Ziff Davis recently published a study on Managed File Transfer that heralds MFT solutions as “the unsung security and compliance solution”.  Eric Lundquist sets the stage nicely:

“Everyone is talking about the need to collaborate more effectively and put employees closer to customers in a real time business environment.

But until you can assure the security, privacy, and compliance requirements of data transfer, the collaborative enterprise is just a good idea.  MFT is one of those enabling technologies designed to make it a reality.”

The study found that security concerns about current file transfer methods include the usual suspects, such as:  encryption; viruses, user authentication, backup, hacking, enforcing security policies, managing external users, auditing, reporting and defining security policies.

Not surprisingly, data from the study shows that many of those very security concerns that people had with their organizations current file transfer methods are actually strengths of today’s MFT solutions.

Keep in mind that many organizations still rely on homegrown scripts and point-to-point solutions, oftentimes using unencrypted FTP protocol for transport… And with very little visibility, management or policy enforcement.  In addition to being time consuming and expensive to manage and maintain (and commonly built by developers that left the company years ago), many existing file transfer methods are insecure and introduce risk and inefficiency into an organization.

Plus, many companies haven’t even begun to crack the person-to-person nut of file transfer beyond relying on corporate email, unsanctioned personal email or file sharing websites, and even sneakernet!

In my next post, we’ll take a closer look at some of the areas where the study identified MFT solutions as being superior to many commonly used methods for file transfer.