Archive for the ‘Email Attachments’ Category

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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 »

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 | 1 Comment »

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 | No Comments »

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 »

Accellion in Action: National Park Service

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

The Federal Times ran an article yesterday on how IT organizations can make information sharing easier by giving end users more control.  The article featured an interview with Accellion’s customer, The U.S. National Park Service.  An excerpt is here:

The National Park Service has some 140 projects in the works thanks to stimulus spending — everything from Everglades restoration in Florida to the rehabilitation of the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall.

All these projects come with paperwork. Documents, drawings, maps and blueprints all must be shared by architects, engineers, construction teams and management partners. E-mail won’t cut it, said Edie Ramey, division chief of information management at the Park Service’s Denver Service Center. Files are too big, security too uncertain and recipient lists too hard to keep current.

The Park Service solves the problem with a mix of technologies. It uses secure file transfer software from Accellion of Palo Alto, Calif., to manage the motion of so many very large documents, then makes the end product accessible in SharePoint for all the relevant parties to share.

The solution solves two integral questions in the world of collaboration: who gets in and who stays out.

“It’s all about the security,” Ramey said. “We used to have something that was basically a big old file-share. Anyone could get in with a generic password and address. They would have access to any files on the [shared space], not just their project files that I would give them permission to see.”

More and more we are seeing IT organizations work to provision their employees and external collaborators with  easy-to-use tools to increase productivity, while ensuring the enterprise organization the security protection it needs. With Accellion, this can be done easily while making the most of investments IT organizations have already made in technologies like SharePoint.

This means the US National Park Service can enjoy securely sharing information almost as much as we enjoy U.S. National Parks.

Posted in Data Security, Email Attachments, FTP, Government | No Comments »

Accellion in Action: Enterprise Deployment for Hogarth Worldwide

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011

Today Accellion announced the recent deployment of Hogarth, another global, enterprise-wide implementation for the Accellion managed file transfer solution.

Part of the WPP advertising group, Hogarth Worldwide provides copy localization for advertising agencies across the group. Clients around the globe rely on Hogarth to translate master creatives in print, TV and digital formats, from English into local languages.

Initially deployed to provide employees with a quick, easy way to share files with external customers, Accellion has quickly become the standard for sharing information internally among Hogarth’s own employees who are located across multiple sites. According to Alex Buchanan, technology operations director for Hogarth, “many of our employees prefer to use the Accellion solution over old ‘drop box’-style solutions as it is much easier to use.”

With encryption and authentication checkpoints, recipients are validated so confidential information is not overexposed. The comprehensive audit trail provided by Accellion was also important to Hogarth for internal and external audits.

Other significant enterprise deployments of Accellion at the WPP advertising group include Ogilvy & Mather, Young & Rubicam, Grey Global and Team Detroit.

Additional information about our Advertising customer deployments can be found here.

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

Facebook e-mail – a new security loophole

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

Yesterday’s announcement by Facebook that they are introducing email capabilities should provide organizations with yet one more reason for banning the use of Facebook at work.  In the hope that it will raise additional awareness of the security and compliance risk with unmanaged data transfer I posted the following comments at cio.com:

In case you missed it, today Facebook announced the addition of e-mail capabilities for its users. The initial rollout (US only) starts today and will continue over the next few months. One of the most alarming things to note, Facebook says it doesn’t have a set limit on the size of files that can be sent/received via its e-mail. So, if you don’t have a secure, easy way for employees to share large files… watch out, Facebook e-mail can easily become the next insecure IT workaround.

Let’s face it, smart people will find a way to get the job done, and unfortunately, security is often of secondary concern when evaluating IT workarounds. To keep your employees away from the temptation of using insecure IT workarounds – like Facebook – to share confidential corporate files too large to be sent over the e-mail network, deploying an enterprise solution for managing file transfer solution is essential.

Posted in Accellion, Data Breach, Data Security, Email Attachments | 2 Comments »

Mind the Gap – Bridging the Security Gap in Microsoft’s Communication and Collaboration platform

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

Microsoft’s Communication and Collaboration platform comprising Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office Communications Server R2 and Microsoft SharePoint streamlines how organizations connect people, processes and information. Microsoft SharePoint alone boasts 100MM+ users. Throw in Exchange and Microsoft OCS R2 and the user base balloons. However communication and collaboration is not limited to corporate boundaries and the out-of-the-box file transfer capabilities provided within Outlook, OCS and SharePoint do not provide a guaranteed secure delivery path to all users.

To work efficiently and share information securely across organizational boundaries requires an additional file transfer security layer to bridge the security gap in Microsoft’s communication and collaboration platform.

Punching holes in firewalls, managing separate server farms to serve the external user community, changing network topology, adding servers to the DMZ adds a tremendous amount of IT management and licensing cost to maintain this additional infrastructure.

Today we announced general availability of the Accellion secure file transfer plug-ins for the Microsoft Business Productivity Suite.  The Accellion plug-ins enable Microsoft SharePoint, Outlook and OCS users to quickly and securely send information from within Outlook, the Office Communicator Client or from the SharePoint Document Library to both internal and external parties.  Best of all the organization has complete tracking of all file transfers to ensure compliance and data security.

• Want to send and track a file from the Microsoft SharePoint library to an external collaborator?
• Want to send a 2G file without hampering the performance of the Exchange server?
• Want to send a file securely during chat within Microsoft OCS?

No problem, with the Accellion Microsoft Business Productivity secure file transfer plug-ins.  Designed for fast, easy deployment, the Accellion secure file transfer plug-ins for Microsoft Outlook, SharePoint and OCS allow organizations to maximize the utilization and performance of these solutions while closing the security gap.

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

Don’t Let Email Destroy Your Relationships

Monday, October 11th, 2010

You can’t live with them or without them.  I am referring to emails.   Only a few lucky souls get less than ten emails a day.  But most corporate employees get tens and even hundreds of emails each and every day.  A Plantronics study called “How We Work,” reveals that email usage by professionals has increased 78 percent over the past five years with half of those surveyed saying email causes workplace relationship problems such as communication anxiety and confusion.  Nearly 4 out of 10 respondents said they received emails that made no sense whatsoever.   72 percent had to follow up on an unintelligible email with a phone call.

Emails with large file attachments are also relationship killers.  Even the most spectacular presentation can lose its luster by the time it reaches its recipient, if it is delivered as a large file attachment.  That “Oh wow” is supplanted by “Arrg…I was finally able to open your email and download the attachment. But everyone in the office is glaring at me for slowing down the email system.”

Relationships can be mended by simply offloading attachments from email servers and sending a secure link via Accellion.  Encourage your company to utilize secure file transfer solutions.  With the Accellion Secure File Transfer system, email servers are no longer clogged up and business productivity isn’t degraded.

Posted in Accellion, Email Attachments | No Comments »

I’ll stick to my Enterprise solution

Monday, September 27th, 2010

As a professed news junkie, I am always scouring the web for the latest political, economic and technology news.  One particular trend that I’ve noticed in the past year or two is the convergence of consumer and enterprise technologies. Consumer products have added support, limited security and integration hooks as a way of garnering adoption in the enterprise.   Conversely, many enterprise solutions have adopted innovative consumer-centric features to make their products more user-friendly.  A great example is chat.  Skype started off in the consumer space and has moved into corporate environment as a way to increase business productivity.

Another technology that has seen applications in both the consumer and enterprise space is secure file transfer.   Numerous companies offer file transfer technologies but they are far from equal.  The level of sophistication, robustness and security required for an enterprise secure file transfer solution continues to be quite different than one for the consumer space.  With an alphabet soup of regulations, companies need to be careful about the technologies they use to securely transfer confidential financial data, health records, legal documents and more.  Consumer-centric solutions allow individual employees to send files without any corporate or IT control, and that can leave companies vulnerable to security violations.  There is nothing worse than finding out that your company is on the 10 o’clock news due to lost confidential data.  That’s a PR nightmare everyone can easily avoid.

The Accellion Secure File Transfer solution provides its customers with the security, tracking and reporting tools necessary to demonstrate compliance.   Companies can safely allow the transfer of files between employees, employees and outside vendors,  and through automated business processes.  With Accellion; administrators have a system by which all files sent via Accellion Secure Transfer contain audit trails for compliance.

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

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