This month the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office has served a Monetary Penalty Notice of £130,000 to Powys County Council, after the details of a child protection case were sent to the wrong recipient. The penalty is the highest that the ICO has served since it received the power in April 2010. The severity of the penalty reflects the fact that the local authority had already received a warning from the ICO to tighten up its security measures following a similar breach.

Over the past 18 months Pro2col has worked closely with a number of County Councils looking to implement a simple way of securing ad-hoc, person to person file transfers.  Additionally, with County Councils looking to centralise or share the cost of services (Shared Services), Ipswitch’s MOVEit DMZ with the Ad Hoc module has proved a very popular choice, especially considering the cost of the Enterprise licence in comparison to other vendors. Read the rest of this entry »

“My company still relies heavily on FTP.  I know we should be using something more secure, but I don’t know where to begin.”

Sound familiar?

The easy answer is that you should migrate away from antiquated FTP software because it could be putting your company’s data at risk – Unsecured data is obviously an enormous liability.  Not only does FTP pose a real security threat, but it also lacks many of the management and enforcement capabilities that modern Managed File Transfer solutions offer. Read the rest of this entry »

Typically, email is the first port of call for all non-technical staff members when faced with the task of sending large documents quickly. We’re now in an age where data leaks are common place and authorities are cracking down on insufficient security policies. According to figures published by IDG Research Services, the companies that they surveyed rated email as the third highest area of concern when it came to the security of their data. The fact of the matter is, standard email is just not capable of meeting modern day security requirements. Not only this, there are other associated problems to consider when using email for large file transfer such as email attachment size limitations, unpredictable deliverability of files, bandwidth utilisation and storage problems.

So businesses are reacting to these issues by implementing sophisticated technologies that address these concerns – which is great – but unfortunately, this is a 1-dimensional solution to a 2-dimensional problem. Providing the facilities to send files securely is one thing, guaranteeing that all file transfers within the business are completed using these facilities is another matter altogether. Read the rest of this entry »

Nathan Ouellette, an author at SC Magazine produced a great review of Biscom’s secure file transfer software, Biscom Delivery Server 4. Installed using a VMware image, the reviewer rated the product based upon 6 key elements including Features, Ease of Use, Performance, Documentation, Support and Value for Money. Emerging with an overall rating of 5 stars – it was clear that BDS was found to be easy to deploy, easy to use, and it gets the job done when it comes to transferring sensitive data securely and simply. The numerous advantages such as multi-platform (Windows and Linux supported, and VM), Outlook plug-in, checkpoint restart, no file size limits, strongest back end encryption (AES 256-bit), extremely granular tracking and reporting, Web services SDK, and it’s simple, intuitive web interface means Biscom Delivery Server is one of the most comprehensive ad hoc file transfer solutions in the marketplace.

You can read the full SC Magazine Biscom Delivery Server review here or, for more information regarding the product please visit the Biscom Delivery Server product page on our website or contact Pro2col on 0333 123 1240.

We’re interested to find out what’s the most common way that you send and receive large files. If you’ve got a spare minute and fancy taking part in our mini poll on LinkedIn – here’s the link to follow:

http://polls.linkedin.com/p/111142/zgtbx

We’ll look forward to hearing from you!

Well, it’s been a while, but in that time we’re pleased to say we’ve managed to launch the ‘new look’ Hermstedt StingRay website (take a peek here) and released the latest StingRay firmware version – 2.6.

We’ve packed StingRay 2.6 full of new features and functionality – designed to make the large file transfer process as quick and simple as possible.  Here’s a rundown of the key features built into StingRay 2.6:

Quicksend – An entirely new file sending option, available when sending files via the StingRay Client Application (Mac version 2.0.2).  Aptly named Quicksend, this feature allows internal users to send files/folders quickly and simply in a few short steps.  Just create a new job, add an email address, attach the desired files/folders and press send.  It really is that simple.

Direct Web Browser Upload – External users can now upload files directly into StingRay’s incoming queue via the external web browser interface.  Significant in terms of automation potential, this new feature is ideal for directing incoming files into internal production workflows, freeing staff from manual downloads and allowing them to focus their attention on more productive, revenue generating tasks.

HTTPS – All of StingRay’s file sending options that rely upon HTTP as the fundamental delivery protocol (Email Hyperlink and Web Browser Upload/Download) can now be secured in transit by HTTPS.  The leading security protocol used on the internet today, SSL provides superior levels of security and is the standard implementation when purchasing items online.  Self-assigned SSL certificates can be created within the internal web browser interface or alternatively, if you have an existing SSL certificate, this can be uploaded to the StingRay.

If that wasn’t enough, a number of tweaks and improvements have been made to the existing features provided by Hermstedt StingRay.  These include:

- Personalised Customer Logins (External Web Browser Upload)
- Progress Bar during file upload (External Web Browser Upload)
- Successful Upload Notification (External Web Browser Upload)
- Email Hyperlink Auto-delete functionality
- Hyperlink Signature Customisation potential

If you want more information, you can download a comprehensive guide that outlines the new features in 2.6 in greater detail.

This is the best bit – the StingRay 2.6 upgrade is FREE for all StingRay 2.5 users that hold and valid Silver or Gold maintenance contract.  Just send an email to customerservice (at) pro2col.com and we will get the upgrade process rolling for you.

Unsupported StingRay users and those holding a Bronze maintenance contract will still be able to upgrade if they’d like, all you’ll need to do is contact the Pro2col sales department on 0333 123 1240 for pricing.

According to a survey published by Osterman Research Inc. in June-July 2009, using a sample of large organisations (over 500 employees and $5 million dollar revenue), 82% of employees resort to using personal email accounts when sending large files.  This tactic is employed by many to evade the email server attachment limits imposed by IT departments.

Considering 20% of the organisations surveyed send in excess of 500 files a week, this is a seriously disturbing statistic when you take into account the ramifications of using standard email for file transfer.  The most frustrating aspect of this predicament, is that many IT professionals are fully aware of the risks associated with this method of file transfer in particular e.g…

•    Compromised security and non-compliance
•    Lack of tracking, logging and auditing
•    The absence of visibility and monitoring

…and consequently, have introduced strategies and procedures to combat the use of unsolicited file transfer methods. The problem is employees will continue to violate security and procedural policies if they aren’t provided with a comparable, alternative solution that offers the same, simple functionality as their email client.

The results also revealed that 55% of the organisations surveyed had seen a 20% increase in ad hoc file transfer activity during June-July 2009 – the largest growth across all of the business file transfer ‘requirements’.  Evidently, employees have an increasing need to send large files on an ad hoc basis, largely due to the dramatic increase in file size over recent years.

So the moral of this story is, if you want your employees to adhere to company procedural policies when sending large files on an ad hoc basis, IT departments need to provide them with an adequate alternative to their email server!