Posts from ‘Security’
In our recent webinar “File sharing: Have employee habits put your company at risk?”, Michael Osterman of Osterman Research and David Boone of Ipswitch File Transfer spoke about the issues associated with trends in individual file sharing and the impact they have on businesses.
There is continued increased usage of rogue tools to share files and information when employees don’t have an adequate solution provided to them by their business. These tools include everything from personal email accounts (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo!) to cloud-based personal file sharing tools (YouSendIt, DropBox) all the way through to USB drives or what David refers to as “SneakerNet” — walking private data around the office on USB drives which can be easily misplaced or lost.
Michael and David also take a look at what information technology teams can do to deliver solutions to businesses that will address these risks, and tips on how to balance the need for end-user simplicity with the control, security and visibility required by the organization.
- Watch the on-demand webinar recording
Lastly they cover five key criteria to consider when selecting a business-class file sharing solution for your organization:
- Make sure it can handle unlimited file sizes.
- Confirm that minimal training is required to deploy it.
- Ensure it is secure. This includes utilizing encryption both in motion and at rest, and that the message itself is encrypted too.
- For successful user adoption, make sure it’s easy to use.
- Finally, make sure it’s easy to integrate into your existing environment.
For the full discussion between Michael and David as well as the question-and-answer session with the audience, we invite you to view the webinar recording. We also invite you to share this with any colleagues who you think may find it useful.
What are the benefits, the risks, the consequences, and the alternatives to the proliferation of personal file transfer and file sharing tools?
Consumer-grade solutions such as Dropbox, webmail and USB drives being rapidly adopted in the workplace. The question is — are they right for you and your organization?
Next Wednesday, on April 25th, you’re invited to join industry experts Michael Osterman and Ipswitch’s David Boone in a 29-minute rapid-fire discussion where we will address:
- Typical Tools – What are the products employees are bringing with them to work?
- What are the risks of relying on personal file sharing tools in the workplace?
- How can I balance the need of the individual with the requirements of the organization?
- Top 3 things to look for in an easy-to-use and governed business-class file sharing solution?
If you manage an IT environment where these tools are pervasively used by employees to send company information, then you’re encouraged to participate in what should be a very opinionated discussion. Bring your questions. Challenge the experts. Learn how to regain control. And enjoy the conversation. Register now.
P.S. – if you are unable to attend the live event, please register anyways and we’ll email you a link to the archived recording for playback on-demand, as your schedule permits.
Ericka Chickowski did a nice job in her Dark Reading article on how old-fashioned FTP introduces unnecessarily levels of compliance and security risks to organizations. And here’s an alarming data point from Harris Interactive – approximately 50% of organizations are currently using the FTP protocol to send and exchange files and data.
Talk of security concerns with FTP is certainly not new. FTP was never designed to provide any type of encryption, making it possible for data to be compromised while in-transit. A common answer for this is to use encrypted standards-based protocols such as SSL/FTPS and SSH/SFTP.
Luckily, modern managed file transfer solutions deliver not only the security you know your business requires, but also the visibility and control that IT needs to properly govern company information.
Ipswitch’s Greg Faubert offers his thoughts in the Dark Reading article:
“While FTP is a ubiquitous protocol, depending on it as a standard architecture for file exchange is a bad strategy…. The PCI standards look specifically at the security surrounding your FTP environment. It is a significant area of focus for auditors, and they will fail companies in their PCI audits for a lack of adequate controls.”
And yet, somehow, many organizations continue to rely on unencrypted FTP to transport mission-critical or sensitive information. For those guilty, here are a few steps to help you get started in migrating away from antiquated FTP. And don’t worry, it won’t be painful.
Here’s a great write-up of how Rochester General Hospital is using Ipswitch’s MOVEit solution to manage over 400,000 electronic billing transfers per year to dozens of payer systems.
Quick background on the business need: Rochester General Hospital needs to exchange patient records, insurance claims, and billing information from their electronic medical record (EMR) and accounting systems with many health providers and insurance companies.
Security and compliance are critically important: Not only do the transfers need to be reliable to facilitate timely payments, but they also needed to be highly secure and auditable to protect patient privacy and ensure compliance with HIPAA and HITECH.
Ipswitch eliminated complexity and created efficiencies:
“We needed to consolidate on a standard way to transfer files to many different payer systems…. MOVEit consolidated a number of batch files and legacy tools into a single, secure and easy to use file transfer solution,” says Dylan Taft, Systems Engineer at RGH.
“In the event of an audit, MOVEit allows us to provide chain-of-custody and non-repudiation with just a few clicks. Without MOVEit, we wouldn’t have this visibility.”
If we didn’t have MOVEit, we would have to hire one or two additional people just to review the log files every day – not to mention lost files, information arriving late, and frustrated doctors and payers.”
Do you have a great Ipswitch story of your own to tell? Email us at mystories@ipswitch.com…. We can’t wait to hear all about it!
There is so much to absorb at RSA Conference. The largest gathering of security vendors, solution providers and practitioners in the U.S. certainly didn’t disappoint as the Moscone Center was buzzing with security education and of course lots of thought provoking conversations.
Many of the people I spoke with shared similar concerns of data breach risk, tighter compliance and auditing requirements, and their lack of visibility and control over the tools that people are using inside their organization to share files and data with other people. IT leaders are feeling 
pressure (and rightfully so) to regain control over how people share files with other people. It was also great hear so many people talking about migrating to the public and private clouds in order to take advantage of benefits such as quick provisioning and elasticity.
My favorite conversations at conferences are usually the ones I have with current customers…. And RSA was no exception. Quite frankly, the key insights I learn from talking with customers help me do my job better. Many thanks to the dozen or so Ipswitch customers that stopped by our booth and shared stories of how they have successfully consolidated and replaced the various homegrown file transfer tools and scripts, various vendor products, and manual processes they had been relying on with an Ipswitch MFT solution, resulting in improved efficiencies in their business processes as well as a simplified way to demonstrate compliance and consistently enforce security policies for all their file transfer and file sharing activities.
