SFTP is Secure FTP, as in Encrypted FTP.



from http://www.webdrive.com/docs/wpsftpbasics.pdf :

The Secure File Transfer Protocol, or SFTP, is not based on the industry standard FTP, File
Transfer Protocol, as defined in RFC-959. It is a completely distinct file transfer specification
developed by the Secure Shell Working Group and SSH Communications Security Corp. Built on
the Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol, the purpose of the protocol is to provide the ability to have
secure, efficient, file transfer occurring over an SSH encrypted pipe or tunnel. The general idea is
to connect to a remote SSH/SFTP server on port 22, perform a secure SSH v2 handshake with the
remote server, and then all future communications would take place through the existing
encrypted tunnel. No new connections would need to be established, as they are when using FTP.
As of the date of this writing, most SSH servers support either version 3 or version 4 of SFTP as
its file transfer protocol.



A quick search with google, yielded this product which is for Win32, so SFTP isn't a Unix thing per se.

Look at http://www.jcraft.com/jcterm/ , they provide an API for SFTP. Again this was found using everyone's favorite, $1.67 billion IPO, search engine company, Google ;)