Archive for the ‘Accellion’ Category

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Veterans Day, Honoring Those Who Serve

Thursday, November 10th, 2011

November 11th is Veterans Day. It’s a day to honor United States’ veterans of all conflicts for their patriotism and willingness to serve. Veterans Day was originally established to honor Americans who had served in World War I. Since then, it has become a national holiday that is celebrated on November 11, the anniversary of the day World War I ended in 1918.

Many people will celebrate the holiday by attending special events that honor those who have served in the military.  Some will attend events in their local communities. Others will travel to the nation’s capital for the observance at Arlington National Cemetery.

For the Veterans, it’s a family reunion of sorts. They roll up on motorcycles, in wheelchairs, taxicabs, and city busses. They shuffle with canes, with limps, and with pride. Many come wearing their uniform of service with the emblems of their military units. They come accompanied by family, by friends and by the memories of their time served.

Here at Accellion, we are particularly proud of the fact that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is an Accellion customer.  For those that don’t know, the VA is the United States government’s second largest department.  The VA provides medical facilities, clinics, and offices and is responsible for administering programs for veterans and their dependents.

The Accellion team would like to say thank you to the military family that has served honorably to protect the rights and liberties of this great nation. We owe a debt of gratitude that words alone cannot express.

 

 

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Had to Pause Angry Birds to Forward a File to my Boss

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

Walk around any organization today and you will see people using the newest and coolest PCs, smartphones, and tablets. It’s not just the normal suspects that love the IT gadgets. It’s everyone from the CEO to the summer intern. Even my mom got an iPad and is getting in on the action.  It’s so easy to download emails and send photos to relatives. She takes it with her everywhere—even work. Everyone loves these devices at home and work because they’re easy to use. I suspect employees will be taking their devices on upcoming holiday vacations.

The problem that IT managers have is identifying the line between personal and business computer use. We know it has been blurring for years, but today it’s practically gone. The availability and variety of powerful mobile devices, along with the simplicity of adding apps, and cloud services has increased the distortion between personal and business use more than we ever imagined.

A new study sponsored by Unisys found that 40.7% of the devices used by workers to access business applications are ones they own themselves, including home PCs, smartphones, and tablets such as the iPad. Nearly 10% reported using their personal tablet for work—a device that did not even exist just 15 months ago.

Consumerization of IT Study

With this in mind, most IT managers and CIOs are well aware that we’ve turned a page and there is no going back.  The real question is, how can organizations cope in a world where the line between a personal and business computer is “cloudy” at best? The answer is identifying security issues and managing enterprise data.

Accellion provides the kind of enterprise solutions that offer the control and flexibility that IT needs, while keeping users happy with easy-to-use file sharing and collaboration applications that can be accessed anytime, from anywhere. And if you have employees like my Mom, who bring their iPad to work, you’ll be glad you invested in securing your sensitive enterprise data.

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

Content for this post is excerpted directly from the IDC iView 2011 Consumerization of IT Study: Closing the ―Consumerization Gap, July 2011, sponsored by Unisys. The multimedia content can be viewed at http://www.unisys.com/iview.

 

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Data breaches put the scare back in Halloween!

Monday, October 31st, 2011

For most people outside the IT profession, the scariest thing they deal with on Halloween is a spooky costume or the newest episode of AMC’s ghastly drama “The Walking Dead.” For IT professionals, a data breach is far worse. With the frequency and cost of data breaches on the rise, it’s easy to see why the topic worries IT professionals. In its fifth annual TITLE survey the Ponemon Institute showed a significant spike in legal defense spending to address fears of successful class actions resulting from customer, consumer or employee data loss. In fact, the total cost per data breach incident now exceeds six million dollars.

If that’s not enough to chill IT and security professionals, another report commissioned by Websense surveyed 100 IT managers around the world about the latest threats to corporate security. The IT managers surveyed went on to say that data loss incidents put their jobs on the line, and that managing the stress of a company data breach is more taxing than divorce, managing personal debt, or a minor car accident.

There were 561 data breaches in 2010 and 589 data breaches to date this year. To avoid the stress of a data breach, IT professionals are employing robust security strategies to ease their worries.

We do our part to help Accellion’s customers and their business users protect data while sharing files with external and internal users.

As for the haunts of Halloween… there is nothing that can help the chills and thrills.

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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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The Mobile Offensive! BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

Mobile employees have been worrying IT managers for years. It all started with pagers, PDAs, and the first cellular phones. Now iPads, smartphones, and a slew of other Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices are on track to outnumber desktop computers. The local area network (LAN) that interconnects computers in a limited area such as a home, computer lab, or office building is fading fast. Most enterprise networks are moving to wireless as the primary way to connect. In the same way that video killed the radio star; Wi-Fi enabled devices and the BYOD trend are killing the LAN. Mobile devices that were restricted by IT managers are now considered indispensible for everyday operations.

Do you think the BYOD trend is not real, or a fad? According to ZDNET, about 75% of enterprises now have a “bring your own device” policy in place. That’s nearly three-quarters of companies surveyed—so yeah BYOD is for real.

A quarter of organizations give employees a whitelist of allowed devices, while almost half let employees bring in and use any device.

  

Bring Your Own Device? It’s real. Nearly three-quarters of companies allow employee-owned smartphones and/or tablets to be used at work, according to Aberdeen data (mix of late 2010 and 2011 surveys). A quarter give employees a whitelist of allowed devices, while almost half let employees bring in and use any device.

 

Here are four trends that motivate companies to try BYOD:

Employee gratification: device lust is no longer just for tech geeks. Employees love BYOD at work. Allowing BYOD can be a real motivational tool. Employees, particularly younger, on-the-move employees, see the brand of a laptop or smartphone as a lifestyle choice and an important part of who they are. Of course Apple is at the epicenter of this movement.

Tech developments: the days of compatibility problems and sharing issues from Mac to Windows are ancient history. A few anti-trust lawsuits got everyone’s attention and a solution was found. The compatibility problems were one thing. In the past the size, weight, and cost of computers made mobile computing an oxymoron.  In 1983 BYOD would not have been possible. This 29 pound BASF 7000 computer would have been nearly impossible to bring to work.  Today’s shinny mobile devices are easy to transport and don’t weight a ton.

Telecommuting and mobile workers:  some of the same technical developments listed above enable more and more workers to work from home, remotely, or on-the-go. Other technical developments like secure file transfer and secure collaboration allow external employees to be productive and secure.

Cost: back in the good old days a computer like the BASF 7000 would have hurt your back and strained your IT budget. At $2800 ($6000 at today’s dollar) this beast of burden cost an arm and a leg. Just think about that next time your fingers are deftly gliding across your light weight tablet or smartphone. With the cost of laptops and tablets around $500 the cost factor, like the BASF 7000, is a thing of the past.

At Accellion we see the BYOD trend as a shift in the increasing demand for mobile access to file sharing. If you haven’t already tried out the Accellion mobile apps here is the link.

 

Aberdeen 2011 Wireless Expense Management: Control International Roaming and the BYOD Revolution. The multimedia content can be viewed at: http://www.aberdeen.com/aberdeen-library/7240/RA-wireless-expense-management.aspx

Lai, E. (2011). 75% of enterprises have ‘bring your own device’ policies. what that means. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/sybase/75-of-enterprises-have-bring-your-own-device-policies-what-that-means-charts/1025

The Buggles. (1979). Video killed the radio star [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwuy4hHO3YQ

 

 

 

 

 

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

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.

MobileIron and 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 »

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 »

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 »

Employee Spotlight — Sooying talks about Product Development and life in Singapore

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

In the second installment of our employee spotlight, we chat with Sooying, our software architect based out of our Singapore office. Sooying is not only an experienced engineer who has helped create award-winning Accellion products for the past eleven years, but also a devoted mother and an avid baker. Sooying has one of the longest tenures at Accellion!

1. What do you do at Accellion?

I am software architect at Accellion. I am currently involved in the Accellion Secure Collaboration project where I am part of a team that designs and architects the product, UI, and database. I research and decide the tools and libraries to use. Part of my responsibility is also ensuring that the front end and back end systems work together. I work on the logic behind the work-flow in the secure collaboration process.

In addition to building the product, I also manage a team of highly skilled engineers to get the design implemented.

I have been involved in the design and implementation of the product since its inception. Furthermore, I am responsible for ensuring the version compatibility and evolution of the application features for our 1,200 enterprise customers, some of which have been Accellion customers for as long as 8 years.

2. How long have you been here?

I have been at Accellion for 11 years, since May 2000.

3. What led you to work at Accellion?

This was my first job out of college. I joined the company because it seemed like it would be an interesting challenge. I wanted a role where I could learn things and have a chance to expand my responsibilities over time. Smaller companies give new graduates a chance to work on many projects and broaden their skill-set quickly.

Other companies that I applied to were larger and the scope of my job would have been quite narrow.

4. What’s your favorite part of working here?

A couple of things make working at Accellion great.

There is a strong degree of trust. We have a very good manager who gives us sufficient freedom to use our expertise to build the product.

I have two kids and there is great work/life balance at Accellion. Like other working mothers, I am always juggling between being a good engineer and a good mother.

Also, a few of my colleagues have been here for a long time, too. We get along very well and complement each other. That is so important for us.

5. How did you get into engineering? Is this something you always wanted to do? Was there someone in particular that influenced your choice of career?

I come from a very big family – one of eight kids from Selangor, Malaysia. None of my family had an interest in IT. However, I have always been very logical and methodological. I like to deal with facts. I chose the science path when I was in high school. In Malaysia that usually means a career in engineering or the medical fields.

I went on to study multi-media and programming at Technology University Malaysia. I enjoy doing programming as computers always follow a set of pre-defined instructions. Whenever there’s a bug, thinking logically, I’m able to narrow down the piece of code in question and solve the problem.

6. What brought you to Singapore?

When I graduated from college, the region was going through the dot com boom. I looked for a job in Singapore since my husband had already started working in Singapore a year before I graduated. I met my husband at university.

7. What’s life like in Singapore?

I like Singapore. Singapore is governed very efficiently which makes sure everything works like a clock. Everything works as it should and the crime rate is very low. You actually feel quite safe walking alone at 3AM in the morning.

Education system here is quite good.

Singapore is an island full of foreign talents. It’s a very diverse.

8. What do you do when you’re not building products?

I spend my time outside of work with my family. I love baking with my daughter who is four and half years old. We like to make butter cookies. I have a five and half year old son as well. Most of my free time is focused on my kids and making sure they are raised well.

Thanks Sooying for sharing your background with us. There is a lot of thought that goes into all of Accellion’s products.

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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 »

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