Data Transfer Encryption and FTP

Note: Data Transfer Encryption and FTP are chargeable add-ons. If you do not have the add-ons, you will not have access to the menus and functionality.

Data transfer encryption enables you to transfer data to and from Authoring with no risk to security. The functionality is designed specifically with respect to data and report exports, and respondent uploading and export. The following data transfer tasks support this feature:

• All the data export types

• Data Import for “Pick up files from server” option

• Report exports

• Respondent uploading

• Respondent export

If your company has licensed the add-ons, an administrator setting makes it possible to force every Authoring user within your company to use encryption and the FTP server during data transfer. Encryption is then handled automatically on respondent upload. The encrypted files can be either ordered by email (go to Handling Respondents in Limited Surveys for more information), or sent to the Forsta FTP server or an external FTP server for downloading (go to Data Transfer for more information). The users will then have to decrypt the files using their private PGP encryption keys.

Note: PGP enforcement does not apply to end user downloads - the export data permission allows unencrypted downloads to end users.

When downloading files from the Forsta FTP server or an external FTP server, if your company has licensed the Encryption add-on and the file you are downloading has the file extension *.pgp, the system will treat it as being encrypted and automatically decrypt it.

The encryption algorithm used by Forsta’s public and private encryption keys is AES-128, i.e. 128 bit. Public/private encryption keys generated by our customers and used when ordering exports from Authoring, may use another algorithm.

Before starting to use PGP, check with Forsta Support that the user has been correctly set up with your public PGP key used for encrypted file transfers from Authoring. Follow the procedure below to import PGP encrypted data in Authoring using Data import:

1. Encrypt your file using Authoring’s public PGP key found in Home > Help > Public PGP Key.

2. Import the file to Authoring using Authoring Data Import (go to Imports for more information).

You can also upload PGP-encrypted data using FTP:

1. Encrypt your file using Authoring’s public PGP key found in Home > Help > Public PGP Key.

2. Upload the file to your FTP upload area in Authoring using FTP in binary mode.

3. Import the file to Authoring using Authoring Respondent Upload

Note: Your user key is available in the User Settings overlay (click your user name in the upper-right corner of the Authoring window).