How To Set Up an SSH Key For Secure Connections

The Secure Shell Protocol (SSH) is perhaps the most well-known means to make a secure connection between a client machine (your laptop, phone or desktop) and a remote server in an office, data center or in your home network. You’ll likely use SSH if you want to get to the command line on your web hosting service or a headless Raspberry Pi. SSH is available in some form for nearly every operating system, and often it is integrated into the OS.

Most servers give you a choice of connecting to SSH via a password or via SSH keys. Which are more secure. The SSH key method uses cryptographically-generated public and private keys to create an encrypted connection between devices.

Our public key is stored on the remote machine and a private key is stored on our machine. The two SSH keys are required to make a secure connection. Keys can also be used with passphrases to add another level of security. But they can also be used without, for example in automated processes.

In this how to we will learn how to create SSH keys using PuTTY, the most popular SSH client, and at the Windows Command Prompt / Linux Terminal.

Read More: How To Set Up an SSH Key For Secure Connections – Tom’s Hardware