Failure is not a term sought after by most. People do not start a project with the intention to fail, but rather to succeed. The same is true for the key file transfers that keep your business moving. Nobody wants to be set up for failure; however, with the wrong tools in place, failure is quite possible.

We’ve come up with the top three classic file transfer “fails” to show what you could be risking.

1. My customer knew the file transfer failed before I did. In interactions and transactions with clients, there is an expectation that promised files will be delivered in a timely manner.  When a customer notices that a file did not make it before the delivering organization does, it can create tension and questions about reliability. Additionally, with FTP (the basis for many home-grown file transfer solutions) there is no alert that a file did not reach its intended destination. So while FTP may be quick and easy to implement, it doesn’t protect you from the potential embarrassment and doesn’t provide a failsafe system that alerts you of an error.
2. My email attachment is too big. The number one file transfer fail that we hear time and time again is an  email attachment that has been blocked from being sent or received because it is too large. This is the way that the majority of people send documents to other people; inside and outside of their organization. Not only is the file transmission not secure, but there is no way to know that the file made it through your email and into your intended target’s inbox. Email attachments also take up inbox space.  “Your inbox is full” messages are so annoying.
3. My IT staff is spending too much time involved manually managing file transfers. When there are multiple file transfer solutions within an organization, it requires a great deal of maintenance. Custom scripts for each solution are hard to maintain and hard to support. This is increasingly difficult as an organization grows in size and the demand increases. Provisioning tasks are often manual, requiring a great deal of time and effort. Wasting resources is a big fail, when resources could be allocated to more pressing tasks.

The good news is these classic fails don’t have to happen to you! Your organization can avoid failure and be prepared for success by implementing a managed file transfer solution, like those offered by Attachmate. Read our previous blog post on tools for evaluating your solution.

Classic File Transfer Fails is a post from: Data In Motion

Is your washing machine giving you signs that it's ready to be replaced? How about your processes for transferring files?

Before you decide it’s time for a new home appliance, there are usually signs that indicate it’s time to bring in the new and recycle the old. Your washer and dryer aren’t what they used to be. From funny noises, to clothes left stained and damp, the signs are hard to ignore. The same is true for developing a file transfer strategy. There are many indicators that illustrate the need for a new approach. We have highlighted three examples that showcase this need.  

1. The most classic symptom that indicates the need for a file transfer strategy is when you have a problem sending a large email attachment. If you are sending a large file to someone at another organization, you want to ensure that the document was received. But what if the attachment is too large for an email system? Even if the important file clears your email, it may not make it through the intended recipient’s email system and there is no way to know if the file was stalled. You need a reliable file transfer method that allows you to easily send even large files to other users.
2. Another indication that it is time for a file transfer strategy is when there is no standard for file transfers in the organization. If everyone is sending files in a different way, it is confusing and makes it difficult to integrate solutions.  A single transfer strategy could streamline the process across your organization, especially if you select a solution that is scalable and flexible to your growing business needs. Also, by investing in a single file transfer solution, you’ll help cut costs by dealing with fewer vendors and reducing the number of file transfer servers you use to move files into and out of the organization. 
3. Finally, if you are using non-secured file transfer protocols, your data is at risk. The information you are transferring could be compromised and there is no way to ensure compliance with corporate policy. This could have devastating consequences on an organization and illustrates the need for one, flexible file transfer strategy that can be used across an organization and ensures files are received and information is protected.

If you notice the need for a file transfer strategy across your organization, we would be happy to discuss the benefits of FileXpress. Please contact us here.

What led you to explore a file transfer strategy?

How You Know it is Time for a File Transfer Strategy is a post from: Data In Motion

We talk a lot about the benefits of an MFT solution on the “Data in Motion” blog. But once you’ve identified the need for MFT, how do you go about selecting the best one? We thought it might be helpful to provide you with some research tools to utilize when evaluating your options and selecting the right MFT solution that meets your business needs.

Analyst firms that research managed file transfer include Aberdeen, Forrester, Gartner and IDC.  We have included reports published surrounding MFT that can help in your search. We’ve also provided links to helpful blogs and white papers that aid in your search.

 Third Party Research

• Gartner — What MFT Is, and How It Applies to You
• Attachmate is currently offering access to this report on our website at no charge
• Gartner– Use These Evaluation Criteria to Establish Your MFT Requirements
• Gartner — How to Distinguish and Choose Between MFT Solutions
• Forrester –Market Overview: Managed File Transfer Solutions

 Blogs

• Filetransferconsulting.com
• Managedfiletransfer.com

White Papers

• Streamlining Information Workflows with Managed File Transfers
• Controlling the Cost of File Transfers
• Securing Internet File Transfers
• Attachmate’s MFT eBook on eliminating insecure and unreliable file transfer

Discussion

• LinkedIn Managed File Transfer Group

Video

• Making File Transfer a Strategic IT Asset

Once you’ve had an opportunity to evaluate the options that are available, we are happy to discuss our FileXpress solution and how it can help you drive more security, visibility and governance in the way you move data inside and outside your organization. Contact us here.

Research Tools to Evaluate MFT Solutions is a post from: Data In Motion

Managed File Transfer is not going away anytime soon, companies should proactively select a solution that supports the organization’s business while also considering the trends associated with MFT.

Attachmate recently developed a webcast called, “Making File Transfer a Strategic IT Asset,” featuring Gartner Analyst Jess Thompson. In the webinar we address the ways in which organizations are moving from the tactical to the strategic in the way they transfer files throughout their enterprise.

Companies are faced with several challenges with MFT. One of the challenges is the number of vendor solutions available, some of which only cater to one particular use case. For example, some solutions focus on ad hoc transfers and this may not meet an organization’s business goals. Another challenge is that file sizes are growing. Traditional solutions have a hard time scaling and adapting to the larger file sizes.

By carefully considering your organization’s needs and trends around MFT, you will be better positioned to select a solution that will position your business for success. Attachmate FileXpress 7.1 supports the breadth of use cases associated with MFT.

For more information on common MFT challenges and how to select and utilize MFT solutions, check out the webcast.

Making File Transfer a Strategic IT Asset is a post from: Data In Motion

Despite stricter compliance guidelines and an increased awareness of security breaches, a Formtek blog post showcases the prevalence of FTP and the need for a more secure solution.

In its post called, “Document Security: Managed File Transfers Enhance Standard FTP,” FormTek highlights survey data showcasing  that  more than 77 percent of companies still use FTP to transfer files.

The numbers reveal that a great deal of data in the enterprise is flowing in large batch files with no encryption. Formtek says that of those companies that don’t currently use FTP, 40 percent reveal they’d like to set up an FTP site to allow data exchange. The problem is, FTP has been around for 40 years and offers no reliable way to securely transfer files.

FTP does not include any type of encryption for transmitting data. The survey reveals that when given a choice between standard FTP versus secure techniques like SFTP, FTPS and HTTPS, only 20 percent said they would choose FTP.  The Formtek post highlights Managed File Transfer (MFT) as technology that addresses FTP security concerns, noting, “MFT solutions include security components to the process of the data transfer, making it more secure.” In addition, MFT offers increased reliability.

Formtek also notes that the survey found the top three challenges to companies that are using file exchange technologies are:

• 49 percent – security
• 30 percent – file size
• 24 percent – file management

These findings are similar to an Attachmate survey that found 53 percent of respondents consider security their greatest challenge when working with file transfers.  This again points to the need for a cost-effective alternative to FTP to securely manage file transfers that can address these top concerns to effectively transfer files of any size, securely and reliably.

To read this full article, visit the FormTek blog.

MFT Enhances FTP is a post from: Data In Motion

Maintaining PCI-DSS Compliance While Accessing Host Data via the Web

Everyone has a web browser.

That means you can make data available to everyone who needs it by putting it on the web. Even data accessed through legacy host applications can be made available on the web – without touching the mainframe or the host application. Simply by using a web-based terminal emulation or file transfer program, users with nothing more than a web browser can access everything they need.

That part is easy. The hard part is security.  If your organization deals with credit cards, you need to comply with PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry – Data Security Standards), which means you have to defend against cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.

Cross-site scripting? XSS? What’s that about? When you authenticate to a website, the web server returns a “session cookie” to your browser. When you click on other pages, your browser sends that session cookie back to the server, to say “hey, it’s me again, the person you just authenticated.”

The session cookie is a big convenience – it means you don’t have to enter your password repeatedly. But it has to be kept secure. If someone steals your session cookie, they might be able to use it to impersonate you and steal your data.

That’s where XSS attacks come in. Some websites have coding flaws that allow attackers to plant malicious scripts that run when you connect to the site. The scripts ask your browser to read your session cookie and send it back to the attacker, who can then try to hijack your session.

Fixing those coding flaws is the best answer, but that’s hard to get right. So a powerful fall-back defense was developed: the “HTTPOnly” flag.

HTTPOnly is a simple idea. The web server marks the session cookie as HTTPOnly. That tells the browser, “don’t let scripts read this cookie – only proper HTTP requests are allowed to use it.” So if a malicious script asks the browser to read the cookie, the browser will refuse.

It’s a powerful defense, which is why PCI-DSS requires use of HTTPOnly.

You might be wondering why the browser needs to be told not to read the cookie on behalf of a script. The answer lies in some unfortunate history. In the early days of the web, poorly behaved applications commonly manipulated the cookie directly.  Modern applications, if they are designed for security, leave it to the browser to handle the cookie, and do not try to read it directly.

One hallmark of a well-designed, secure web application is that it functions correctly even if HTTPOnly has been enabled on the web server. If an application malfunctions when HTTPOnly is turned on, that’s a sure sign that the application is not well-behaved when it comes to cookies and security.

The takeaway: to comply with PCI-DSS, you need to enable HTTPOnly. If this causes problems for your application, then you need to question your vendor about whether the application is properly designed.

Safely Accessing Host Data from the Web is a post from: Data In Motion

The market for managed file transfer solutions is constantly changing. It is important for vendors and consumers to be savvy about these driving forces to anticipate their organization’s needs. Forrester recently came out with a report, “Market Overview: Managed File Transfer Solutions,” in which Analyst Ken Vollmer interviewed 20 MFT vendors, including Attachmate, to gather industry information and perspective.

Vollmer found the market is growing rapidly. One of the largest drivers of the growth is the increased awareness about the limitations of file transfer protocol – or FTP. Both internal and external auditors are demanding “better security and improved governance over information that leaves the enterprise.” Vollmer says that MFT solutions provide an effective option for addressing this need. Vollmer’s report suggests most MFT vendors are targeting three specific sectors, which have seen an increased need for MFT solutions. The financial, healthcare and government sectors are all seeing an increased need for a solution that addresses increased security to maintain privacy and critical information.

Forrester believes MFT revenue grew about 15 percent year-over-year in 2010 and expects this growth rate will continue for the next three years as more and more organizations realize the value of MFT solutions and update their infrastructures.

The report concludes that the trend of traditional FTP being replaced with more robust MFT solutions will continue and that those FTP solutions will “no longer be adequate for meeting file transfer needs.” I’ve written about some of the limitations with FTP in previous posts.

For more information, including interesting survey data, you can check out the full Forrester report, “Market Overview: Managed File Transfer Solutions.”

A Look at the Managed File Transfer Market is a post from: Data In Motion

Security conscious organizations are always looking for ways to tighten protection of the core information assets that are vital to their business. Best practices involving the protection of this information when it is in transit over a network include encryption through secure file transfer technologies and good record keeping through network file transfer auditing.

The challenge in implementing encryption and auditing for file transfers is that file transfer is oftentimes worker-driven and critical to the workflow of the business. These transfers, and the business processes of which they are a part, are not to be “messed with”;  not unless you’re willing to be called out for disrupting someone’s productivity.

But what if you could non-invasively add encryption and auditing to the file transfers your business workers are performing? What’s more, what if you could seamlessly extend this encryption and network file transfer auditing to new file transfers with new systems that users find necessary to interact with?

In FileXpress 7.1, which was just released, Attachmate is providing capabilities that enable just these solutions. With the release of FileXpress Internet Server 7.1, organizations now have the ability to seamlessly redirect client connections to target file transfer servers through the FileXpress Internet Server, which delivers the benefits of secure file transfer protocols, centralized network file transfer auditing, and access control at user and group levels.

The client utility is the FileXpress Desktop Client, an intuitive, drag-and-drop file transfer tool. Users can configure it to connect to a range of file transfer server types, including those running FTP, FTPS (SSL/TLS), and SFTP (SSH).  However, behind the scenes, communications are routed through the FileXpress Internet Server. This means that users are able to configure new connections to new file transfer servers, but those file transfers first pass through the Internet Server for auditing and logging.

The FileXpress Internet Server provides configuration panels that allow an administrator to control such things as:

• Permitted target systems – users can only configure connections to target servers allowed by the FileXpress administrator. Wildcard values for target system names are supported.
• Permitted client protocols – the use of secure communication protocols between the client and the FileXpress Internet Server can be required. These include both FTPS (SSL/TLS) and SFTP (SSH).
• Permitted users and groups – control can be set up to define which users have the ability to create new connections to permitted file transfer servers

Now that all client transfers are routed through the FileXpress Internet Server, a central audit record of each file transfer can be kept, searched for, and reported on. This capability provides the perfect balance of allowing the administrator to control protocols and destinations, without needing to micro-manage each transfer destination.

Ultimately, this means your organization has more control and visibility over user-driven and user-configured file transfer, but still provides the agility end users require in order to quickly complete assigned tasks.

FileXpress 7.1 – Balancing security with efficiency is a post from: Data In Motion

A recent blog post on managedfiletransfer.com titled “Managed File Transfer: File Transfers Using DMZ Streaming and Reverse Proxies,” does a great job at describing a couple of use cases in which an organization may wish to move files into and out of its corporate network, through the demilitarized zone or DMZ, without making those files come to rest in the DMZ. 

DMZ streaming, as it is referred to in the blog post, provides both security benefits (no files need to reside in the DMZ, waiting to be delivered to their ultimate destination) and efficiency benefits (an inbound or outbound file transfer is a single step, rather than two steps). 

What’s great is that today’s managed file transfer solutions can provide both DMZ streaming and enhance the business and security aspects of B2B file exchanges.  These solutions improve an organization’s ability to accommodate its partners and customers by offering a range of secure file transfer protocols on the frontend (client side) of the file transfer connection and converting on the backend to the protocols supported by the systems from which outbound files come, or on which inbound files are placed.  Additionally, managed file transfer solutions are able to mask details of the internal corporate network to outside users, protecting such information as internal account IDs, server names, file transfer protocols used by those servers, and file system paths.

When looking for secure and efficient methods for moving files into and out of your organization, these are all important considerations to pay attention to.

To learn about how Attachmate’s FileXpress streams files through the DMZ, provides protocol conversion, and obfuscates the details of your backend environment, check out the whitepaper “Secure Data Streaming with Attachmate FileXpress.”

DMZ Streaming Plus is a post from: Data In Motion

I can hear the movie trailer right now, “In a world where files are growing larger, one hero sets out on the quest for reliability.”

Ok, pretty goofy I know.  It’s just large file transfer.

The reality is some electronic files are large.  Sometimes these large files need to be transferred.  Very often, the larger the file, the more challenging it is to get that large file transfer to happen over a network in a way that’s complete, accurate and on time.

When this is the case, many times individuals find themselves facilitating the large file transfer by copying the file to a physical medium (DVD, USB drive, etc.) and physically shipping that medium to the intended recipient. This approach has its own set of reliability and security challenges.

What determines a large file transfer?  It really is subject to the use case.  File transfers between individuals by means of email attachments will often become “large” when the files attached are larger than 10Mb.  Batch data coming off of a mainframe can be in the hundreds of megabytes.  Media files and virtual machine images are often in the multiple gigabyte range.

In a Managed File Transfer approach to large file transfer, certain technologies that drive up the reliability of file transfers of all sizes come into play.  This collective set of capabilities is often referred to as “guaranteed delivery.” These technologies are focused on responding to problems when they arise, and include:

• Automatic Retries – If the file transfer fails, the client knows that an error is one that can be recovered from, it can reattempt a file transfer after a pre-defined waiting period.
• Alerts – Communication over a variety of channels, such as emails, text messages and SNMP traps designed to bring attention to the fact that a problem has arisen and provide detail on the nature of the large file transfer issue.
• Checkpoint/Restart – Checkpoint control packets tell the sending client and receiving server how much of the file has been transferred so far.  In the event of a failed transfer, the large file transfer can resume at the last checkpoint, rather than restart at the beginning of the file.
• Email integration – Tools for leveraging reliable large file transfer capabilities into a user’s email experience, without making the user significantly change the way they currently send smaller files through email.

Comprehensive managed file transfer solutions such as Attachmate FileXpress support large file transfers across a wide variety of use cases, from user-driven file transfers through email, to bulk data movement between IBM mainframes and distributed systems inside of a data center. 

Image courtesy of clipartheaven.com

If you’re on a quest for reliability for your large file transfers, investigate managed file transfer solutions and the capabilities they bring to your particular use case. Who knows, you might just  become your organization’s hero.

Large File Transfer, the Quest for Reliability is a post from: Data In Motion