Archive for the ‘Email Attachments’ Category

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Powerpoint – Friend or Foe

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Apparently our military is now fighting a Powerpoint insurgency, according to an article today in the NY times entitled “We have Met the Enemy and He is Powerpoint”.

Here I was thinking this would be an article about the perils of large Powerpoint files, and it was, sorta.  Except this article didn’t focus so much on the size of Powerpoint files but on the content. It seems that no military meeting, report or presentation is now considered complete without a Powerpoint slide deck, consuming numerous hours in the preparation. While several high profile military commanders are fighting back against the “death by Powerpoint” there is no end in sight.

General McChrystal the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan was shown a Powerpoint slide in Kabul last summer that is now bouncing around the Internet as an example of Powerpoint gone out of control.  This slide is truly frightening and as General McChrystal dryly remarked ““When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.”

Rampant “powerpointing” can be a real nuisance for IT departments.  I did a quick check on my computer and many of my powerpoint slide decks are greater than 5MB.  Sending around powerpoint slides to even a modest distribution list can really push the limits on email storage and performance.  With email attachments typically taking up more than 70% of email storage – Powerpoint slide decks are one of the major contributors.

Given the realization that Powerpoints are not going away any time soon –  what can be done to fight back? As a minimum, consider sending Powerpoint slides via Accellion file transfer instead of email attachments so that at least you make your IT department happy.  Also T.X. Hammes Essay entitled “Dumb Dumb Bullets” published in the Armed Forces Journal should be required reading for all military personnel.

Posted in Accellion, Email Attachments | No Comments »

Police responsible for first UK data loss subject to new fines

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

Last Friday was not a good day for the Gwent Police in the UK.  The personal information of 10,000 people was accidentally emailed by the Gwent Police to a journalist at The Register, resulting in the first major UK data loss since new fines were introduced by the UK Information Commissioner.

It was bad enough that a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet containing birth dates and criminal record checks was sent unencrypted and without password protection.  To accidentally include in the CC: field, the email address of a journalist at The Register turned this into a high profile data breach.  The Register email address was in the system because it had been used earlier for two unrelated Freedom of Information requests.

IT staff were immediately called in to tighten security measures to avoid similar incidents occurring in the future.  As a minimum that should include a secure file transfer system, content monitoring and filtering and data encryption.

While The Register has cooperated with Gwent Police in deleting the file they did not feel compelled to comply with requests not to mention this story.

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

Digital Copiers and Scanners – Digital Time Bombs

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian wins the Accellion Top Sleuth award this week, with his story on Digital Photocopiers Loaded with Secrets. Holey Moley, what were people thinking when they discarded their digital photocopiers?  Digital copiers contain hard drives that store images of documents, scanned, copied and emailed from the machine.  Extracting this info from discarded photocopiers is not much of a challenge, especially when the disk is not encrypted. Apparently one photocopier even had a sensitive document still under the copier glass. While major manufacturers of digital copiers and scanners offer security and encryption packages, there is mounting evidence that organizations aren’t generally aware of the security risks inherent with these devices.

So why the interest by Accellion in digital copiers and scanners?  We’ve had our eye on these little beasties for quite some time as potential sources of data leakage. Today’s digital copiers and scanners provide the ability to scan a document and then email the resulting digital file as an email attachment. Without security controls, digital copiers and scanners pose a serious threat to protection of intellectual property and non-compliance with regulations such as HIPAA. In addition, scanned documents create huge email attachments that wreak havoc on email performance.  A couple of years ago we introduced the SMTP Satellite to plug this security hole and improve email performance.

With the Accellion SMTP Satellite organizations can secure and track the transfer of scanned documents and offload delivery from email.  And we’ve written earlier on our view that disk and data encryption is always a good idea.

Posted in Accellion, Data Breach, Data Security, Email Attachments, Product | 1 Comment »

Stop Taxing Email Servers with Email Attachments

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

Given that Tax Day is looming in the U.S. it seems only appropriate to draw attention to the tax that file attachments place on email performance and email storage. With files typically taking up more than 80% of email storage, file attachments place a heavy tax on email servers.

But organizations are fighting back.  They are reducing their tax rate by offloading email attachments using managed file transfer.

What’s your tax rate for email attachments? Take our short quiz to assess your email attachment tax rate:

1)  What size email attachments do you allow through your email system?

a) 5MB     b)10MB    c) unlimited

2) What size of mailbox do you allocate to each user?

a) 200MB  b) 2 GB  c) unlimited

3) What policies do you have in place for email retention?

a) 30 day    b) 90 day   c) no policies

Now calculate your tax-rate.

Each (a) answer is worth 5% tax

Each (b) answer is worth 10% tax

Each (c) answer is worth 25% tax

If you scored <15% tax – well done you are an excellent custodian of IT resources – however your security folks might want to check into how your business users are sending large files since it doesn’t look like email is an option.

If you scored >25% tax – it’s a good time to consider a managed file transfer solution.

If you scored >50% tax – you are either rolling in money or are seriously in need of a managed file transfer solution.

Contact Accellion if you are interested in reducing your email attachment tax rate. We’re here to help.

Posted in Accellion, Email Attachments | No Comments »

Top 3 File Transfer Security Mistakes

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Thought it might be helpful to share our perspective on the Top 3 Security Mistakes related to File Transfer along with some tips on how to avoid them.  After all, staying out of trouble is half the battle.

Mistake #1  - Using P2P file sharing software at work.

Using P2P file sharing in the workplace is just not a good idea. Installing P2P file sharing on a work computer can get you into a heap of trouble by inadvertently exposing computer files externally. The FTC recently had to inform 100 organizations that personal customer and employee data was being shared on P2P networks.  Legislation is under review that would require stricter notifications on the security hazards of P2P file sharing.  The best advice here is to practice P2P workplace abstinence – don’t use P2P file sharing in the workplace.

Mistake #2 – Sending confidential information via an email attachment, USB stick or CD

Email attachments, USB sticks and CDs are not a secure means of file transfer. When sensitive information is sent unsecured then an organization is at risk for non-compliance with industry and government regulations including HIPAA, SOX, and GLBA.  Files containing confidential information need to be protected to avoid data breaches. USB sticks and CDs, can easily be misplaced or lost in transit as the UK Government discovered in 2009 when disks containing personal information on 25 million UK citizens went missing in the Royal Mail. Email attachments are not secure and do not provide the encryption required by HIPAA. If a file contains confidential information it needs to be sent via secure, encrypted channels.

Mistake #3 – Forgetting to cleanup files on un-secure FTP servers

Everyone knows that FTP is not the most user friendly business application, and cleaning up files previously uploaded to an FTP server probably ranks right up there in priority with cleaning out the lint from your trouser cuffs.  In the hands of business users, FTP servers become a security breach waiting to happen.  Files uploaded and left indefinitely on the FTP server, can result in many years worth of files sitting out on unsecured FTP servers.  Coupled with the commonplace sharing of FTP account names and passwords, FTP servers are often a weak link in an organization’s data security program.

The good news is that managed file transfer can keep you out of trouble in all these areas.

Posted in Accellion, Data Breach, Data Security, Email Attachments, FTP, P2P, UK | 2 Comments »

Email Attachments – Misconceptions Compromise Security

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

Are organizations aware of the security risks from email attachments? Generally not.

With email attachments typically accounting for more than 70% of e-mail volume, the bulk of data on email systems resides in the email attachments not email messages. Unfortunately in many organizations the management of email attachments is an afterthought leading to security vulnerabilities.

The disturbing reality is that users will try to force as much information through email as they can get away.  Without adequate security controls in place users commonly send confidential information unprotected through email attachments.  In cases where users hit email attachment size limits, they rapidly seek out unsecure IT workarounds such as thumb drives, CDs, P2P file sharing, just to get their job done.

So why the apparent lack of concern regarding the security of email attachments?  Here are just 3 of the common misconceptions:

•  Misconception #1: E-mail attachments are limited to 10MB; therefore, the risk of a data breach from file transfer is minimal.
•  Misconception #2: FTP is available; therefore, the risk of a data breach from file transfer is minimal.
•  Misconception #3: We haven’t experienced a security breach from unsecure file transfer, so the risk of a data breach from file transfer is minimal.

To learn how these common misconceptions compromise security read the full article published in Enterprise Systems this week.

Given the increased profile of data breaches and updated and extended compliance regulations such as HIPAA, now is not the time to ignore security vulnerabilities. Organizations, large and small, are waking up to the hazards of email attachments and are deploying managed file transfer solutions to protect confidential information and ensure compliance.

Give us a call if you would like to review the security of email attachments and investigate deployment of a managed file transfer solution to protect your organization.

Posted in Accellion, Data Breach, Data Security, Email Attachments, FTP, HIPAA, P2P | No Comments »

Truce Proposed between Lotus Notes and Exchange

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Reading some of the online comments regarding Lotus Notes is enough to make one blush.  At Accellion we find ourselves in the middle of this ongoing war between Lotus Notes and Exchange – and we are not ready to take sides.

Everyone knows that Exchange has the lion’s share of the email market.  And that’s good news for us since Exchange best practices limits email attachments to 10MB.  Anyone using Exchange has to be thinking about a solution for how to let their users send large files securely. Traditional IT workarounds for moving files such as CDs, FTP sites and IM are no longer looked kindly upon by any security officer. With Accellion, users can securely send files and file folders up to 20GB directly from Outlook or alternatively from our web interface.

However there are still a large number of people using Lotus Notes. To read the online comments you cannot but recognize that there is some frustration among Lotus Notes users.  But whether an organization decides to stay on Notes or migrate to Exchange is okay with us.  In fact we have had customers who have used us both for a Notes and Exchange environment, pre-and post migration, how even-handed is that?

So what can you expect from Accellion?  You can expect that we will make no judgements regarding your choice of email environment. We are officially not taking sides in the war between Lotus Notes and Exchange.  Accellion has an email plug-in for both Lotus Notes and Exchange and we’ll let you choose which one to use.  We propose a truce.

Posted in Email Attachments | No Comments »

Messy Email Migration at White House led to misplaced emails and files

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

Considered one of the messiest email migrations ever, the recent Computerworld story regarding missing White House emails provides a fascinating view into a Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange migration gone wrong.  It’s estimated that more than 2 million emails and associated email attachments went missing during the White House email migration effort. 

We have a number of large customers who first contacted us for a enterprise file transfer solution as part of their Notes to Exchange migration programs – too bad we didn’t get that call from the White House it might have helped.

Typically organizations initially approach us as part of their Notes to Exchange migration program because they realize that Exchange is going to limit their users to 10MB attachments and they need a solution for sending large files.  However another important benefit of deploying Accellion, particularly prior to migration, is that Accellion can considerably reduce the email store that has to be migrated.  Files can easily take up more than 75% of email storage and by offloading file transfer from email, the time and resources required for email migration can be greatly reduced.

If you are planning a Notes to Exchange migration anytime soon we’d love to talk with you about how we can help.

Posted in Email Attachments | No Comments »

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