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Go Mobile, Go Secure with Accellion

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

Our latest Accellion Mobile App for iPhone and iPad with support for iOS 5 was introduced today.  With this release, Accellion is leading the industry when it comes to enterprise mobile file sharing security features and control.

The Accellion Mobile App offers the industry’s first encrypted, protected container for mobile file sharing, including 128-bit AES data encryption for files locally saved on a mobile device.  For those of you with iPhones and iPads you now have a secure way to save files locally on your mobile device.

Let’s say you’re travelling on business.  Momentarily distracted by thoughts of your upcoming presentation, you leave the iPad behind at the security line.  If you have been using a consumer cloud storage app, your files can be easily accessible to the next person that picks up your iPad.

With Accellion, files downloaded and saved on to the device are automatically encrypted.  If you don’t see your iPad again, at least other people won’t see your information.  Oh, and your files are still safe, secure and available to you from your iPhone and laptop.

We’ve built a number of additional IT and security features geared for enterprise use into the Accellion Mobile App.  Learn more.

The Accellion Mobile App is a free download and works in conjunction with Accellion Secure Collaboration and Accellion Managed File Transfer.  Register for a free 30-day individual user trial of the Accellion Mobile App at: http://www.info.accellion.com/mobile-trial.html.

We hope you enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed developing it.

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Accellion and MobileIron Announce Partnership

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

Most IT organizations have minimal visibility into what’s on an employee’s phone and how it’s being used, and even less control or insight into information being accessed and shared.

MobileIronand Accellion announced a partnership today to provide our customers with secure mobile device and content management. Together, MobileIron and Accellion help an IT organization to regain control over mobile devices and how employees collaborate and share information from them.

As part of the partnership, Accellion will be one of only seven applications chosen to participate in MobileIron’s AppConnect program.  The goal of AppConnect is to secure MobileIron-developed apps as well as third-party apps on the App Store, Android Market and other mobile app services.

The benefit of the Accellion and MobileIron partnership was summed up by Jason Otani, Director, IT Infrastructure, Curtiss-Wright Corporation, a mutual customer:

Using Accellion Secure Collaboration’s native mobile apps, our teams really appreciate being able to securely collaborate on contracts and engineering plans with internal and external business partners.  MobileIron’s ability to wipe the device clean remotely any time a device is lost or stolen adds another level of security protection against a possible data breach.

For the most up-to-date news and information about this partnership, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

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Posted in Accellion, Collaboration, Data Breach, Data Security, Government, Healthcare, Mobile, Product, Virtualization | No Comments »

What’s next? Constant Reinvention.

Thursday, July 28th, 2011

What’s next?  I was inspired to consider this question today after reading John D. Halamka’s blog entry on Life as a Heathcare CIO.

If you’re not familiar with his work, John Halamka is, an MD, MS, and is Chief Information Officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Chief Information Officer at Harvard Medical School, Chairman of the New England Healthcare Exchange Network (NEHEN), Co-Chair of the HIT Standards Committee, a full Professor at Harvard Medical School, and a practicing Emergency Physician.  He is also a long time Accellion customer and has implemented Accellion’s secure file sharing at both BIDMC and Harvard Medical School.  You can read more about his implementation of Accellion in this eWeek article.

Given the scope of his career, it seems like he must ask himself the “What’s Next?” question a lot.  On his blog he answers it.  What’s next?  Constant Reinvention.  He recently announced he is going to step down as CIO of Harvard Medical School, help them find a fulltime replacement for the role and embrace the next reinvention of his career.  About the next phase of his career he states:

It’s July of 2011… and I feel powerful forces are aligning to create a quantum leap forward in electronic health records and health information exchange technology.

We think he’s right.  Healthcare organizations are struggling with the growing use of mobile devices and unmanaged Dropbox-type of solutions in their enterprise and need to secure, manage and audit the mobile sharing of electronic health records, research and other Protected Health Information (PHI).  They know this problem puts the organization at risk for non-compliance with HIPAA and Hitech. The organization could also run the risk of a serious data breach, making news headlines, and incurring hefty regulatory fines.

Accellion’s healthcare customers tend to be more savvy than most and care about offering their staff easy to use file sharing and collaboration applications while still securing and managing sensitive patient and research data.

Accellion is constantly introducing new products and features, and the market continues to have new problems to solve – unmanaged Dropbox-type of solutions in the enterprise, proliferation of new mobile devices.  Asking “What’s Next?” helps us all to thrive and innovate.

So, thanks John for providing today’s inspiration and we wish you luck for your next reinvention.

Posted in Accellion, Collaboration, Data Breach, Data Security, Healthcare, HIPAA, Mobile | No Comments »

Accellion in Action: Seattle Children’s Hospital

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

A recent issue of Research Practitioner Magazine includes the article, “Collaboration Moves Research, Clinical Knowledge” and talks about the importance of medical researchers reaching out to potential collaborators, nearby and globally, as they work on ground-breaking medical research.

For more than 100 years, one such facility, Seattle Children’s Hospital, has provided inpatient, outpatient, diagnostic, surgical, rehabilitative, behavioral, emergency and outreach services to children from infancy through young adulthood.  Part of Seattle Children’s Hospital, Seattle Children’s Research Institute, has nine major centers, and is internationally recognized for its work in cancer, genetics, immunology, pathology, infectious disease, injury prevention and bioethics.

Accellion customer Wes Wright, Chief Technology Officer at Seattle Children’s, weighed in on how Seattle Children’s uses file transfer and collaboration technology from Accellion to facilitate their research.

Seattle Children’s Hospital in Washington struggled sending secure files through a difficult-to-use secure file transfer protocol server and using email encryption. Less than a year ago, however, the hospital and foundation switched to a Web-based program, one that offers encryption, user tracking, and transfer of large data files. The program is offered by Accellion, headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif.

The switch to the new file transfer system was spurred primarily by research needs, says Wes Wright, vice president and chief technology officer at Seattle Children’s. “We put the solution in to help us transfer data files for research, but it has since spread out among the whole organization.” After the purchase, the system took only took about three weeks to implement.

About 4,800 employees use the system now… the reason is the simplicity of the plug-in, Wright says. If a user wants to transfer a file, he opens Microsoft Outlook and chooses new mail. In the right-hand corner of the new mail is a plug-in that says “Accellion.” “You hit that button and it opens a file browse window. You browse to the file you want and attach it.”

…The system also tracks who has downloaded and looked at each file. “Whenever anyone accesses a particular file, we keep a log of it,” he says. Sometimes researchers send the file to themselves and download it on their home systems so they can work at home. “We know that user X sent it to himself and then downloaded it when he got home. We can keep track of that file and where it went.”

Such technology is “the wave of the future with HIPAA and high-tech regulations and rules,” Wright says. “The easier we can make it to securely share and collaborate among researchers, it’s going to be a research differentiator.”

We’re so proud Seattle Children’s Hospital staff and research team use Accellion to help move such important work forward.

Posted in Accellion, Collaboration, Data Security, Email Attachments, Healthcare, HIPAA, Mobile | No Comments »

Learning from Morgan Stanley’s Data Breach

Wednesday, July 13th, 2011

“Morgan Stanley Admits to Loss of Unencrypted CDs” reads the latest data breach headline in SC Magazine. I can’t help but shake my head as this could have been easily avoided.  The lost information contained 34,000 client account and social security numbers, among other confidential data.  The CDs were delivered in tact to the New York State department of taxation and finance’s mail room and disappeared somewhere between there and the intended recipient’s hands.

IT departments worry about data security and do their best to put systems in place to prevent this kind of data breach.  So how does it happen?  Some of the biggest risks come from employees who work around an IT mandated solution.  In this case, it looks like there was a file too large for either Morgan Stanley’s, the recipient’s, or both systems’ email restrictions.  For the employee who opted to mail the unencrypted CD, the magnitude of the potential loss and risk involved may have never crossed their minds or took a backseat to Getting the Job Done.

You, as an IT professional, can easily save the day and provide a way for your users to share information and collaborate securely.

In addition to banning CDs, thumbdrives, free dropbox-type of applications, FTP or USB sticks, implementing secure file sharing technology such as Accellion’s helps enterprises securely share files in a way that can be seamless to employees and their intended recipients.  With Accellion, you can track and manage who has sent and downloaded what file, where, and via what device.

Since Accellion supports any file format and size, I suspect Morgan Stanley’s CDs were used to transfer files an Accellion user would’ve been able to send easily.  With Accellion, shared files are stored securely on a server, so issues with the recipients’ email storage limits are also bypassed.  And the file is encrypted in transit and at rest.

Some of the world’s leading financial services organizations use Accellion to protect their sensitive data including: AEW Capital Management, American Capital, Australian Unity, Bank of Scotland, Bank of Spain-Miami (Banco Santander), Cigna WorldWide Insurance Company, Covenant Bank, Deloitte & Touche CA, Georgia Bank and Trust, Farmers Insurance Group, Federal Credit Union, HeathMarkets, IMA Financial Group, Inc., KPMG, MIB Solutions, PFS Global Ltd., Princeton Financial Systems, United Community Bank, ViewPoint Bank and Xpress Holding to name a few.

Financial services firms need to protect their sensitive data in a way that’s easy-to-use for employees and easy-to-manage for IT staff.  Accellion solutions can help.

Posted in Accellion, Data Breach, Data Security, Email Attachments, Financial, FTP | No Comments »

iCloud, you Cloud, we all can Cloud. Let’s minimize data security risks, too.

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011

Between this week’s high profile security vulnerability of free, cloud-based services and the recent iCloud announcement, the good, bad, and ugly of cloud deployments have garnered a lot of attention.

For the record, Accellion solutions are sold only to business and government organizations.  Our customers have a choice in deployment options including, virtual or physical appliances, and public or private cloud.  They can also have hybrid deployments.

No matter where you sit on the relative benefits of cloud deployments, the fact remains that employees are increasingly taking advantage of cloud-based consumer services to share confidential information and collaborate with people outside the organization, with little to no regard for corporate and IT security policies.  These consumer-grade solutions allow individuals to share, send and sync files between devices, yet leave IT and security teams with no visibility into the sharing of enterprise data.   With Apple iOS’ lack of a file system, iPad users are especially prone to using these applications.

Enterprises need to get ahead of the issue of how employees share information. Best practice requirements that cannot be met with consumer, dropbox-type applications include:

o    Flexible deployment options
o    Centralized IT administration and management
o    Full audit and log capabilities
o    Track and own your enterprise data

Bill French at iPadCTO sums it up best:

Box, DropBox, (and soon iCloud), represent the fast-food industry of document collaboration. Accellion is a sit-down restaurant complete with a five-course menu and even a chef in the kitchen who will customize your meal if you ask. And this restaurant has a really cool customer relationship feature that will tell you precisely what you and everyone in your party ate, when you ate it, and how many calories were in it. Oh yeah, and they serve outstanding espresso in an environment that’s pleasurable to have intimate conversations without the noise and distractions of a hyper-fast eatery.

As I mentioned, Accellion, unlike competing solutions, is sold only to business and government organizations and all customers have oversight of their cloud and on premise installations – including public, private, or hybrid cloud deployments.  We let you make the choice.

We offer an enterprise solution that offers the control and flexibility that IT needs while keeping business users happy with an easy-to-use file sharing application that can be used anytime from anywhere.

For more information, read our latest white paper: Secure File Transfer and Collaboration in the Cloud: Maximizing the Benefits While Minimizing the Risks.

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How many of your employees are taking their iPad or iPhone on vacation?

Monday, June 13th, 2011

Leaving the office behind has always been a challenge for some, but the iPad is now making it even harder. As employees head to the beach, mountains, and island getaways how many husbands and wives are sneaking an iPad into their luggage?

In the past 12 months, with the introduction of the iPad, there has been a surge in the volume of users.  According to information released by Apple for their investor community, close to 25 million iPads have been sold to date.

Many of these iPads are being used for business, and employees are taking advantage of free and low cost cloud-based collaboration solutions to solve their file sharing needs, without adequate security, tracking, or visibility for the organization.

When your employees and their partners are using free, unmanaged cloud-based services to share and sync files, you know your organization is at risk for a data breach, intellectual property theft or non-compliance.  Well, actually, because they’re using these apps and you have no visibility into what they’re doing, maybe you don’t know how exposed your organization is to a data breach.  Consider this instead: how many people in your organization do you think are taking their iPads on vacation with them this summer, and how many plan to access business information on their iPad?  iPads are also attractive targets for thieves and can be accidentally left behind.

Accellion announced today that our native file sharing and collaboration application for the iPad and iPhone have been made available for download off of the App Store in iTunes just in time for school to be out and vacations to begin.  Designed to work with Accellion Secure Collaboration, the Accellion Mobile Apps for iPad and iPhone are now available for download for free from the App Store in iTunes.  Download the app, and know there’s one less thing to worry about before you go on vacation – of course getting caught doing work on vacation might still get you in trouble with your loved ones.  We can’t help you there.

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Posted in Accellion, Collaboration, Data Breach, Data Security, Mobile | No Comments »

58 Percent of Security IT Pros See Mobile Devices as Greatest Risk to the Enterprise

Friday, June 3rd, 2011

What’s the biggest risk on IT security peoples’ minds currently?  According to ISACA, the not-for-profit IT security association, it is staff-owned mobile devices.

Survey respondents acknowledge the risks mobile devices pose, with 58% of respondents saying mobile gear, particularly tablets and smartphones, represent the greatest risk to the enterprise and 44% saying they are aware of corporate data being insecurely stored on such devices.

Rolf von Roessing, the association’s International Vice President, stated in an interview with InfoSecurity Magazine:

Protection and risk management are more important than ever, and they should be seen as a strategic imperative.

Do studies like this help you in your quest to move this “strategic imperative” up the food chain in your organization and lend it some urgency?  Are your executives coming to you for advice on how to secure enterprise information on these devices?  If not, how long do you think it’s going to take them to make it a priority?

Posted in Accellion | No Comments »

HIPAA Expected to be Strengthened “Within Months if Not Weeks”

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

It was reported from last week’s HIPAA conference, sponsored by OCR and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, that the final rule that will strengthen HIPAA privacy and security safeguards will be released by the end of 2011.  Sue McAndrew, deputy director for health information privacy at the Office of Civil Rights in the Health and Human Services Department, went so far as to say:

“I really am hoping that we are now targeting months, if not weeks, for the publication.”

That article also reported:

As part of the final rule, business associates, which supply services and activities on behalf of healthcare providers and health plans, will be obligated to comply with HIPAA, and they will be responsible for their subcontractors following it also, McAndrew said.

Health Care organizations and their business partners should start thinking about how to provision their employees with ways to collaborate and share confidential information to improve compliance with industry regulations such as HIPAA and reduce the risk of data breaches now.  If you are interested in learning more about this topic, download the Accellion White Paper: Secure File Sharing for HIPAA Compliance: Protecting PHI.

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Accellion in Action: HIT Entertainment’s Enterprise Deployment

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

When you think of Barney, Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine, enterprise software isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind, but today Accellion announced that the company behind these widely cherished children’s entertainment brands, HIT Entertainment, has implemented a virtual, enterprise-wide deployment of Accellion Secure File Transfer.

 

HIT Entertainment Protects their Brands with Accellion

The press release goes on to detail:

“HIT Entertainment is responsible for well-known programmes such as Bob the Builder, Thomas & Friends and Fireman Sam, and has a pressing need to protect its intellectual property when sending so many files to its offices across the world,” said James Herbert, HIT Entertainment’s Senior Manager of Global Infrastructure.

Accellion originally replaced FTP as the main method for file transfer at HIT Entertainment, a way of working that was cumbersome, not secure and led to an additional management overhead. After three years, the company was ready to commit for a longer period with Accellion. “The product is easy to run,” said Herbert, “it virtually manages itself.”

Well known brands need to protect their intellectual property in a way that’s easy-to-use for employees and easy-to-manage for IT staff.  Accellion solutions can help.

Posted in Accellion, Email Attachments, UK, Virtualization | No Comments »

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