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Catering to the Sophisticated User: Make that a “babe-a-ccino”

Thursday, August 4th, 2011

It was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to tap into the toddler market with a specialty mock coffee drink aptly called the “babe-a-ccino.” Yes, no kidding, there is the photo in the WSJ this morning of a young man, clutching his morsel of croissant, or is it a chai lavendar biscuit, with his “babe-a-ccino.” Invitingly presented in a classic espresso cup, the “babe-a-ccino” seems to consist of frothy milk, a sprinkle of cocoa, and only the suggestion of coffee.

Jack, age 2, drinks a babe-a-ccino at the Seesaw cafe in San Francisco – WSJ

So what exactly does this have to do with business users and software?  Well it’s an interesting example of understanding your audience and catering to their wants and needs.  For the under five year old crowd it tends to be 99% about wants, and depending on the business user it may be the same.  In the case of the “babe-a-ccino” the toddler wants what Mommy or Daddy has, however what they need is a big glass of milk.  Enter the “babe-a-ccino” an excellent compromise between what toddler wants – cute cup, frothy milk and a teaspoon to play with – and what they need which is a decent serving of milk.

Let’s face it, today’s business users are sophisticated in their wants and needs. With easy access to free software they are pushing the envelope on the types of solutions they are bringing into the workplace.  What they want is easy access to information, from any device, easy file sharing with colleagues and outside partners and easy collaboration. What they also need is security and tracking so they stay out of trouble.

It’s hard being a parent but someone has to do it.  Sorry kid.  No, you can’t have a coffee drink.  Not least because I don’t want to deal with you when you are bouncing off the walls later from the caffeine.  Similarly, for the business user: sorry, but no, you cannot use Dropbox for sharing confidential work information.  Not least because no one has a record of what you are doing, and I don’t want to lose my job because of a data breach.  Now comes the big pout.

Enter the “babe-a-ccino.”  Now everyone’s happy.  Kid gets what they want, Mom and Dad are happy too. Consider Accellion the “babe-a-ccino” of file sharing.  It gives the business user what they want, while giving IT/Security teams what they need. Everyone’s happy.

I’ll take my “babe-a-ccino” to go, thanks.

Posted in Accellion, Collaboration, Data Security, Product | No Comments »

EOL for Space Shuttle – 30 Year Product Life Better Than Most Cars?

Friday, July 8th, 2011

Atlantis on October 3, 1985 Photo Credit: NASA/KSC

This week, after 30 years of service, the Atlantis Space Shuttle is scheduled to make its final flight before retirement.  30 years ago we had no iPad or iPhone, we didn’t even have the Internet.  MS-DOS was just released by Microsoft, the hottest computer was the Sinclair ZX80 retailing at $199.95 and the “Best Selling Car in the America” was the Ford Escort.  With this technological perspective the Space Shuttle design is a mind blowing achievement.

It’s become easy over the years to take for granted the almost routine take off and landings of the Space Shuttle.  Yet a 30 year product lifetime, for any product, is impressive.  Compare the Space Shuttle’s 30 years of service to the ten years expected lifetime of a car and three years for a mobile phone.  Admittedly, the Space Shuttle didn’t get daily use, but still most technologies don’t have a 30 year product life.  Most people would consider themselves lucky to get two years of service out of laptop.

At Accellion, we’re proud that our file sharing solution has been in service for more than five years at customers such as P&G, Ogilvy & Mather, St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, L’Oreal, and Hilton Hotels to name just a few.  Along the way we have enhanced Accellion file sharing, to support new technologies such as virtualization, cloud, and mobile apps.  And, yes, our customer base has grown significantly over the years, including the addition of NASA several years ago. While product life is definitely influenced by technological advancement, customer satisfaction is perhaps the bigger contributing factor.  At Accellion, our extremely high customer renewal rate (>98%) represents not only a long product life but, more importantly, that our customers are our old friends.

Congratulations and best wishes to NASA for the final Space Shuttle launch.

Posted in Accellion, Government | No Comments »

Lord of the Files – File Sharing Gone Wild

Monday, June 27th, 2011

Who would have thought that the novel, Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, an English literature staple for English schoolchildren, was not only the idea behind the popular TV series “Lost”, but also provides important parallels to the story currently unfolding of enterprise file sharing gone wild.  In the Lord of the Flies the attempts by the group of British schoolboys to govern themselves when stranded on a deserted island is in some ways akin to how business users are today attempting to govern their file sharing when deserted by IT.

The major themes of the Lord of the Flies include an exploration of the conflicts of civilization and the loss of innocence, both of which seem applicable to the current conflict of business user vs. IT in the world of enterprise file sharing.  While the novel, and even the TV show, may be rather more graphic on the conflict of living by rules vs. savagery, valuing the good of the group vs. individual gratification and exploring law vs. anarchy perhaps some good lessons can be learned?  Just how would Ralph, Jack, Simon and Piggy, the main characters in Lord of the Flies have handled file sharing?

Ralph, the elected leader of the group, the representative of order, civilization and productivity, thinks about how the boys should organize themselves and get to work to maximize their chance of survival and rescue.  Is Ralph perhaps the CIO figure?  Would Ralph, the CIO, be taking charge, implementing an enterprise file sharing solution so business users can not only survive and can get their jobs done, but also stay out of trouble.

Jack, the opposite of Ralph, the character representing savagery not civilization, demonstrates how he can use his savagery to control the boys who increasingly abandon civilization to follow him.  Hmmmm… not sure about this Jack character, although we have all seen business users do things they shouldn’t.

Simon, is the character who just does what is right not because of Ralph or Jack’s influence, but just because he knows it is the right thing to do.  This would be the business user every organization would like to have.

Piggy, the inventor and intellectual, uses his inventiveness to benefit the group.  It is Piggy who initially finds a conch and blows it to bring all the boys together on the island and Piggy who makes a sundial so they can tell the time.  Piggy, in the world of enterprise file sharing would have early on blown the conch he discovered, to alert IT and Security teams that they needed to work together to give business users a way to share files securely.  Piggy would also be the one to design and implement the system.

So how does this story end?  In Lord of the Flies, the boys are eventually rescued and returned to civilization, but not without some casualties.  The adult who steps onto the island does remark that he would have expected better from British boys!

How does the story end in enterprise file sharing?  I’m betting on the Ralphs and Simons of the world to give this story a happy ending.

Posted in Accellion, Cloud, Collaboration, Email Attachments, UK | 1 Comment »

Forget the iPod, who wants a cassette deck?

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

Last weekend marked the 40th anniversary of the introduction of the File Transfer Protocol (FTP). While FTP certainly isn’t pretty to use, it has served a purpose.  Originally designed to enable programmers to move files between systems, FTP has continued to serve that purpose nobly for the past 40 years.

However IT departments who have used FTP as the basis for employees to share files across the enterprise, have had less successful results.

Giving FTP to business users as a file sharing solution is akin to imagining your users would be happy using a 40 year old music player rather than an iPod.  As great as the high fidelity cassette deck was when introduced in January of 1971, which would you choose today: the cassette deck or the latest iPod?

 

Photo caption: On January 1, 1971 the high fidelity cassette deck was invented.

FTP sites are notoriously difficult for business users to use and time consuming for IT to administer.  They require too many IT hours for account set-up and there is no easy way to know who has active accounts and who has accessed a particular file. IT administrators are left responsible for creating and deleting accounts and files, an important but tedious process that too often gets pushed to the back burner.  When files and FTP accounts are not terminated in a timely manner, businesses are exposed to security risks.

It’s time to move on.  Technology continues to evolve. Think how much happier your users will be with the file sharing equivalent of the iPod – it’s called Accellion Secure File Transfer and Collaboration.

Posted in Accellion, FTP, Product | No Comments »

If a tree falls in a forest, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

Friday, April 15th, 2011

If a tree falls in a forest, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?  Or the file sharing equivalent – if an employee uses a free personal file sharing account, and IT doesn’t know about it, does it still present a security risk?  You bet it does.

This week’s CIO UK article entitled CIOs: Break security rules to make them better raises an important point that IT needs to get involved with the applications and devices that employees are bringing into the workplace in order to improve security.

IT experimentation with consumer oriented services lets IT see the type of services that employees are looking for but also gives IT firsthand knowledge and experience of the alarming security implications.

Anyone who has signed up for a free dropbox type of account knows how convenient it is for syncing files.  At the same time anyone with a sense of information security gets this niggling feeling that something isn’t quite right about the ease of moving files out of the organization.

So if employees are using free personal file sharing accounts for enterprise use and IT doesn’t know about it, does it create a data security and compliance risk?  You bet it does.  In fact an informal survey of IT folks indicates that in most organizations IT does know that employees are using a variety of free personal  file sharing apps.

So what’s a good approach for IT to deal with this?  A good first step would be to signup for a free file sharing account and see firsthand not only how easy it is to use but also how easy it is to abuse.  Then make it a priority to deploy an enterprise solution for secure file sharing that makes everyone happy.  Let us suggest Accellion.

Posted in Accellion, Data Breach, Data Security, Product | No Comments »

The Data Breach that Keeps on Giving

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

The Epsilon data breach of last week keeps on giving, with millions of email notifications being sent out from the companies affected, informing recipients of the incident.  The New York Times has weighed in and made recommendations for Congress to address this type of failure for consumers with an editorial “Who Really Sent That E-Mail?”

The breach at Epsilon underscores the urgent need for a federal standard of data safety that ensures companies follow adequate policies and procedures to protect consumers’ information and determines companies’ legal liability for breaches. As Congress debates new data privacy rules, it should put data security at the forefront.

We agree with the The New York Times about the importance of protecting consumer information and hope Congress and more companies take data security seriously.  Trusting third party marketers with your data is a risk, but there are ways to mitigate the risks and share securely.  A big part of why corporations and government agencies deploy Accellion is to be able to keep track of who is using what data when, internally and across organizational boundaries.

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

Top Ten Reasons You Need Secure Collaboration

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

10.  Your company has already had a data breach. Don’t make the same mistake twice.  According to a recent survey by McAfee, only half of the companies who have had a data breach or attempted data breach, have taken steps to remediate and protect systems for the future.

9.  People don’t think before they send files. Ideally, they would think twice. But they don’t.  A lawyer accidentally sent a confidential document to a New York Times reporter instead of to a law colleague–both shared the same last name. The result: Nightmare on Email Street.

8.  People get distracted and leave things behind, including that shiny new iPad with the latest sales pricing and quotes.

7.  People write down passwords in obvious places including the same bag their iPad was in when it was left behind.

6.  People turn off security safeguards if they get in the way.

5.  No matter what kind of company you are, you can be a target. The recent data breach at marketing firm, Epsilon, ended up being a colossal 2,500 company data breach, for the price of one.  Epsilon counts brands like BestBuy and Citigroup among its 2,500 customers, or did.

4.  People upload documents to unsecure file-sharing sites even when they know they shouldn’t. Doctors, in blatant violation of HIPAA, have been known to “go outside the system” to send MRIs, including use of free dropbox-type services.

3.  People download files they shouldn’t. If an employee leaves a company, sensitive files often leave, too.  Even worse, files may continue auto-syncing.

2.  Customers get mad when their credit card information is stolen, especially when they get charged for a 3D HDTV that they didn’t order, and that wasn’t delivered to their house.

1.  You like your job and want to keep it.

 

Accellion Secure Collaboration: Share Securely.

 

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

“Forget telling execs they can’t use their new shiny iPad”

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

Thanks Mike Rothman, analyst and president at security research firm Securosis, for pointing out in this week’s CSO article by George Hulme, that denying execs the use of their shiny new iPads is not going to make anyone popular. We agree with you Mike, “You have to try to find a way to secure these devices the best you can.”

Judging by the lines outside the Apple stores, more iPads are heading into the enterprise, so this issue is not going away. What’s the big deal with iPads? George Hulme sums it up perfectly “One of the biggest challenges the consumerization of IT creates for the enterprises is the lack of control over where work data is stored and how it’s shared on user devices.”

So if your execs are starting to show their high-tech flair, bringing iPads into the office – here’s our Accellion iPad security tip to keep everyone happy and secure:

Implement Accellion Secure Collaboration so that execs have secure access to sensitive information from their iPads but the information is stored on secure servers not on their iPads.

The result:

i) Your execs get to use their shiny new iPads to easily and securely access and share information with internal and external users.

ii) Confidential information is stored securely on IT managed servers.

iii) You have complete tracking of all file activity including dates and times of all downloads, uploads and recipients.

iv) When your exec leaves their iPad at the client site, on the train, in a conference room, you don’t need to call in a SWAT team, Accellion has you covered and your files are safe.

Here’s a link to more information about Accellion mobile apps. It’s the app every exec with a shiny iPad needs, so they don’t tarnish your company’s security.

 

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

Observations from Gartner Portals, Content and Collaboration Summit – Part I

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

Accellion is participating at the Gartner Portals, Content and Collaboration (PCC) Summit this week as part of the launch of our new Secure Collaboration Solution.

A couple of interesting takeaways from the first day of the Gartner Summit:

Hybrid cloud deployments will be the norm for enterprise deployments of portals, content and collaboration as enterprise organizations balance security and cost management. Accommodating the security requirements of different geographies, users and information sensitivity means public cloud only solutions are not viable for most enterprise organizations.  This was good to hear given Accellion’s breadth of on-premise and in-the-cloud public, private and hybrid deployment options for secure collaboration and file transfer.

The real value of enterprise content is when it is in-motion being shared with people inside and outside the organization. Enterprise content management systems represent content at rest, which for most organizations is a cost. When this content is shared as part of a business process in the form of legal contracts, product designs, sales proposals, then it generates value for the organization. Sounds good to us, since Accellion is all about sharing information securely.

More today at the conference on the mobile worker and the social enterprise.  Accellion iPhone and iPad app demo got a good workout yesterday at the Exhibit – devices are both recharged for today.

Posted in Accellion, Cloud, Collaboration, Product | No Comments »

It’s Not Personal – It’s Business

Monday, March 7th, 2011

Employees at Wells Fargo really shouldn’t take it personally that their CIO, Wayne Mekjian, won’t let them use personal devices to access the corporate network – it’s just business.  In today’s Network World article entitled “Wells Fargo says no to personal smartphones and tablets, period” it’s obvious Wayne is serious about financial data security and responsibility.  And who’s to blame him, after the financial scandals and meltdown of the past few years, CIOs in the financial industry should be on red alert to avoid embarrassing data breaches.  You have to applaud Wayne for taking a stand for information security.

It’s not like Wayne won’t let his folks use smartphones and tablets – he just wants them to be Wells-Fargo issued.  So who’s complaining? Provisioning employees with the necessary tools to be efficient and productive, whether that be devices or software, seems a reasonable responsibility for any organization.  As long as the organization isn’t too restrictive in their provisioning.

We continue to be amazed at how many organizations still fail to provision their users with the ability to securely share information across organizational boundaries. Legal documents, contracts, product designs, software under development, medical records, marketing campaigns, sales data, financial results, board communications are routinely shared with people outside the corporate network and all potentially contain sensitive IP and confidential personal information. Yet many enterprise users are not provisioned with an approved method for sharing files securely.  The use of personal file sharing accounts is an unfortunate but common workaround. If ever there was a security hole to plug, the file sharing hole is one to plug, and fast.

So Wayne Mekjian, thanks for taking a stand for security, you are our Accellion CIO hero of the week.

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

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