SSH has a wonderful feature called SSH Port Forwarding, sometimes called SSH Tunneling, which allows you to establish a secure SSH session and then tunnel arbitrary TCP connections through it. Tunnels can be created at any time, with almost no effort and no programming, which makes them very appealing. SSH Port Forwarding can be used for secure communications in a myriad of different ways.

Many Hosting Companies that provide MySQL hosting will block access to the MySQL Server from outside the hosting company's network, and only grant access to users connecting from localhost.

There are several benefits to using SSH:

• Connection to a MySQL server from behind a firewall when the MySQL server port is blocked.
• Automatic authentication of users, no passwords sent in plain text to prevent the stealing of passwords.
• Multiple strong authentication methods that prevent such security threats as spoofing identity.
• Encryption and compression of data for security and speed.
• Secure file transfer.
  
  

  

Related topics:
Password Authentication, Public Key Authentication