Beginning July 1st, the University's network will only accept inbound FTP traffic from clients using Secure Shell FTP.

Rationale
Regular FTP is not a secure protocol. When logging into your University account using regular FTP, your NetID and account password are passed in clear text over the Internet. Since no one can guarantee the confidentiality of information passed in clear text over the public Internet, there is a risk that your login credentials may be exposed in transit. To counter this risk, the University supplies faculty, students, and staff with a software tool that encrypts your remote FTP and Telnet traffic.  The software tool is called Secure Shell and is free to University members here:
http://www.albany.edu/its/CSS_details_SSH.htm.

In addition to the threat to login credentials, FTP scans are conducted by cyber criminals looking for systems with open FTP connections. The University is regularly scanned for these connections. By blocking this traffic, it helps to protect internal systems from outside attacks.

Exceptions
A number of departments will continue to offer open FTP services.  Inbound plain text and anonymous FTP traffic will still be allowed to these specific machines.