---
title: "Disable FTP clear/plain text authentication"
description: "If you've read our previous article on how to pass PCI compliance scans, you might notice that you failed a PCI scan due to FTP clear/plain text authentication being used. In this article we'll..."
url: https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/ftp/disable-ftp-clear-plain-text-authentication/
date: 2012-11-05
modified: 2021-08-16
author: "InMotion Hosting Contributor"
categories: ["FTP"]
type: post
lang: en
---

# Disable FTP clear/plain text authentication

If you’ve read our previous article on [how to pass PCI compliance scans](/support/security/how-to-pass-pci-scans/), you might notice that you failed a PCI scan due to FTP clear/plain text authentication being used. In this article we’ll discuss disabling FTP clear/plain text authentication.

By default when you establish an FTP connection to the server, your credentials are passed to the server as clear/plain text. What this can mean is that if someone was sniffing the network traffic from your computer to the server because you were on a open WiFi network for instance, they could potentially compromise your account. So requiring an encrypted connection instead of a clear/plain text one can help protect your account against this.

It’s important to note that this change would require you having [root access](/support/server/ssh/root-access-faq/) on your VPS or dedicated server, as this is an advanced setting and the default can’t be changed on our shared servers.

1. [Log into WHM](/support/edu/whm/log-into-whm/).
2. In the top-left **Find** box enter in **ftp**, then click on **FTP Server Configuration.[![whm-click-on-ftp-server-configuration](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/website_website-troubleshooting_pci-compliance_whm-click-on-ftp-server-configuration.png)](/support/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/website_website-troubleshooting_pci-compliance_whm-click-on-ftp-server-configuration.png) **
3. In the **TLS Encryption Support** drop-down, select **Required (Command)**.
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on **Save**.

You should now know how to disable FTP clear/plain text authentication on your server. Now that you know how to disable this you’ll also more than likely want to learn about [securely connecting to your website using an FTP client](/support/) as well.