CloudHub worker trying to connect to SFTP site which allows whitelisted IPs only - mule

Question

I have a Mule 4 application [App1] created on CloudHub. I tried to deploy the application's jar file onto CloudHub. This application has a Static IP [eg. 100.101.102.103] assigned to it in Runtime Manager. This IP address is whitelisted by customer to allow communication with their SFTP sites and APIs. My Mule application has APIs and some SFTP flows. When I try to deploy my mule application [App1], the deployment fails with below error:
Connectivity test failed for config 'SFTP_Config'. Application deployment will continue. Error was: Could not establish SFTP connection with host: 'sftp.hostname' at port: '22' - Error during login to 'sftpuser#sftp.hostname'.
The SFTP Config is:
<sftp:config name="SFTP_Config" doc:name="SFTP Config" doc:id="5d626288-5181-41d5-807d-2786ea4292d8" >
<sftp:connection host="${sftp.host}" port="${sftp.port}" username="${secure::sftp.username}" password="${secure::sftp.password}" connectionTimeoutUnit="MINUTES" connectionTimeout="2" responseTimeoutUnit="MINUTES" responseTimeout="2" workingDir="${sftp.peoplePosition.directory}">
<reconnection failsDeployment="false" >
<reconnect frequency="${sftp.retryInterval}" count="${sftp.retryAttempts}" />
</reconnection>
</sftp:connection>
</sftp:config>
I also tried using failsDeployment="false" in the SFTP configuration as recommended in this KB article
but it didn't work either.
The log shows:
[2023-02-16 05:59:00.754] ERROR
org.mule.extension.sftp.internal.connection.SftpConnectionProvider
[qtp1351434790-36]: Auth fail
com.jcraft.jsch.JSchException: Auth fail
[2023-02-16 05:59:00.824] WARN
org.mule.runtime.core.internal.connection.
PoolingConnectionManagementStrategy
[qtp1351434790-36]: Failed to create a connection while
applying the pool initialization policy.
org.mule.runtime.api.connection.ConnectionException:
Could not establish SFTP connection with host: 'sftphost' at port: '22'
- Error during login to sftpuser#sftphost
at
org.mule.runtime.core.internal.connection.ErrorTypeHandler
ConnectionProviderWrapper.lambda$connect$0(ErrorTypeHandler
ConnectionProviderWrapper.java:70)
at java.util.Optional.map(Optional.java:215)
I have verified the SFTP credentials, they are working fine with Winscp.
Is there any way a CloudHub worker can complete the deployment successfully or validate the SFTP configuration using Static IP instead of it's own IP address?