The MFT Gateway and AS2 Gateway are mostly similar AS2 EDI Solutions but they differ in terms of deployment and use case. Explore the key features and differences between each product to determine the ideal AS2 solution for your specific use case.
In today’s digital era, where millions of transactions occur every day, data security and protecting data exchanges have become more critical than ever. Once data goes beyond the organizational security system, it becomes vulnerable to numerous cyber threats. Hence, it is crucial to be able to safeguard information exchange in order to protect sensitive information, provide confidence, adhere to the legal requirements, and ensure operational efficiency. Recognizing this, organizations are now looking for effective ways of managing their data exchanges while enhancing security. To maintain confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity in these exchanges, they use techniques such as encryption, digital signatures and integrity checks, authentication, access control, and secure protocols.
Our MFT Gateway and AS2 Gateway products ensure that all company documents are exchanged securely, retaining confidentiality, integrity, and availability throughout the communication process using either the AS2 or SFTP protocols. Because of this, they may be used for a variety of corporate applications, such as secure communications, large-scale file transfers, and electronic data interchange (EDI).
AS2 is used for the transmission of business-to-business documents using a secure connection through the regular internet. It is often used in sectors such as retail, healthcare and logistics because of its high levels of protection. During the process of transferring the data, AS2 employs encryption techniques like AES so that the information cannot be intercepted by any other party. It uses digital signatures for the identification of the sender and for ensuring that the message has not been tampered with. AS2 supports MDNs, which is a form of receipt to indicate that the AS2 partner has received the message and that the message was received in its original form without any alterations. AS2 also often employs SSL/TLS protocols to establish a secure connection that enhances the security of the data during transfer.
SFTP is an enhanced version of the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) that guarantees the secure accessibility of files, their transfer, and management over a protected data connection. It is widely used in various industries including finance, healthcare, and government sectors for secure file transfers. SFTP forms the basis of secure transmission since it encrypts both the commands and the data so that passwords and other sensitive information cannot be intercepted in plain text. It supports public key based authentication, making it more secure. SFTP also has the feature of preserving the integrity of data that is being transferred, thereby preventing loss or data corruption. SFTP works on a secure connection usually through SSH, and this makes it secure to perform file transfer activities. SFTP is set to run on port 22 by default the same port as SSH hence making firewall configurations easier and reduces the complexity of managing multiple ports for different protocols. SFTP has the ability to perform almost any file operation that can be done on a standard file server, such as reading and writing files, changing file permission, and directory listings. This makes it a very useful tool for managing files as it can be used securely.
The MFT Gateway is an end-to-end AS2 communication solution which is offered as a web-based application, therefore there is no software, hardware, setup or updates required. It can also be run in a customer’s own AWS environment within a particular geographic location to meet the regulatory needs while being serverless to minimize expenses.
Serving as the middleman between your trading partners like Walmart or the FDA, MFT Gateway helps establish a safe AS2 connection. It is possible to upload and download files without any interference or even integrate with other systems in a fully automated manner.
The MFT Gateway also supports SFTP protocol where the partners can connect to the SFTP server and use any standard SFTP client for the exchange of files securely.
MFT Gateway provides a dedicated URL for the purpose of receiving large files. MFT Gateway uses dynamic IP addresses for its services by default,
meaning the IP address used by MFT Gateway services may change over time. However, the static IP feature can be enabled if needed.
It also has features like file upload/download and interfacing through a web console, REST APIs, and webhooks, AWS S3 bucket integration, and SFTP-based integration.
The MFT Gateway is perfect for companies that require hosted AS2 connections but are not large enough for a dedicated hosting solution, and for large companies that require dedicated hosting or highly-scalable cloud-based deployments.
AS2 Gateway can be installed as a desktop application for Windows, Linux, and Mac or as an enterprise on-premises deployment running on a customer cloud account like AWS, GCP, or Azure, or as a container on Docker, Kubernetes, and Heroku/PaaS. Furthermore, it is offered as a hosted SaaS solution. It can also facilitate AS2-based regulatory submissions to FDA/EMA, and it can handle files of several gigabytes in size. The AS2 Gateway, which is based on the traditional enterprise architecture, uses relational database management systems like MySQL, PostgreSQL, or Microsoft SQL Server (MSSQL).
There are different editions of AS2 Gateway which include Windows, Linux or Mac installation for simple, low-volume in-house usage, for FDA/EMA submissions, on-premises installation on a customer cloud or virtual machine, and for containerization. With AS2 Gateway you can have a very close integration with current on-premises or cloud applications, custom authentication and identity integrations can be implemented, and the solution can be further customized to meet client requirements. With the support of the Enterprise Service Bus, UltraESB-X by AdroitLogic, it has been connecting businesses over the AS2 protocol for a decade. When using RDBMS, it also offers the opportunity to save messages on the external storage and the incoming messages can be uploaded to AWS S3 or Google Storage.
AS2 Gateway does not support SFTP file transfers directly. However, it offers SFTP integration to facilitate submitting and retrieval of AS2-transmitted files. AS2 Gateway usually offers a single static IP, and can additionally be tuned to send and receive large files with a single URL.
AS2 Gateway is designed to meet customer requirements for customization, file uploads/downloads and system integration through a web-based console, REST APIs, webhooks, SFTP, direct or mounted file system access, and AWS S3 integration.
The MFT Gateway and AS2 Gateway products are mostly similar but they differ in terms of deployment and use case. The MFT Gateway is a hosted SaaS solution with AS2 and SFTP connectivity that does not require much configuration effort. It is well-suited for Small and Medium-sized Businesses who seek simple file transfer services and APIs through web control panels.
On the other hand, AS2 Gateway is comparatively more versatile with installations on Windows, Linux, Mac, and the option for installation on a customer’s cloud account or in a container platform. It is aimed at enterprises that need to work with large files, adhere to compliance standards, and integrate with other applications and systems.
Sampavi is a Senior Software Engineer at Aayu Technologies with over 2 years of experience in B2B communication software and cloud technologies. She has played a crucial role in developing and implementing advanced systems, driven by her passion for leveraging technology to solve complex business challenges. In her free time, she enjoys listening to music and watching movies.
We are a US based company with Sri Lankan ingenuity majored in Cloud and Serverless technology based product engineering.
Our solutions power small businesses using our hosted SaaS solutions , to enterprises that run our software on-cloud and on-premise.
