How can I secure a FTP transfer using like an SFTP middleman

Question

I have a little home security camera that has FTP capabilities to upload captured videos/images to an FTP server.

The only thing is I use a droplet on digitalocean to store my content but I don't like the idea of sending my content to my droplet via insecure FTP.

I have a little home server that I run off a crappy Dell and I was wondering if there was a way I could maybe

Send the FTP transfer to my local server (more secure because it will be behind firewalls/router) and then the little server will then send the received content to my droplet via SFTP

so like

Camera sends to > Little local server via FTP, which then sends the content via SFTP to > My Droplet

I hope this makes sense if anybody needs more clarification feel free to ask.

Answer 1

I assume your Dell runs Windows OS.

The easiest solution is to schedule a frequent regular synchronization from a drop folder of your local FTP server to the remote SFTP server.

For example, with WinSCP, just schedule a regular run of the following batch-file:

winscp.com /log=c:\path\sync.log /command ^
    "open sftp://user:[email protected]/" ^
    "synchronize remote c:\ftp\camera /path/camera" ^
    "exit"

For details, see WinSCP guide to:

• Automating file transfers (or synchronization) to SFTP server
• Scheduling file transfers to SFTP server

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If you need to upload the pictures in a real time, you can run a continuous script instead with keepuptodate command.

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(I'm the author of WinSCP)