Posts from ‘Management’
Correlation & Visibility
Let’s start to examine the impact of end-to-end visibility and ways it can be put to work for your organization. For starters, let’s dig into correlation.
Correlation involves identifying related actions and events as a file moves through a series of business processes (including what happens after a file is moved, renamed, or deleted), and using that information to make business decisions. Correlation can also associate file transfer metadata with downstream processes such as whether a product was shipped or an invoice was paid after an order was received from a customer.
Ipswitch’s Frank Kenney shares some thoughts in the video below on why correlation is an especially important part of visibility and how it enables you to really understand not only file transfers, but also the applications, processes, purchase orders and other items in your infrastructure that tie back to customers, SLA’s and revenue..
Correlation enables users to easily view all the events related to the transfer and consumption of a single file or set of files, including subsequent applications and resulting business processes. For example, they can track a file through a complete workflow and throughout its entire lifecycle, even if it was shared with a customer or business partner – critical insight that can impact the quality and timeliness of work, service level agreements, not to mention revenue and profitability.
Information flows into, within and out of organizations faster and in greater volumes than ever before. Complicating matters is the growing number of vendor systems, applications and platforms that make up your company’s business infrastructure and touch even your most sensitive and mission-critical information.
If you don’t have visibility into the data and files that are flowing between systems, applications and people — both inside and beyond the company firewall — things can go haywire very quickly.
- Lost files, security breaches and compliance violations
- Broken SLAs and other processes that are dependent on files
- No file lifecycle tracking as data flows between applications, systems and people
- Damaged partner and customer relationships
- Lost opportunities
Relying on the reporting capabilities of each individual system has proven to be risky and inefficient. Chances are, you’re swimming in a sea of not-very-useful-or-actionable data and static reports that are already a week behind with what’s actually happening in your company this very instant.
In today’s blog video, Frank Kenney shares his thoughts why having one consolidated view is critical and why organizations are having such a hard time achieving visibility.
When it comes to your file transfers, many questions exist. Do you have the total visibility your business requires? How do your customers gain visibility into their file transfers?? Do you have all the information you need to meet your service level agreements (SLAs) as well as enabling transparency about integration and file transfers??? Let Ipswitch help you answer these questions and overcome your visibility challenges.
You’re going to be hearing more and more about “VISIBILITY” from Ipswitch, so I’d like to quickly start this blog post with our definition of visibility in the context of files and data flowing into, within and out of your company:
Visibility: “Unobstructed vision into all data interactions, including files, events, people, policies and processes”
Fast, easy access to critical file and data transfer information is a must-have – it’s critical to the success of your business. Whether it’s tracking and reporting on SLAs, analyzing file transfer metrics to identify bottlenecks and improve efficiency, or providing customers and partners with easy self-service access to the file transfer information they require – as well as countless other business objectives – unobstructed visibility is imperative.
Having one consolidated view into all of the systems and processes involved in your organizations file and data transfers will deliver tremendous business value and a competitive edge. Please do take a couple of minutes to watch Ipswitch’s Frank Kenney share his perspective on why visibility is important.
“My company still relies heavily on FTP. I know we should be using something more secure, but I don’t know where to begin.”
Sound familiar?
The easy answer is that you should migrate away from antiquated FTP software because it could be putting your company’s data at risk – Unsecured data is obviously an enormous liability. Not only does FTP pose a real security threat, but it also lacks many of the management and enforcement capabilities that modern Managed File Transfer solutions offer.
No, it won’t be as daunting of a task as you think. Here’s a few steps to help you get started:
Identify the various tools that are being used to transfer information in, out, and around your organization. This would include not only all the one-off FTP instances, but also email attachments, file sharing websites, smartphones, EDI, etc. Chances are, you’ll be surprised to learn some of the methods employees are using to share and move files and data.- Map out existing processes for file and data interactions. Include person-to-person, person-to-server, business-to-business and system-to-system scenarios. Make sure you really understand the business processes that consume and rely on data.
- Take inventory of the places where files live. Servers, employee computers, network directories, SharePoint, ordering systems, CRM software, etc. After all, it’s harder to protect information that you don’t even know exists.
- Think about how much your company depends on the secure and reliable transfer of files and data. What would the effects be of a data breach? How much does revenue or profitability depend on the underlying business process and the data that feeds them?
- Determine who has access to sensitive company information. Then think about who really needs access (and who doesn’t) to the various types of information. If you’re not already controlling access to company information, it should be part of your near-term plan. Not everybody in your company should have access to everything.
Modern managed file transfer solutions deliver not only the security you know your business requires, but also the ability to better govern and control you data…. As well as provide you with visibility and auditing capabilities into all of your organizations data interactions, including files, events, people, policies and processes.
Every day, files are exchanged between your systems, employees, and business partners on a global scale. It’s no secret that with each file transfer, your organization faces potential exposure to viruses, worms, Trojan horses and other malware – and the damaged files, corrupted applications, reduced performance and other adverse business effects that come with them.
Are your file transfers as safe as they can be? Specifically, when you receive inbound files, are you doing all you can to protect your IT infrastructure from the risk of viruses and malware?? Are your outbound data and file transfers “clean,” so you don’t expose your trading partners to any viruses that might be undetected in your systems???
Ipswitch MOVEit and MessageWay solutions offer the ability to integrate with specific antivirus solutions. Here’s a link to learn more about MOVEit DMZ’s new ability to integrate with Sophos and Symantec ICAP enabled antivirus solutions to ensure that only clean files enter your infrastructure.
For example, all files uploaded to MOVEit DMZ (including those sent using the person-to-person Ad Hoc Transfer module) are first scanned and validated to ensure that they are free of viruses, trojans, malware and other malicious threats. If an infected file is detected the following actions will immediately and automatically be taken:
• Rejects the transfer of the infected file
• Alerts end user that upload failed due to virus detection
• Logs the virus, timestamp, the scan engine, version and definition tag
• Reports the list of infected files that have been detected during a specified time period
By integrating your antivirus solution with your managed file transfer solution, you ensure that all the files you receive are scanned before they enter your network. Not only does this protect your applications, data and valuable IT assets, but it prevents you from accidentally passing on any viruses that may exist in your systems.
