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Summary: The Wall Street Journal courted a wave of resentment with an article on how end users can bypass IT restrictions. While the fireworks are entertaining, the real question is, how will you address these real user needs as an enabler? Here’s a secure and enterprise class solution that end users would use – what a concept!

That scream of despair from the direction of the IT director and CIO that you heard a few days ago may have been a result of the Wall Street Journal‘s article by Vauhini Vara entitled Ten Things Your IT Department Won’t Tell You. The article provides ways of how end users can bypass IT restrictions and controls for various tasks such as checking personal emails and large file transfer.

Naturally, Ms Vara is getting an avalanche of angry letters from IT providers as noted by this WSJ blog. What I find particularly instructive is not so much the bad advice dispensed — and indeed they were lousy ideas — but how this points to the on-going tension between IT and the organizations and users that IT supports.

In this context, I would like to discuss the #1 hack/bypass in the article – transferring large files. Like the article noted, IT departments often purposely block large attachments from going through the corporate email system for reasons ranging from performance to protection from attacks.

As a workaround, Ms. Vara suggests using a consumer grade service, which are often free, like YouSendIt or SendThisFile. At the same time, she notes the risk, such as this “makes it easier for a wily hacker to intercept files…”

No wonder CIO’s are breaking out in pools of cold sweat from this article!

On paper, IT has the moral high ground – these procedures are meant to protect both users and organizations from viruses, spam and increasing violations of regulations and corporate procedures. While no end users would disagree with the importance of these protections, it is also the reality that end users are looking to get their job done. Whether you call it protection or a hurdle, a successful end user will instinctively find a way around the limitation. (Even without WSJ’s help.)

Fortunately, what we are seeing is a generation of IT professionals who are looking beyond the eternal struggle between IT and the consumers of IT capabilities in a zero-sum calculation. Instead, there is a recognition that IT is an integral part of business processes that, if appropriately deployed and managed, can become a competitive advantage for the entire organization.

Sending large files is a legitimate need for many of today’s business processes, so instead of pointing accusing fingers at each other, the trend is to deploy a secure file transfer system that is specifically designed to transport large files in parallel like Accellion‘s secure file transfer solution.

For the users, the Accellion solution is easy to use and can handle 20+ gigabytes in file/folder size with a single click. It is designed with communicating with external partners in mind, which enables employees to easily trade large files with business partners and clients to get the job done.

IT administrators love the Accellion solution because it is a set-it-and-forget-it appliance. It can be installed in less than an hour and requires administrative intervention only when you want to change a configurable parameter. Accellion handles files in a secure fashion that is compliant with regulations such as HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley. This solution is engineered as an enterprise tool that fits seamlessly within the overall IT infrastructure.

So, while we ponder the flak that Ms. Vara is getting from the unhappy CIOs and IT Directors with some degree of fascination, the easiest solution is probably to install an Accellion secure file transfer solution so we can all get on with life.

ACA Guy

Accellion in the News

Media Coverage

Accellion Solves CRA International’s Large File Transfer Issues

How One CIO Escaped E-Mail Attachment Hell

Summary: What makes a solution “enterprise class”? If you are sending files using a solution meant to send pictures to grandma, you may be asking for trouble. There are five categories of capabilities that you want to consider for business file transfers.

Someone asked me recently what I mean by consumer-oriented vs. enterprise solutions. In other words, what distinguishes enterprise file transfer solutions from consumer products? While the intersection between high-end consumer solutions and enterprise solutions can be hazy, there are five sets of required characteristics that I use to determine whether or not a file transfer solution is suitable for business use:

* Management and business processes
* Policy control
* Integration with other enterprise solutions
* Security and compliance
* Branding

Let’s have a look at each of these characteristics and why they are worth the added overhead in an enterprise context.

Management and business processes
The solution needs features that map to the work flow of business processes and how a business is run. Data and documents are the lifeblood of most businesses, and they need to be handled like the critical assets they are. Important enterprise features for file transfer include automated file life cycle management, audit and tracking capabilities, verification of file delivery, encryption, automated virus checking, file integrity check, and so on.

Policy control
An enterprise-level file transfer application allows configurable automated policies at several levels. For instance, at the user level, there could be several classes of users to account for external vs internal users. Similarly, at the access level, depending on the nature of the file, there could be multiple access authentication requirements. And, at the file level, there could be a number of policies dictating the duration in which a file is accessible.

Integration with other enterprise solutions
An enterprise file transfer solution should be able to work seamlessly within the overall IT infrastructure. Integrating with existing systems like email and directory services would ensure smooth business process and work flow.

The most obvious integration is with email clients such as Outlook and Lotus Notes. However, it should also integrate with directory services such as LDAP/AD to streamline administration. And, beyond these usual suspects, there should also be API/SDK capabilities to integrate with other applications. I have seen examples ranging from intranet single sign-on to integrating with finance systems for revenue recognition.

Security and compliance
These two issues are probably the most immediate concern of most businesses today. In other words, if the file transfer process doesn’t comply with mandated regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA, it shouldn’t be used. While the specifics vary by industries and business processes, typical features include encryption, virus-checking, information removal based on rules and policies (life cycle management), audit trails to see who has done what with the files, and policy management to set user privileges.

Branding
Companies invest huge amounts of budget and resources developing and marketing their “brand.” An enterprise-level file transfer solution should be configured to have a specific company’s look and feel. This could include the use of the company’s logo, specific fonts, colors, and a company-specific user guide. This is particularly important for external and guest users where putting a company’s skin or wrapper makes it feel like a well-integrated part of the business process.

In the knowledge economy of today, sending your most critical assets (digital files) via solutions meant to send pictures to grandma is playing with fire. The five feature categories above should help you quickly assess your current capabilities and, if need be, can be the basis for your search for an enterprise grade secure file transfer solution.

And, yes, in case you are wondering, Accellion‘s secure file transfer solution does all of the above (and more) while making it easy to use like a consumer solution. Best of the both worlds, as the saying goes.

ACA Guy

Accellion in the News

Media Coverage

Accellion Solves CRA International’s Large File Transfer Issues

How One CIO Escaped E-Mail Attachment Hell

Summary: A Gartner analyst describes an appliance as getting an outsource model inside your own infrastructure. This means you get the deep domain knowledge and best practice while controlling your own destiny.

“What is an IT appliance?” my mom would ask me. Well, it is like a toaster. If I have to hold a piece of bread to the open flame to get breakfast ready, chances are, I cannot get insurance on my house for long. With a toaster, I plug it in, set the level once, insert the bread, and nobody would yell at me for burning down the house (until I spill coffee into the toaster). In the context of the secure file transfer (IT) appliance from Accellion, you plug it, configure it once, and end users get off your back (unless you spill coffee on it).

While a perfectly good working definition, today I just heard a much more eloquent definition of an IT appliance. This comes from a discussion I with a Gartner analyst who noted that an IT appliance is an outsourced product that resides in your infrastructure.

We’ll start with the concept of outsourcing – the practice of acquiring goods or services from an outside vendor because it requires a level of expertise that is difficult to accumulate and manage internally. An example that I can speak with some authority about, since I have gone through many, is PR agencies. The beauty of the outsource model is that the provider is focused on doing the job well in order to acquire and maintain its clients. From the buyer’s/user’s perspective, this means that I do not have to build up and maintain domain expertise that does not exist in my organization and, thus, the outsourcing frees up resources and enhances flexibility of the organization.

Now put this into the concept of an appliance like the Accellion secure file transfer appliance. A company comes to Accellion mainly because of our expertise on how to transfer large files securely from a sender to a recipient within the enterprise context. While getting a file from person A to person B is a simple need at its core, the enterprise requirements on issues such as administration, life-cycle management, access control, and compliance/audit often require a level of expertise and experience uncommon in most organizations.

What makes the Accellion solution unique, however, is that we have put the solution in the appliance form factor. Namely, in the Gartner analyst’s words, it allows you to put this bundle of secure file transfer services (at the same level as you could have gotten from a outsourced provider with dedicated capabilities) inside your infrastructure.

This is a critically important part of the definition. It means that you, the buyer/user, have total control over this service. You are not at the mercy of another company’s policies or someone else’s infrastructure. You know how the product is deployed, and who uses it and when. You set the policies and parameters that safeguard your company’s assets (i.e., your files). You control your own destiny.

In short, an appliance allows you to access all the deep domain expertise of an outsourced model while retaining full control over your own infrastructure and usage. For enterprise IT use, this does not get any better.

So, the next time you think of an IT appliance as a simple plug-and-play box that has a specific purpose, remember also that it comes with a vast amount of technical expertise at your fingertips and under your control. For Mom, however, I will stick with the toaster example.

By the way, you can get more information about how easy it is to deploy an Accellion appliance by reading 3 Easy Steps to Secure File Transfer Nirvana – a.k.a., Why IT and end users love appliance solutions.

ACA Guy

Accellion in the News

Media Coverage

Accellion Solves CRA International’s Large File Transfer Issues

How One CIO Escaped E-Mail Attachment Hell

Press Releases

* Red Dot Building Systems Selects Accellion’s Secure File Transfer Solution to Meet its Large File Transfer Needs

* Microsystems Selects Accellion’s Secure File Transfer Solution for its Large File Transfer Needs

Summary: A Wall Street Journal article suggests that business users can circumvent corporate email system limitations by forwarding business correspondence to consumer-oriented email services like Gmail or Yahoo Mail. How many ways can you say SOX, HIPAA, FRCP violations?

A recent Wall Street Journal article by columnist Lee Gomes discussed the “Internet boundlessness” of consumer email systems like Google’s Gmail, Microsoft’s Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail from Yahoo! Inc. The context of the article was Yahoo!’s recent announcement of “free unlimited storage” for Yahoo Mail users.

Ordinarily, none of this should have any affect whatsoever on corporate email usage. But the WSJ article is suggesting that business users take note of the vast storage capabilities of the consumer email services and store attachments related to corporate uses there. The article claims that:

One of the ironies of the current tech scene is that the free email services available from the big Web companies are often faster and have more storage than the corporate accounts that office stiffs use in their jobs every day. It’s thus now common for people to forward work email to an outside free account, turning it into a permanent archive that’s always available for quick searching.

As a matter of a fact, Mr. Gomes proclaimed that he has no less than 40,000 messages stored in this Yahoo email account in about two years.

BIG GULP!!

Personally, I am an enthusiastic user of consumer email accounts like Yahoo Mail and Gmail. They serve their purpose and (my) world is better as a result.

But, in the era of SOX, HIPAA, and FRCP where there are severe financial and legal consequences when corporate data is mishandled, this article is suggesting that business people violate their corporate security policies and send proprietary communication outside the corporate firewall.

As the saying goes, I may be crazy but I ain’t stupid.

Using consumer oriented technology to solve the problem of transferring large files and attachments in the corporate context is really substituting a completely separate and potential much larger can of worms for a small problem. For example, Gmail crawls the content of the mail in order to serve advertisements that match the content – Gmail probably know more about the content than you do. Where is your confidentiality and data security?

For companies seeking an alternative to sending and receiving large attachments in this email-centric world that we live in, Accellion secure file transfer solution solves the problem cleanly for the end users while satisfying all the corporate security and compliance requirements.

The Accellion solution is a secure appliance that integrates into your company’s IT infrastructure, and is controlled by your own IT department. The appliance allows employees to send and receive attachments of any size. (OK, 20 Gigabytes is the amount that we have tested so far, but at 5 DVDs worth of data in one click, our testers got tired!) On top of the large file capability, it comes with features like automated file life-cycle management, role-based authentication levels, and integration with corporate assets such as directory services. You know, a real enterprise solution from any angle that you look at it.

Mr. Gomes, let’s talk. If you cannot send large attachments through your wsj.com business email account, I have the right solution for you!

Summary: CIO Magazine featured a story on how Accellion helps a financial services company escape the large attachment trap and turn its Accellion investment into a competitive advantage.

Laurianne McLaughlin the CIO magazine technology editor for “Essential Technology” wrote a story about “How One CIO Escaped E-Mail Attachment Hell.” There are plenty of good lessons here for every CIO to take to heart, no matter what business you’re in.

The CIO in question is Fred Danback of Integro Insurance Brokers. Mr. Danback’s enterprise email system was creaking under the weight of large attachments. His IT team was dealing with bloated email servers, slow system response times, and message delivery failures.

He tried to address the problem by asking employees to forgo attaching large files to their email messages. His “pretty please” plea didn’t work, largely because the business was dependent on employees being able to exchange large files among themselves and also with partners and clients outside the company. Preventing the large attachments clearly wasn’t a solution; he had to find a way to get the files to the people who needed them, while at the same time taming the email issues. If he didn’t resolve the problem, Integro was at high risk of losing business with its blue-chip clients.

The article noted that Integro’s e-mail system, supporting some 400 users in five countries, was groaning under weighty attachments. “There’s a lot of document transfer that takes place. We may get CAD drawings, MPEG files, technical specifications, it runs the gamut,” Danback says. Not only was his internal system being taxed, but also, his users were bumping up against problems with clients receiving their messages, since many firms limit attachment sizes to prevent problems like denial-of-service attacks, Danback says.

Alas, these problems are universal for almost any kind of business today.

Of course, by now you are guessing how Mr. Danback and Integro solved their problems. Yes, they installed an Accellion secure file transfer appliance. For just a few thousand dollars, the appliance immediately eliminated the email system’s burden of transporting large files. And because the appliance integrates with the email system, the users didn’t have to learn a new process to use their new tool.

Maybe even more important to Integro is that this new method for getting files from person to person is giving the company a competitive advantage. Ms. McLaughlin tells it like this: Danback’s business users like it for another reason. Because their insurance industry competitors are dealing with the same large documents and e-mail woes, anything Integro brokers can do to make their interactions with clients more seamless can only help them win business, Danback says. “We had to find a way to differentiate ourselves from our competitors.”

The moral of the story for CIOs feeling the pressure of large attachments, sagging email systems and growing business needs? I couldn’t have said it any better than Ms. McLaughlin and Mr. Danback:

The more attachment-heavy your company is, the more an appliance [like Accellion's] makes sense in terms of ROI. If you have complex discovery and compliance needs, you will want to consider using an appliance in concert with e-mail archival software. Both of these product categories are growing, with good reason: Another recent Osterman Research study found that 59 percent of enterprises call messaging storage growth a serious problem. And messaging storage needs are growing at a clip of about 35 percent per year, according to Michael Osterman, principal of Osterman Research.

What’s Danback’s advice to other CIOs about e-mail appliances? “Look at what could go wrong with your e-mail and do something about it now. So you don’t get yourself in a situation where you have proprietary or secret information in the public mail,” he says.

ACA Guy

Accellion in the News

Media Coverage

How One CIO Escaped E-Mail Attachment Hell

File transfer security the easy way

Press Releases

* Microsystems Selects Accellion’s Secure File Transfer Solution for its Large File Transfer Needs

* Accellion Makes Global Collaboration Easier With Internationalization of Secure File Transfer Solution

Summary: Get Back 30 is an IT initiative by a Fortune 50 Accellion customer that aims to relieve its (130,000+) employees from inefficient processes. In addition to making the end users and IT team happy, the multiplier effect on overall organizational capacity would make any CFO smile.

There’s a lot to be learned from a household name Fortune 50 multi-national firm that finds innovative ways to leverage the latest IT best practice to enhance its business processes. This Accellion customer has just launched an initiative to encourage its employees to become even more efficient through the use of time-saving technologies. The campaign is called Get Back 30, and it promotes the idea of recovering 30 minutes in the daily processes by doing things smartly. It’s a tangible drive to find more value for the company in its premier resource: its people.

I’m thrilled to tell you that the Accellion Secure File Transfer solution factors into the company’s Get Back 30 initiative by allowing employees to send files and large attachments within and outside the company in an easy and efficient manner. Employees are encouraged to use the Accellion solution to send large files instead of using awkward and time-consuming processes like FTP servers. I can’t think of a better endorsement of how our solution helps improve business processes that involve sending and receiving files.

As Get Back 30 rolls out, I expect more employees will welcome the easy-to-use secure file transfer solution, and find benefit in being able to quickly and securely trade work files with coworkers, clients and colleagues inside and outside the company.

While Get Back 30 is all about helping people become more efficient, increasing use of the Accellion solution within the company delivers a side benefit of making other technology more efficient, too. I’m speaking, of course, about the company’s enterprise email system. As more and more employees grow accustomed to sending their usual email attachments through an Accellion appliance, the new usage model relieves the strain on the overburdened email resources. Consequently, the company spends less time and money managing the burgeoning growth of the email system.

So, the benefit of Get Back 30 does not apply only to the end users, which is considerable as it is, but it also accrues to the IT team. They, too, “get back 30” when they expend less effort maintaining the enterprise email system. Their time can now be better spent being proactive with other IT projects.

So, how does this work out? Let’s assume an organization of 10,000 people. Each person, on the conservative side, would recoup 60 minutes per month as a result of using the Accellion solution as part of the Get Back 30 initiative. That would work out to be 120,000 man hours that would not have been available without Accellion. This particular customer has more than 130,000 employees. Now, these are IT expenditures with ROI multiplier numbers that even the CFO would love.

ACA Guy

Accellion in the News

Media Coverage

Accellion updates secure file transfer appliance – user interface now available in six languages

Clarian Health finds quick way to transfer files: Clarian Health Partners’ telemedicine program… has found a way to save time, money – and aggravation – by getting done in two hours what might have taken two weeks in the past.

Press Releases

* Microsystems Selects Accellion’s Secure File Transfer Solution for its Large File Transfer Needs

* Accellion Makes Global Collaboration Easier With Internationalization of Secure File Transfer Solution

Summary: Inviting external guest users onto your Accellion Secure File Transfer solution costs nothing. There’s no wait for the business users who need to exchange large files. No more midnight phone calls for emergency FTP access. Accellion makes the world a better place.

As I talk with Accellion customers, I am finding that they really like that external people also can access most of the capabilities on the Accellion Secure File Transfer solution. This makes it very easy for employees to work with clients, colleagues and partners outside of their own organization. In fact, employees of most professional firms – like advertising agencies and law firms – interact mostly with external contacts. Accellion makes it as easy and inexpensive to receive large files from external people as it is to send to them.

Often to IT administrators’ surprise, field usage has shown that many fully deployed sites have eight or more external guest users for every one internal user of the Accellion system. Accellion is happy because it shows that these users are taking full advantage of the capabilities, and their business processes really need the ability to easily share data with external partners. IT administrators are happy because there’s no cost for allowing external guest users to access the Accellion file transfer capabilities.

When it comes to external guest users, it’s like a permanent “Buy One, Get Eight Free” sale with Accellion. When you purchase an appliance or a network of appliances for your company’s use, you can extend the service to all the external guest users at no additional cost. Better still, there’s nothing to add to the infrastructure, and no software for the user to download. If a guest user has access to an internet browser, he can use the file transfer service.

I’ve mentioned before how easy it is to provision service to an external guest user. (See “Let External Users Send Large Files Back Securely Without Harassing IT.”) Any authorized user within the organization can invite an external participant to have an account on the appliance. No one needs to request IT to set it up, or beg for permission to allow the access. A simple email invitation is enough to allow the external user to register for an account and begin using the service.

Compare that simple process to using an FTP server to transfer files. First of all, FTP servers are typically administered by IT personnel. Anyone who wants to use them (including internal employees) has to ask and wait for IT to provision access, even for a one-time use. There may be a company policy against giving external access. Even if there isn’t, IT needs to get involved in giving the outsider access.

Even worse than the administrative hassles of FTP are the security concerns. A typical FTP server is basically a large hard drive. Usually, people can access files that are not meant for them in the same directory. What’s more, transmissions – including passwords – are in clear text, making them vulnerable to interception. Secure FTP service adds encryption, but it requires everyone to install additional client software. This is often impossible with outside users because, increasingly, IT administrators do not allow users to install such software.

FTP invites so many complications that help desk support can be inundated on a busy day. Worst yet, when it comes to external users, do you want your scarce and expensive help desk resources to go toward supporting people who don’t even work for your company?

Relieving the burden on the IT team from chores like supporting FTP and allowing as many external users to exchange data with internal users as business processes dictate – maybe there is still free lunch to be had after all! That is, if you use the Accellion secure file transfer system.

ACA Guy

Accellion in the News
Media Coverage


Accellion updates secure file transfer appliance – user interface now available in six languages

Clarian Health finds quick way to transfer files: Clarian Health Partners’ telemedicine program… has found a way to save time, money – and aggravation – by getting done in two hours what might have taken two weeks in the past.

Press Releases
Microsystems Selects Accellion’s Secure File Transfer Solution for its Large File Transfer Needs

Accellion Makes Global Collaboration Easier With Internationalization of Secure File Transfer Solution

Summary: Accellion customers have spoken – Accellion has won the 2007 Global Product Excellence Award. It is about security, ease of deployment and administration, ease of use, and happy users.

I’m pleased to tell you that Accellion has received a 2007 Global Product Excellence Award — Customer Trust from the Info Security Products Guide. Accellion’s award comes in the category of “secure file transfer appliance.”

While it’s always nice to garner a recognition, what makes this one especially gratifying is that it is customers and end users that cast the votes. In other words, we have won the American Idol for secure file transfer appliance all thanks to our legion of fans – the people who trust and depend on the Accellion Secure File Transfer Solution day after day.

Sweet!

As I talk with Accellion customers, I hear their stories of how our secure file transfer solution transforms and enhances their organizational processes. Most of our customers cite ease of use for end users as a main driving factor that led them to look for a secure file transfer solution in the first place. But once they looked a little closer at the Accellion solution, they found the robust security features we’ve built in. And while other file transfer products might have elements of these features, taken as a whole, no enterprise file transfer solution can even come close to the total package of security and ease of use that Accellion delivers.

For security features, here are some of the popular ones:

Information storage and transmission encryption – files can be encrypted during transmission, sending and receiving, and storage using the appliance. This protects the file while it is “waiting for delivery.”

Integration with enterprise directory systems — For enterprise deployments, companies can link the Accellion appliance(s) to the network directory (e.g., LDAP and Active Directory) that controls all end user access to network resources. This ensures security while making it easy for the IT administrators.

Virus checking – The system administrator can set the appliance such that all files placed on it are screened for viruses and malware.

Automated file lifecycle management – The appliance has automated processes to remove files that have reached their “expiration date” on the appliance without administrator intervention while giving the senders control over the exact file lifecycle. This also helps to satisfy requirements under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, rule 37.

Audit features – Audit trails list who has been sending and receiving files, which helps organizations to comply with security and privacy mandates in legislation like Sarbanes-Oxley, the Graham Leach Bliley Act (GLBA), and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act).

Aside from the security features mentioned above, customers also tell me they like the appliance form factor that just plugs into a company’s network. Everything is owned and administered by the company. There is no concern about someone else hosting your files, or about pieces of files being transferred via peer-to-peer networks.

In other words, the solution is enterprise-grade in security and administration but easy to use like a consumer product. The best of all possible worlds.

ACA Guy

Accellion in the News
Media Coverage


Accellion updates secure file transfer appliance – user interface now available in six languages

Clarian Health finds quick way to transfer files: Clarian Health Partners’ telemedicine program… has found a way to save time, money – and aggravation – by getting done in two hours what might have taken two weeks in the past.

Press Releases
Microsystems Selects Accellion’s Secure File Transfer Solution for its Large File Transfer Needs

Accellion Makes Global Collaboration Easier With Internationalization of Secure File Transfer Solution