How often does this happen to you? You attach a file to an email and hit Send. Then the dreaded message shows up. Either your or the recipient’s email system can’t handle the file because it’s too large.
How often does this happen to you? You’re on deadline to finish a project and send the resulting document to others. Maybe it’s a presentation you’re preparing for your executive team or a deliverable for a client. You attach the precious file to an email and hit Send. Then the dreaded message shows up. Either your or the recipient’s email system can’t handle the file because it’s too large. Or another favorite message: Your email box is over its limit and you can’t send anything until you delete or archive other files. Either way, your productivity comes to a screeching halt until you find a workaround for delivering that document.
The workarounds are usually inconvenient as well as insecure. Frustrated email users who can’t send large attachments often turn to one of these alternatives:
1. Breaking up the file into multiple smaller files, forcing the recipient to reassemble the pieces.
IN DEPTH: How effective is your file transfer strategy?
2. Using an FTP server, which may or may not be secure.
3. Using a file transfer service designed for personal use.
4. Using a personal email account that doesn’t have file size limits.
5. Putting the file on a thumb drive and taking or sending it to the intended recipient.
Of course, these “solutions” introduce a whole new set of problems for the company. It may be impossible to track the document, to know who has seen it or whether it has been received by the right person or people. The delivery method could be very insecure and may violate privacy or confidentiality regulations. And, the workaround is so much more inconvenient and time consuming than simply being able to attach the file to an email message.
Enterprise email systems were not designed to handle large attachments. Yet the reality today is that 98% of the bits that are stored on an email server are attributed to attachments. Think how much more efficient your email system could be if you could offload even a portion of those files.
There are several enterprise-class file transfer solutions on the market that are aimed at taking the pressure off your email system for sending and receiving files that can range up to several gigabytes in size. To keep your users from turning to non-secure consumer-class file transfer applications, it’s time to investigate a secure file transfer solution.
Let me first make the distinction between “enterprise” and “consumer” tools for sending large files. Enterprise products are specifically built for business use. They include good security features, such as encryption, virus-checking and SSL. They have features like audit trails and private access to files in order to meet business regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA. They integrate with enterprise email systems like Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes and with directory systems like Active Directory and LDAP. They ensure complete receipt and delivery of files in the event of an interruption in transmission. In short, enterprise-level file transfer products are designed to protect your critical business information.
Products that I’d place in the enterprise category include Accellion Secure File Transfer; Biscom Delivery Server; Axway Secure Transport; YouSendIt enterprise edition; and LeapFILE hosted solution.
These products are designed to act as an integrated complement to your email system and/or to operate standalone as a Web-based file transfer tool. For example, I know that Accellion and YouSendIt have Outlook plug-ins that allow an email user to send a large attachment right from within Outlook. In fact, the email administrator can set a policy that all attachments over a specific file size automatically go through the file transfer system. When the user clicks the attach symbol, the file transfer utility takes over to grab the file and send it through a separate encrypted communications channel.
The large file is placed on a secure file server, either within the cloud or within your infrastructure, where the file awaits downloading from the specific recipient(s) the sender designates. The file sender as well as the system administrator can determine how long a file remains on the server, and who can access it. There is an audit trail that shows who accessed each file, and precisely when.
These types of solutions can be used to communicate two-way with external users. This is especially nice when you have business partners, clients or colleagues who are outside your immediate network or email system, and they need to send large files to your internal users. An external user can be invited to set up an account and become authenticated to use the file transfer system without the intervention of a system administrator. This is an important distinguishing feature over FTP servers, which frequently require a systems administrator to set up new users.
The newest innovation for secure file transfer systems is that they can be used with mobile devices. For example, YouSendIt has applications for the iPhone and BlackBerry devices. While you wouldn’t want to download a 20MB file to your smartphone, you can forward and share files from your phone and track the status of files previously sent.
Law firms tend to be heavy users of secure file transfer applications because of the need to exchange lots of legal documents among attorneys and with clients. Confidentiality and the chain of custody of documents are important, so the audit trail feature is especially welcome.
David Michel is CIO of the law firm Burr & Forman. With eight offices in five states, the 500 or so employees of this firm have a need to exchange lots of documents with each other and with clients and other attorneys. Burr & Forman used to use an internal FTP server, but Michel said there was too much concern over security, document tracking and server maintenance. The company adopted the enterprise version of YouSendIt. The Outlook plug-in makes it convenient for employees to send the large files. Anything over 25MB in size is automatically steered through YouSendIt rather than being sent through the Exchange server.
Your users need to send and receive big files to do their work. Isn’t it time to give them a file transfer tool that meets your enterprise requirements?
Linda Musthaler is a principal analyst with Essential Solutions Corporation. You can write to her at LMusthaler@essential-iws.com. Get more of Linda’s views here.
Essential Solutions researches the practical value of information technology, and how it can make individual workers and entire organizations more productive. Essential Solutions offers consulting services to computer industry and corporate clients to help define and fulfill the potential of IT.
