Managed File Transfer Solutions | Secure File Transfer Software | UK » Pro2col Managed File Transfer General

Cloud File transfer Services Hosted in the UK are not subject to the Patriot Act

James Lewis — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 10:53:43 +0000

Over the years I’ve spoken to many clients about hosted data transfer systems, and the security implications of where your data is stored. Generally there arelots of levels of sensitivity of data that a business might have. Sometimes the more commercial, cloud based technologies can fit, e.g. sending marketing collateral to a printers wouldn’t generally be considered sensitive data. Over recent years however, there has been a worrying increase in the amount of enterprises who have either mandated the use of cloud based technologies for the distribution of sensitive data, or turned a blind eye to what employees are using off of their own back. Naturally there are issues surrounding compliance here and potential brand damage should the data find its way into the public domain, but that’s been covered many times before and isn’t the focus of this blog.

A few days ago I spoke with an international consulting firm (who shall remain nameless). They confided in me that the organisation didn’t have a managed file transfer solution in place to cater for the ad hoc transfer of data between internal staff and external parties. They disclosed that a decision had been taken to purchase a wetransfer.com channel for their business, but this IT Manager was very concerned about compliance and security of his data. Having had some experience of wetransfer in the past I suggested that additionally he should be concerned about where his data was stored. Being a predominately US based company, it could be possible that their data was making its way to their US data centres and therefore be subject to the Patriot Act. I wasn’t scaremongering, this is true as there is no way to define which server your data resides on as it’s a consumer grade solution, predominantly adopted by enterprises to get them out of a hole.

When looking at securely transferring business critical data I can see why a company may opt to adopt a ‘big brand’ cloud solution, but its worth pointing out they’re generally big brands because they appeal to the masses and are consumer grade. When selecting a cloud based technology its worth asking these questions:

Where will my data be stored?
What levels of physical security are in place at these data centres?
What security is in place to protect my data at rest in these locations?
Is my data encrypted in transit and at rest at all times?
Who within the organisation supplying the service has access to my files?
What controls am I offered to administer and manage the service being used across my organisation?
What compliance or data security standards do you adhere to?
What logging and tracking do you provide to help me achieve compliance?

This list outlines some of the most important questions and is a good starting place. If you’d like to discuss your file transfer requirements in more detail our consultants can help. We’ve been working with file transfer technologies for more than a decade now and are well placed to be able to detail your requirements and help you identify the best technology fit. Get in touch via our online form or call 0333 123 1240 or for International callers +44 1202 433 415.

The post Cloud File transfer Services Hosted in the UK are not subject to the Patriot Act appeared first on Managed File Transfer Solutions | Secure File Transfer Software | UK.

Socitm 2012: Managed File Transfer for Councils

Lindsay Lewis — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 12:05:38 +0000

We’ve been working closely with councils throughout the UK to simplify, secure and streamline their file transfer, so we couldn’t miss the opportunity to attend Socitm 2012; the No. 1 UK ICT event for councils. The conference has kicked off today (here’s a breakdown of the programme) and the Pro2col team are ready and waiting to share the knowledge and experience that we have gained from working with councils to secure person-to-person file transfers and automate the movement of sensitive data into and out of the organisation.

On a similar note, this is the ideal moment to publically release our lastest e-book: The Council’s Guide to Secure Managed File Transfer, which is now available for download. It covers a range of issues surrounding the secure movement within councils including:

How to eliminate the problems caused when employees resort to insecure, non-compliant file transfer methods such as email.
Ensuring you meet with UK data security and compliance legislation including The Data Protection Act and PCI DSS.
Providing your employees with a quick and simple way to send and receive sensitive files both internally and with third parties.
Automating the transfer of files, saving time and money.
How to regain control over file transfer processes and user access.

If you’re at the conference and would like to speak to one of our managed file transfer experts, drop by stand 8 (piccy attached) – we’re always happy to help. If you’ve not been able to make it this year and you’d like to talk to us, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the office on 0333 123 1240.

The post Socitm 2012: Managed File Transfer for Councils appeared first on Managed File Transfer Solutions | Secure File Transfer Software | UK.

Managed file transfer set back after Java vulnerability in Mac OSX

James Lewis — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 09:35:29 +0000

TechWeek Europe yesterday reported that Apple’s latest Java update for Mac OS X not only fixes a number of security flaws, it also removes the browser plug-in from the user’s system. This is in response to long standing problems with Java vulnerabilities after six hundred thousand Apple Macs were infected with the Flashback worm earlier this year. Apple’s approach to controlling software updates for Mac’s resulted in patches written by Oracle for Java 6.x being rewritten and distributed compounding serious security flaws further with the inevitable delays. Apple is now only responsible for Java updates on Macs running OS 10.7.2 or below, therefore upgrading the OS to a later version will result in the use of Java 7 which is developed and updated directly by Oracle although it too isn’t without problems.

Whats the problem with disabling Java you may ask? Well its well known that Java is really the undisputed champion when it comes to carrying larger data sets through a web browser and most managed file transfer software products use Java, almost without exception! Why Java, well thats another discussion which has been very well documented over on the FileCatalyst web site and whilst Mac’s in general don’t account for the largest desktop market share, around 6.5% the lack of Java in OSX is a real problem for Mac users of managed file transfer solutions.

The resolution? Well Apple aren’t stopping users from running Java on their Mac’s rather ensuring that they take the decision to enable it, this however is likely to further strain relationships between Mac users and the predominately Windows based IT departments. I suspect that we’ll hear more about this over the coming weeks and months and given our focus on the creative marketplace we’ll keep you informed.

The post Managed file transfer set back after Java vulnerability in Mac OSX appeared first on Managed File Transfer Solutions | Secure File Transfer Software | UK.

Managed File Transfer is for SMB’s too

James Lewis — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 09:29:20 +0000

Recent research suggests that the SMB sector is coming under an increasing number of cyber attacks from hackers and cyber criminals. Figures published by Symantec revealed that the number of attacks on companies with fewer than 250 staff had doubled in the six months to June 2012. Similarly AVG reported that it was predicting an increase on the £3.37 million of damage inflicted on UK SMB’s last year. Verizon confirmed that the majority of 855 data breaches analysed in their Data Breach Investigation Report had been inflicted upon SMB’s.

The question is; why are SMB’s being targeted? It would appear that the modest budgets available to small companies make them easier targets, giventhe lower level of expenditure on information security technologies. Especially since SMB’s frequently work as suppliers for larger organisations, making them a more attractive proposition to hackers than the more conventional direct attack on the corporate target.

What does this have to do with managed file transfer I hear you ask? MFT has generally been considered a technology more appropriate to corporate organisation’s – with its big price tag and grand title. Times are changing for the MFT marketplace and there are now some very comprehensive solutions available at really competitive prices. For those SMB’s considering how they should secure data transfers with their larger corporate customers, technologies exist at around the £4,000 mark which provide an equal amount of functionality as many corporate companies have.

To discuss your file transfer requirements, whether you’re an SMB or multi-national organisation, get in touch with Pro2col or give us a call on 0333 123 1240.

The post Managed File Transfer is for SMB’s too appeared first on Managed File Transfer Solutions | Secure File Transfer Software | UK.

Ad Hoc Managed File Transfer – Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes but nothing for Apple Mac?

James Lewis — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 11:13:16 +0000

It would be fair to say that a clear majority of the IT professionals we speak to on a weekly basis want to regain some control over the data that their employees send. In the past, many IT administrators would start with the customary approach of limiting the size of email attachments that could be sent via the email server. However, this only resulted in employees searching for alternative ways of sending files – frequently the choice was a SaaS/Cloud based, consumer grade solutions such as YouSendit, Mailbigfile, Dropbox, the list goes on!

In general employees intentions are honourable but when they need to ‘get the job done’, they adopt for the path of least resistance i.e quick and easy solutions that they can sign up to for free. This however creates a minefield for the IT and Compliance departments who tackle a daily myriad of issues around tracking, governance and security of corporate data. With no online service completely immune from attack (take the recent announcements around LinkedIn and Yahoo) the issue is very real and pressing.

Inevitably the bottom line is that the business needs to invest in an ad hoc file transfer solution that enables employees to send files on an ad hoc basis. Fortunately for businesses this issue has existed for some time, and a number of the managed file transfer vendors we work with offer solutions to these problems. Selecting the right solution depends upon the number of users, security requirements, size of the data sets, preferred deployment option (on-site/hosted/SaaS), specific functionality required and budget – but that’s where we come in to help you through the vendor selection process.

Finally let’s not forget that there are a wide variety of email clients used in today’s businesses. The most dominant – Microsoft Outlook has been well addressed by the majority of managed file transfer vendors. Lotus Notes on the other hand hasn’t received the same time and attention but there are a couple of options out there, I guess this is down to size of their shrinking market share. When it comes to Apple however everyone falls short. This has little to do with the developers ability – more with the architecture of Apple Mail, Microsoft Entourage or Outlook for Mac, none of which support plugin’s in the same way. Still, all of the vendors provide a webmail facility if you need to support Mac OS users.

For further assistance in selecting the most appropriate ad hoc file transfer solution for your business please get in touch with the UK’s leading MFT experts on 0333 123 1240.

The post Ad Hoc Managed File Transfer – Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes but nothing for Apple Mac? appeared first on Managed File Transfer Solutions | Secure File Transfer Software | UK.

Managed File Transfer – Remote Access Removed or Remote File Termination?

James Lewis — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 15:28:17 +0000

Managed file transfer solutions are the ideal technology to share files securely with remote trading partners and customers. This is what they were designed to do and in the most part, they all provide a simple interface to achieve this. Some provide a web browser facility, whilst others offer additional plugins such as a Microsoft Outlook Plugin or less conventionally, a Lotus Notes Plugin. However the one common way in which the majority of these technologies work is for the file to remain on a web server, to be collected by the intended recipient. This then provides the system with an audit trail of when the file was downloaded and in most cases, to which IP address – confirming the users location.

This is great in most instances but imagine a situation where you’ve sent an email using the plugin within your email client of choice, only to later find that you’ve attached the wrong document. Worse than that, it contains sensitive customer or financial data – what then? You make a frantic call to your IT Help Desk asking them to delete the file or remove access to it. You then get confirmation from the kind Support Desk person to say that they’ve action your request. Great, you’re in the clear…. but upon returning to your email you see that your customer has already downloaded the file and you have the email notification to prove it. Where you usually greet the notification with a shrug of the shoulders in the knowledge that the managed file transfer solution has once again done its job, this time it leaves you cold!

Fortunately not all managed file transfer solutions are built the same. Some have DLP capabilities ensuring that sensitive data is quarantined whilst one vendor we work with provides a very unique capability, remote file termination. How is this done I hear you ask, well give us a call and we’ll tell you! Suffice to say, this type of technology provides the highest levels of security available therefore isn’t pitched at your general ad hoc file transfer users. It’s more appropriate for those companies dealing with extremely sensitive data, e.g. data needing to be exchanged between board members, patent information, IPO, MBO, acquisitions and mergers information and so on.

If your business has a requirement to move data in a more secure manner than your existing file transfer technology allows, speak to Pro2col as we’ve got technologies that can handle the most sensitive of data.

The post Managed File Transfer – Remote Access Removed or Remote File Termination? appeared first on Managed File Transfer Solutions | Secure File Transfer Software | UK.

A Secure Alternative to Dropbox – Welcome to Managed File Transfer

James Lewis — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 13:51:17 +0000

Once again here we are discussing Dropbox as they attempt to minimise the damage to the company brand following the latest reports announcing a further security breach.

Dropbox announced yesterday on their blog that after hiring some “outside experts” to investigate why certain Dropbox users were getting spam to their non-public Dropbox email addresses, the experts concluded that a Dropbox employee’s account was hacked and the details were lifted from a project document. No details were provided on the numbers of users affected, what other information was compromised or why account details were stored in an unencrypted document.

Ordinarily we’re singing the praise of managed file transfer solutions as an alternative to custom built, cumbersome, unsupported, legacy FTP servers. However, a quick search on Google this morning showed me that perhaps more people are now searching the internet for a secure alternative to Dropbox, likely due to the broadcast of recent security issues.

A business’ decision to select Dropbox or any other cloud based technology for storing and sharing company data, should be taken with caution. Cloud based solutions in general offer significantly more advanced features than your average in house managed file transfer solution, which end users have grown accustomed to. Why? Because they’re developing for a single, controlled environment over which the vendor has complete control whereas a managed file transfer vendor has to develop for multiple server based operating systems and the QA process can be lengthy, thus inhibiting progress of a product.

There are however a number of reasons why a greater degree of security can be achieved by deploying an in house managed file transfer solution, here are four of them:

It’s not a big Cloud brand target with hundreds and thousands of users
Data is stored local to you and you have complete control over the security policies
Access is securely controlled by AD/LDAP and other user group contained within corporate authentication tools
Reporting and blacklisting tools mean that hackers can be monitored and banned very quickly

If you are concerned about the lack security, control, auditing and governance of your business data then speak to Pro2col. We can help to analyse your requirements, select the most appropriate vendors and assist right through the evaluation process and beyond. Managed File Transfer is fast becoming a necessary business tool and is certainly a more than adequate alternative to Dropbox.

The post A Secure Alternative to Dropbox – Welcome to Managed File Transfer appeared first on Managed File Transfer Solutions | Secure File Transfer Software | UK.

Award for the Best Managed File Transfer Vendor goes to…

James Lewis — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 14:16:45 +0000

According to a recent study of managed file transfer vendors undertaken by the Info-Tech Research Group, one of our key vendors GlobalSCAPE received the highest praise and was afforded the award of best managed file transfer vendor. As GlobalSCAPE’s Master Partner here in the UK, we’re very pleased with the high praise and we concur with the assessment that GlobalSCAPE… “has an extensive feature set, solid price point, and clear strategy. Meeting advanced security requirements with extensive security modules combined with anti-flooding and auto-ban features, GlobalSCAPE offers 24 x7 support to quickly respond to any potential problems that occur.”

In addition Ipswitch File Transfer were also recognised as a Champion in the study impressing the analysts with a strong, well rounded product portfolio. Again, as Ipswitch’s Elite Partner here in the UK we recognise the value that Ipswitch’s MOVEit range of technologies provide, accompanied by a strong feature set.

With the sunsetting on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant back in 2010, there has certainly been space for an analyst report on managed file transfer vendors and solutions. I think that the Info-Tech report has a little way to go to reach the breadth of MFT industry content that Gartner achieved but it shows that we’ve chosen well in selecting the best vendors to work with.

If you’d like to discuss how either GlobalSCAPE or Ipswitch’s Managed File Transfer solutions could help your business, we’re perfectly placed to assist you in helping you to select the right MFT solution for your needs. Please get in touch on 0333 123 1240.

The post Award for the Best Managed File Transfer Vendor goes to… appeared first on Managed File Transfer Solutions | Secure File Transfer Software | UK.

Free managed file transfer software: Is open source really an option?

James Lewis — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 15:29:09 +0000

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve spoken with a number of companies who’ve wanted to implement a managed file transfer solution but haven’t had the budget to implement something from one of our vendors. With more than a couple of these companies I was asked the question – do you know of any free managed file transfer solutions, you know something open source, something we can deploy on Linux?

Given that our business focuses on selling file transfer technologies and ‘free’ doesn’t quite pay the bills, I was somewhat surprised to be asked this question. However, as I’m a bit of a file transfer geek I had in fact researched this in the past I knew that there were not – the best I could find was a couple of Sourceforge FTP server projects.

I completely understand a company wanting to keep the cost of their technologies down, preferring to deploy on a Linux platform. We’re no different and

run a number of our mission critical systems on various flavours of Linux and have been deploying Linux solutions for about 8 years now. There are several vendors with great technologies which can be deployed on Linux – Linoma and Axway and a quick look at the price tag would confirm that these solutions certainly aren’t open source.

It got me thinking whether the open source route was something which could be explored in the same way other technologies have, but I concluded that we’ve got enough on our plate at the moment servicing the needs of our existing clients and those willing to pay for software. Whilst open source works in some aspects of business, companies needing to move mission critical data want a structured development roadmap and enterprise level support too.

The post Free managed file transfer software: Is open source really an option? appeared first on Managed File Transfer Solutions | Secure File Transfer Software | UK.

Managed File Transfer news & updates

James Lewis — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 13:41:48 +0000

With the economy showing no signs of improvement Pro2col is bucking the trend with May 2012 being our best month of trading ever, in fact 2012 has showed great promise. Our selection of managed file transfer vendors is paying dividends as we strengthen our relationships and knowledge of their technology moving us into the key supplier for several vendors. Additionally our work with the reseller channel is seeing growth as we provide our expertise to the general reseller channel.

Recent Managed File Transfer News includes:

GlobalSCAPE’s achieved one of the highest ratings in the latest Managed File Transfer (MFT) Vendor Landscape Report from Info-Tech Research Group released this week.
Linoma Software gains FIPS 140-2 accreditation for their GoAnywhere software, achieving the benchmark required by many organisations in the public and private sectors.
Biscom’s BDS continues to gain traction in the legal sector with a number of new customers following their recently released version 4.2 which provides secure collaboration and an iPad app.
FileCatalyst have been busy with their recently released FileCatalyst Central for managing and monitoring multiple servers. Additionally performance has been improved to 10Gbps and an iOS app is now available.

If you’re considering implementing a managed file transfer solution why not get in touch with us at Pro2col and let us take the hard work out of selecting and evaluating vendors. Speak to one of our solution specialists on 0333 123 1240

The post Managed File Transfer news & updates appeared first on Managed File Transfer Solutions | Secure File Transfer Software | UK.