The world of file transfer has changed dramatically over the last decade. A growing mobile workforce, increased business-to-business interactions and more stringent security and privacy requirements are causing many organizations to re-evaluate their current file transfer technologies.
Today, organizations require tools that can handle more files, larger file sizes and files traveling to locations around the world. In addition, the solution must comply with rigorous security regulations, and it must do all these things without draining IT resources.
File transfer is often part of a larger enterprise workflow, and is essential to most IT operations. If file transfer is insecure or inefficient, it can disrupt operations and lead to significant security breaches. While file transfer is one of the most commonly adopted software technologies, many organizations are finding that homegrown or basic file transfer technologies are limiting, and the capabilities are fundamentally inadequate.
Downfalls of basic tech
Many legacy file transfer solutions fall short when it comes to transferring large, unwieldy files. For example, FTP lacks a recovery mechanism when transfers fail. It is also incapable of picking up interrupted transfers where they left off and transfers slow to a crawl when network latency increases.
The truth is many file transfer applications were designed as simple utilities, not as enterprise tools. As a result, homegrown and legacy technologies often lack the robustness to quickly adapt to changes in operating conditions. Specifically, basic file transfer tools do not offer the flexibility to handle multiple sources and targets. This is especially detrimental in business-to-business interactions as it prohibits companies from integrating with partners, vendors and suppliers.
In addition, they do not provide the ability to support both Internet file transfers and transfers between internal server platforms, and many are unable to accommodate large e-mail attachments and increased network traffic. Lastly, solutions such as FTP include no provisions for data encryption, meaning that sensitive data is easily exposed in transit. For the financial and government sectors, exposed data can cause significant security risks.
As business-to-business interactions grow and workforces continue to disperse, enterprise file transfer requirements also increase. Features such as multiplatform support, secure communications, user-interface options and scalability are essential elements to an effective enterprise solution.
As a result, companies are turning to managed file transfer (MFT) products for enhanced security, centralized visibility and control, reliable delivery and end-to-end automation. Industry experts estimate the MFT market is growing at a rate of 10 percent to 20 percent a year, indicating a fundamental shift from basic file transfer technology to advance managed file transfer solutions. Organizations are turning to MFT tools to address multiple challenges, including:
* How can I automate the movement of files between internal systems and partners/customers?
* How can I ensure the successful delivery of files without manual checks or extensive scripting for error handling, file verification and file transfer retries?
* How can I support a variety of transfer clients and protocols, including browsers via HTTPS, e-mail attachments and FTP/SFTP clients?
* How can I support user-to-user file transfers as e-mail attachments without worrying about file size limits or maxing out e-mail server storage limits?
* How can I report on regulatory compliance by rolling up audit details on file transfers across multiple systems?
MFT technology helps companies monitor, control and secure all aspects of data movement (including large bulk data) between any two entities. The tools allow organizations to not only protect sensitive data, but also enable compliance and improve reliability.
Clearly, data in motion is vulnerable and businesses need to consider a number of factors when evaluating a MFT solution. One such element is support for the growing demands of partners and customers. As business-to-business interactions increase, so will an organization’s file transfer requirements. User-interface options and scalability are essential to an enterprise’s file transfer strategy.
All too often, the file transfer process is interrupted or encounters an error. MFT solutions include capabilities such as automated retries, packet-level data integrity checks, exception alerts, and file transfer queuing. These features provide the reliability needed to detect problems, notify senders and recover transfers when transmissions fail.
What to look for
So what should an organization look for when evaluating MFT tools? Consider the following functions:
* Support for internal and external security mandates: This should include Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, PCI DSS and Gramm-Leach-Bliley. It’s important to choose a tool that provides comprehensive support for the latest authentication, authorization and encryption technologies. The solution should also include a full set of security protocols including HTTPS, FTPS, SFTP, and PGP over FTP.
* High reliability: The product must be able to deliver a file to its intended destination, regardless of its size. When file transfers do fail, however, the tool should support graceful recovery through alerts, details of the failure, and, when possible, automatically attempt the file transfer again.
* Detailed auditing of all transfer activity: Auditability ensures the solution is logging every transfer-related event as well as providing detailed reports of every aspect of all transfers.
Ensuring your organization’s data is securely delivered and received is vital to its communication framework. Factors including accelerating market globalization and increased levels of security risk will continue to drive the push for advanced file transfer technologies. Clearly, advanced file transfer technology such as MFT should be a critical part of an enterprise’s information strategy.
Morris, CISSP, is a product marketing manager for Attachmate Corporation, a provider of managed file transfer solutions through the FileXpress family of products. To learn more about MFT, download this white paper or visit Attachmate’s blog “Data in Motion.”
