Paula Skokowski | FileTalk - An Accellion Blog

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Expect Storage Rationing to Begin Soon

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

Check out these charts on the rise of cloud computing from GigaOm. It’s the last figure entitled “Projected Storage Shortage by 2020″ that really grabbed my attention. In 2009 30% of the digital content created could not be accommodated in the cloud, by 2020 that number is expected to rise to 60% shortage. Sounds like it is time to start issuing ration books for storage or to change our ways.

It’s surprising that the projected shortage of cloud storage hasn’t got more attention but perhaps it’s a topic akin to discussing the drought in California while it’s raining – not too many interested listeners. For many organizations moving to the cloud, it offers the opportunity to tap into unlimited computing power and storage – well maybe not quite unlimited.

Somehow I don’t think the rate of creation of digital data is going to slow (check out Data Tsunami – 5 Exabytes of Data Created Every 2 Days?) but we certainly could do a better job of managing the storage of data. Many of today’s IT systems are designed as if storage grew on trees. In some cases it’s the system that is wasteful and in some cases it’s the user who is wasteful.

In the world of email attachments we have wastage on both fronts, but if I had to pick sides, the users are probably the worst offenders. At least with email systems, IT administrators can put limits on the size of individual mailboxes and on the size of email attachments that can be attached. Unfortunately these constraints can make it impossible for a user to get their job done. Email attachment limits are the IT equivalent of flow control valves on showerheads and toilets. While they constrict the flow which is good, they also prevent people from getting done what they need to, which is bad. You have to shower longer to rinse the soap off, the kids now flush the toilet twice, and your users go off looking for IT workarounds for file transfer.

One of the most popular features of Accellion secure file transfer is the automatic file cleanup, which means that file storage is rarely an issue with Accellion. Files transferred via Accellion are available for a specified period of time, typically 14 to 30 days. After that it’s “Hasta la vista” and the file is automatically deleted.

So our Accellion tip for today is – if email storage has got to the point where you are considering ration books it might be time to consider a solution for those email attachments – it’s called Accellion.

7:19 am and I’m already in ftp hell

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

It’s another bad day in the world of FTP – it’s 7:19 am and FTP is already acting up. No one should have to start the day like this. Here are some of the tweets this morning bemoaning problems with FTP.

“7:19 am and I’m already in ftp hell.”
“Methinks I’ve got the slowest FTP server in the world.”
“30 mins to update a ftp password? It’s a lot of time…”
“Whyy must u be so slow ftp server!!”
“I hate slow FTP speeds ”
“These files are huge. It’s been a half hour and counting. One little blip in the FTP and I’m f’d.”
“The road to ftp hell is paved with bad connections.”

Perhaps tomorrow will be a better FTP day, but probably not. Read why FTP is a Failure to Provision for file transfer.

With Accellion, every day is a great day to send files.

Posted in Accellion, FTP | No Comments »

Back to School – No File Left Behind

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

It’s back to school time. As I read through the stack of back to school forms, looking for the dotted lines for the parent signature, my eyes stopped abruptly at the sentence “flash drive strongly recommended”. Nooooooo – this is where it all begins. Innocent young minds being corrupted with the idea that transferring files on a flash drive is a good idea.

Faculty, students and staff need to be able to easily collaborate, exchange ideas, and share data including student records, faculty and staff employee information, academic work and research data. However FaceBook, MySpace, IM, P2P and USB sticks are not the answer for secure file transfer.

We’ve had an educational initiative program at Accellion for a number of years that provides free student licenses to any educational institution that purchases licenses for all its faculty and staff. Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley (Go Bears), University of Chicago, University of Tennesse, Pepperdine, Texas A&M, Kent State, University of Colorado are just a few of the universities using Accellion secure file transfer.

It’s never too early or too late to learn how to send files securely. No matter whether your users are students or employees, Accellion wants everyone to get an A grade for file transfer security so we are offering an Accellion Back to School promotion for purchases made before September 30,2010. Contact Accellion sales at sales@accellion.com or 650 739 0095 before September 15, 2010 for details.

Posted in Accellion, Email Attachments, FTP | No Comments »

Data Breach Disease Strikes NHS – Again

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Yet again, an NHS trust is hit by a data breach, as reported in SC magazine today. This time a CD of patient data was found at a bus stop. This is not to be confused with the data breach from the USB stick containing medical records that was found in a UK car park.

It is barely a month since we blogged on this topic, NHS Trusts Failing to Protect Information, and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) issued a press release with the ominous title Poor Data Security in the NHS. Earlier in June, Mick Gorrill, head of enforcement at the ICO, said: “Everyone makes mistakes, but regrettably there are far too many within the NHS. Health bodies must implement the appropriate procedures when storing and transferring patients’ sensitive personal information. We have taken a number of steps to explain the importance of personal data to NHS bodies and help them comply with the law. We will continue to do so.”

Looks like Mike and the ICO have their work cut out for them. Here is a checklist of to-don’ts that the ICO might find helpful in their data protection enforcement efforts with the NHS trusts.

• Don’t use USB sticks for transferring confidential patient data
• Don’t use CDs for transferring confidential patient data
• Don’t post confidential patient data on unsecure FTP sites
• Don’t allow use of P2P file sharing on NHS computers

Also our earlier blog posting Top 3 File Transfer Security Mistakes should be required reading for all NHS trusts.

Posted in Accellion, Data Breach, Data Security, FTP, Healthcare, P2P, UK | No Comments »

FTP – Failure To Provision for File Transfer

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

For many organizations FTP is the only provision made for file transfer, yet FTP is actually a failure to provision. Why is it that businesses do not think twice about provisioning their employees with a phone, an email account, a desk, a chair, yet provisioning an employee to send files is an after thought at best?

FTP has to rank among the worst business tools for file transfer. Other than the occasional software developer is there really anyone who likes FTP? FTP is not easy to use for business users, requires a lot of hand holding by IT, and the lack of file cleanup creates security risks for organizations. Here are some tweets from the past 24 hours on the topic of FTP and the lack of love thereof …

I have ftp locked in a small dungeon underneath my apartment. Occasionally I throw it scraps of chicken.

Have to go into work and ftp is still acting up. Today will be so fun

I just checked the FTP log. You downloaded “that what we don’t speak of in public”. The shame.

Just once I’d like to open an ftp client without it needing to update itself…

Real men don’t do backups, they just put their work on an FTP site and let the world mirror it. Linus Torvalds

If my FTP connection gets a bit faster I might be able to launch this site by christmas.

I couldn’t make this stuff up even if I tried.

Few would question that being able to make a phone call, or being able to send an email is considered an essential business tool, so too is the ability to easily and securely send a file. Provisioning employees with the ability to send files securely is not a nice-to-have but a need-to-have so that we can get our jobs done and stay out of trouble.

Need to be reminded of the troubles you can get into with FTP? Here are some earlier blog postings on the security concerns with FTP:

• Good Ole FTP Just Doesn’t Cut it Anymore
• Top 3 File Transfer Mistakes
• Climategate – Stolen Emails Found on Public FTP Server, Climate Research Unit in Hot Water?

So next time someone says that FTP is available for file transfer – remind them that FTP stands for Failure To Provision for file transfer.

Posted in Accellion, Data Security, FTP | No Comments »

Environmental Impact of Email Attachments – Storm in a Teacup?

Monday, August 16th, 2010

The Mother Jones article from last Monday entitled “Are Email Attachments Bad for the Environment?” is certainly getting a reaction. The article is still circulating the twitosphere, even one week later.

The story features some interesting quotes from Matthew Yeager, identified as a data storage expert from the UK, including:

“sending an email attachment of 4.7 megabytes creates as much greenhouse gas as boiling your tea kettle 17.5 times.”

You have to hand it to the English – they can reduce the complexity of the Internet and the global debate on greenhouse gases down to the topic of brewing a cup of tea.

While Yeager didn’t go into the details of his tea kettle calculation – many commenters have, including Anonymous, who provided the following:

According to PBS Roughscience, a standard kitchen kettle takes about 2000 Watts of electrical power. Thus, 17.5 × 2 kW = 35 kW. But that’s power (P), not energy (E = P×T) over time period T. If it takes about 10 mins to boil a kettle then, 2 kW / 6 = 0.33 kWh per boil.

If a typical British kitchen kettle is assumed to hold 1.5 liters, that’s about 6.34 US coffee cups, according to Google convert. According to General Electric, brewing 3 pots of coffee (6 cups) requires 1 kWh of energy. So, 1 brew (or 1 kettle boil) takes about 0.33 kWh, which seems consistent.

The controversy seems to arise from whether the claimed 35kW per email is a reasonable number or not. As one IT manager commented

“Now I know our server room is warm, but the damn thing would melt if it was using that much energy.”

While nobody disputes that email attachments take up storage, and that redundancy, backups, and sharing of email attachments explodes the storage requirements, what does seem to be up for debate is the scale of the energy consumption. As of today, Mr Yeager hasn’t come forward to explain or revise his estimate, which might explain why this story keeps circulating.

I think I need to sit down with a cuppa to think this one through.

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

Do These Files Make My Email Look Big?

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

Today’s blog posting was prompted by the fabulous headline in the WSJ this morning “Do These Jeans Make My Diaper Look Big?” In case you are wondering, the article is about the fashion trend of skinny jeans for toddlers – go figure.

So to keep things simple, the answer is YES to both questions.

Do These Jeans Make My Diaper Look Big? The answer is YES.

Do These Files Make My Email Look Big? The answer is YES.

Very similar to the idea of squeezing a large diaper clad child into a pair of skinny jeans, large files just don’t belong attached to emails. It looks uncomfortable, it is uncomfortable, and your IT manager just might throw a tantrum.

Whoever dreamed up skinny jeans as a fashion statement certainly didn’t have a diaper-clad child in mind. Similarly email wasn’t designed for large file attachments. As with many things in life – just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. This applies equally to diaper clad children wearing skinny jeans and large files attached to email.

So our Accellion tip for today is – respect your email and don’t attach large files. That’s what Accellion secure file transfer is for.

Posted in Accellion, Email Attachments | No Comments »

Data Tsunami – 5 Exabytes of Data Created Every 2 Days?

Monday, August 9th, 2010

At the Techonomy conference last week in Lake Tahoe, Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, mentioned the stunning soundbite ”There were 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003,” Schmidt said, “but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing.”

Woweee that’s a lot of bytes, and I thought it was just me drowning in data.

PCWorld in its article “Prepare for Data Tsumani, Warns Google CEO” featured this quote and focussed on the “incomprehensible amounts of data out there about all of us…” and the privacy concerns.

I’m still stuck on the sheer volume of data. 1 exabyte is equivalent to 1 quillion bytes or

1 EB = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 B = 10¹⁸ bytes = 1 billion gigabytes = 1 million terabytes

Managing and controlling this volume of information, not to mention securing the confidential bits, is a non-trivial undertaking and based on Mr. Schmidt’s prediction, the task is only going to get bigger. Just as organizations equipped employees with their own telephones, and then email accounts, and then mobile phones, the time has come to equip each employee with a secure file transfer account so that they can move information quickly and securely with the necessary organizational tracking and reporting for compliance.

Accellion customers are already weathering the data tsunami, transferring Terabytes of data per month via Accellion secure file transfer.

5 exabytes in 2 days – bring it on.

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

10MB Email Attachments Heading for Extinction

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

Loved the tweet this morning from Shane Moorhead, self described as a shoe maker, clock cleaner, puppet master, and shearer of sheep.

” … 10MB Email attachments should go the way of the fax. Only for dinosaurs.”

Anyone who has recently spent any period of time with a child under the age of five will no doubt be up on the topic of dinosaurs. Amazing creatures, and hard to believe they once roamed the earth. They came both big and small. This got me thinking.

If large email attachments are heading the way of the dinosaurs, could files have a dinosaur equivalent, and what might that look like?

Is a 5MB email attachment equivalent to a Stegosaurus? Would a 10MB attachment be a Tyrannosaurus? 20GB a Diplodocus?

I’m never quite going to be able to view email attachments the same way. In future when I read complaints on twitter regarding email attachments I’m going to substitute the dinosaur equivalents…

“What kind of person sends an email with a Triceratops attached? Three times.”

I could have some fun with this.

Posted in Accellion, Email Attachments | No Comments »

Healthcare CIO Puts USB Ports on the Disabled List

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

Finally a story about a CIO who takes on the data security threat from USB sticks and thumb drives. Earlier this week, in Health Data Management News, appeared a short article entitled “Data Security is The CIO’s Constant Challenge”. This is the story of Chuck Christian, CIO at Good Samaritan Hospital, Vincennes, Indiana and his IT department, and their efforts to protect private healthcare information and ensure HIPAA compliance.

Chuck explained “Earlier this year, Good Samaritan went well beyond its laptop policies, disabling USB ports across the computers connecting to its network. It was a pre-emptive move to preclude inappropriate data transfers to easily lost devices.”

Chuck Christian explained that disabling the USB ports definitely resulted in changes in behavior. Not least being the purchasing manager from the hospital who wanted to purchase thumb drives in bulk. Chuck’s response – “I said no.” To the credit of Chuck and his IT department they implemented a number of secure alternatives to enable staff at the hospital to get their jobs done.

It’s as simple as that. If you are in charge of data security “Just say no” when someone even suggests using a USB stick or bringing it into the workplace, and give them a secure alternative, such as Accellion secure file transfer.

Chuck Christian you are our Accellion Hero of the week.

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

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