Posts from ‘Security’
RSA Conference or bust!
Are you attending RSA Conference next week in San Francisco? If so, stop by booth #629 at the Moscone Center and say hello the Ipswitch team.
This will be my third year attending RSA. Not only and I’m looking forward to talking about how Ipswitch’s portfolio of Managed File Transfer solutions can solve the problems you’re experiencing with your current file transfer and B2B environment…. 
But I’m also looking forward to learning about topics like security attacks, data breaches, mobile threats, cloud security, and compliance along with the other 15,000+ people attending the largest security conference in North America.
If you’re going to be at RSA this year, stop by our Ipswitch booth (#629) to learn how we can help you:
- Mitigate security risks and data breach exposure. We’ll show you how to secure and control all files/data moving between systems and people — both internally and externally
- Reduce complexity by consolidating and replacing the various file transfer products, homegrown solutions, hard to maintain scripts, and tools people use to share files
- Increases productivity and efficiency by automating manual and labor-intensive workflows with a simple point-and-click interface – No scripting required
- Provide visibility and auditability into all data transfer and file sharing activities, including files, events, people, policies and processes
We hope to see you there.
As companies continue to include the cloud in their overall IT initiatives – taking advantage of elasticity, scalability, interoperability and mobility – concerns around management, governance and control of data are preventing some organizations from fully embracing cloud services.
In fact, according to the recent Ponemon cloud survey, over 30% of IT and compliance respondents claim that concerns about data security have kept their organization from adopting cloud services…. And approximately half place a high priority on security when evaluating cloud providers.
For many, the benefits and the desire to migrate to the cloud in organizations seem to outweigh the security concerns.
That being said, every company’s risk tolerance is different. Some of the variables in play that impact risk tolerance certainly include the type of information being moved and stored in the cloud, the industry (and associated compliance requirements) and of not only the company but also its business partners, as well as the specific security measures provided (or not provided) by cloud providers they are considering.
Not all cloud services are created equal. There are absolutely great differences in the measures different providers have taken to protect information they process and store in the cloud. A few security considerations include authentication and authorization as well as protecting data not only while it’s in transit to the cloud, but also while it remains there.
It’s no secret that more and more companies are turning to the cloud to benefit from all that it has to offer. Subscribing to a cloud service can offer conveniences over deploying software on-premises, including faster deployment, budgeting flexibility, built-in elasticity, near-perfect uptime and it can be significantly less taxing on IT resources.
Managed File Transfer (MFT) is certainly not being left behind in this cloud revolution. According to Gartner, adoption of MFT Cloud Services is growing rapidly and now accounts for approximately 10% of the overall MFT market. While both on-premises and cloud markets will continue to grow about 20% annually, cloud services will become a bigger piece of the MFT pie.
Here’s a nifty graph from the Ponemon Institute’s recently published “The Security of Cloud Infrastructure” report summarizing key cloud drivers from the perspective of both IT/Security and Compliance respondents. Interesting to see that many people believe that cloud services will provide improved security and compliance efforts over doing it themselves on-premises with their resource.
So, how do you feel about cloud security? Are you comfortable with your organization’s data being moved into the cloud?? What cloud security measures would make you feel better???
Looking back at 2011, we saw more and more employees using consumer-grade (and often personally owned) file sharing technologies such as USB drives, smartphones, personal email accounts, and file sharing websites to move sensitive company information. We’ve learned that employees will “do what they need to do” to be productive and get their job done… And if IT doesn’t provide them with the right tools, they will find their own.
2011 was also a record-breaking year for data breaches. Coincidence? Perhaps. But there is no denying the fact that the increased use of non-sanctioned technology in the workplace has created a security loophole in many organizations. It will become increasingly important for organizations to mitigate this risk to avoid a failed security or compliance audit or worse, a data breach.
Ipswitch can help your organization meet the security, usability and visibility requirements for file sharing. For example, our Ad hoc Transfer module for MOVEit DMZ enables organization to enforce consistent policies and processes around person‐to‐person file transfers ‐ email encryption, attachment offloading, secure messaging, eDiscovery, and more. It not only gives companies unparalleled governance, but it also allows end users to send information, with anyone, in a fast, easy, secure, visible, and well managed way.
We will be talking a lot more about the topic of people person-to-person file sharing in 2012, so stay tuned….
This morning I was asked if I recommended using transport encryption or file encryption to protect company files and data.
My answer: “Use both of them, together!”
For starters, here’s a real quick summary of both encryption types:
- Transport encryption (“data-in-transit”) protects the file as it travels over protocols such as FTPS (SSL), SFTP (SSH) and HTTPS. Leading solutions use encryption strengths up to 256-bit.
- File encryption (“data-at-rest”) encrypts an individual file so that if it ever ended up in someone else’s possession, they couldn’t open it or see the contents. PGP is commonly used to encrypt files.
I believe that using both together provides a double-layer of protection. The transport protects the files as they are moving…. And the PGP protects the file itself, especially important after it’s been moved and is sitting on a server, laptop, USB drive, smartphone or anywhere else.
Here’s an analogy: Think of transport encryption as an armored truck that’s transporting money from say a retail store to a bank. 99.999% of the time that armored Brinks truck will securely transport your delivery without any incident. But adding a second layer of protection – say you put the money in a safe before putting it in the truck – reduces the chance of compromise exponentially, both during and after transport.
One last piece of advice: Ensure that your organization has stopped using the FTP protocol for transferring any type of confidential, private or sensitive information. Although it’s an amazing accomplishment that FTP is still functional after 40 years, please please please realize that FTP is does not provide any encryption or guaranteed delivery – not to mention that tactically deployed FTP servers scattered throughout your organization lack the visibility, management and enforcement capabilities that modern Managed File Transfer solutions deploy.
