Posts Tagged ‘File Sharing’

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Security Prescription: Take Note of New HIPAA Rules

Tuesday, March 5th, 2013

 

Changes are afoot in the health care industry. New HIPAA regulations were unveiled last month to ramp up patients’ privacy and access rights. One of the important new patient access rights is that individuals can now request a copy of their electronic medical records to be sent, well, electronically. I don’t know about you, but long ago my doctors traded in clipboards and pens for computers, iPads and mobile devices, capturing my personal health information via a simple, touchscreen interface. So, it only makes sense that as individuals we should be able to access our electronically stored personal medical data and play a more active role in how our medical-related information is communicated and managed.

The new HIPAA regulations also introduce increased penalties for HIPAA noncompliance. With data breaches continuing to make headlines, the penalty for negligence in protecting health information (PHI) now carries a maximum penalty of $1.5 million per violation.

From an individual’s perspective the new HIPAA regulations are excellent news.  Now it is mandated that we can easily get a copy of our own medical records, while at the same time organizations are being held increasingly accountable for protecting this sensitive information.

The new HIPAA rules also mean that health care organizations must have a secure file sharing and transfer method in place for sharing medical records with patients or risk paying the price in terms of hefty HIPAA fines .

Many of the leading healthcare organizations already use Accellion secure file sharing to ensure HIPAA compliance.  Read more about how one of the top U.S. hospitals turned to Accellion to boost data security, share vast amounts of information, and support ongoing HIPAA compliance.

If your organization hasn’t had a secure file sharing health checkup in the past year, please contact us for a confidential review of your current systems.  We are here to help.

 

 

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Trick or Breach: Frightening Spike in Data Security Incidents

Wednesday, October 31st, 2012

Who’s lurking around your valuable data? According to new figures from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the U.K., your organization’s risk for a breach has increased by a startling percent.

Here’s the spooktacular data they found:

  • In the past five years, data security breaches have increased more than 1000 percent in the U.K.
  • The industry hit hardest is local government, with breaches increasing by 1609 percent; followed by public sector (1308%); and private sector (1159%)
  • The ICO has issued nearly £2 million of fines from July 2011 to 2012 – more than three times the amount of penalties from the previous year

These numbers were reinforced in the United States in Verizon’s 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report that reported 855 incidents and 174 million compromised records.

Verizon’s annual report includes more incidents, derived from more contributors, and represents a broader and more diverse scope. The number of compromised records across these incidents skyrocketed back up to 174 million after reaching an all-time low in last year’s report .In fact, the 2012 report boasts the second-highest data loss total since Verizon started keeping track in 2004.

Nick Banks, head of EMEA and APAC operations for Imation Mobile Security told Help Net Security, “Organizations must take responsibility for preventing breaches, and with so much available technology there really is no excuse for failing to adequately protect data.”

Nick’s right. Safeguarding corporate data has to be at the top of organizations’ priority lists. With tools like Accellion, comprehensive enterprise security is attainable, affordable, and easier than ever – providing a safe way for users to share information, while ensuring files don’t end up in the wrong hands.

It’s time to turn this trend in the opposite direction. Who’s in?

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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Three Lessons Learned from Colossal Government Data Breach

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012

Does the name Bradley Manning mean anything to you? If you’re a government organization, the name is synonymous with “colossal data breach” – as Manning spearheaded the biggest leak of classified information in our nation’s history.

To briefly recap, Manning, a U.S. Army soldier, single handedly accessed more than 900,000 intelligence documents, including daily war logs from military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. And he did it by downloading files onto CDs labeled “Lady Gaga”, which he shared with the whistleblower site, WikiLeaks.

According to Manning’s published chat logs, the event was “childishly easy”; “no one expected a thing”; and the “weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counter-intelligence, and inattentive signal analysis created a perfect storm.”

With Manning’s trial just a few months away, we take a look back to share three important lessons learned from this monumental event:

Lesson #1: DLP is Important: While Manning had access to a classified network used by the Department of Defense and the State Department, having a data loss prevention (DLP) solution in place that scanned information, across all network points before it left the network, would have provided an additional line of defense to prevent the data from being downloaded – to a CD, flash drive, or any other storage mechanism.

Lesson #2: It’s Time to Cast a Wider Security Net: Because most government agencies are large, data security can be focused on the “core” or interior of the network versus the perimeter of the organization. But, big data security challenges arise as employees have new ways to view and share confidential data – via BYOD movements, wireless access points, and consumer-based, third-party file sharing sites. Now that networks have become more decentralized, agencies need to deploy a wider “net” to secure and manage data.

Lesson #3: Security and Large File Size Aren’t Mutually Exclusive: Large data transfers are not only common within the government domain, they are often required. But how are agencies securing and managing that data?  And, can large files be shared simply and on demand? To address these needs, organizations are turning to mobile file sharing solutions that give employees the ability to send and synchronize large, classified and confidential documents with ease, while giving IT the security, authentication, encryption and file tracking and reporting capabilities necessary to support data security best practices.

These are three key lessons to remember as we move into 2013 and strive to keep newsworthy security breaches a part of our past, fully protecting government data exchanges of the future.

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An iPhone for Everyone: Is that a Sound Mobile Strategy?

Thursday, September 13th, 2012

As expected, Apple announced the much-anticipated iPhone 5 at this week’s media event to great fanfare and we expect once available it will immediately become part of the BYOD mix.

Just a few weeks ago, Marissa Mayer, in one of her first acts as CEO of Yahoo, decided everyone at Yahoo would be issued an iPhone or Android device.  Her preference is the iPhone, in spite of being a former Google employee and she expects employees to become familiar with the platform so that they can create “products that shine” on it.

It’s an interesting response by Yahoo, who like so many organizations, has ended up with a diverse population of Android, BlackBerry and Apple iOS devices in the enterprise.

While Accellion mobile file sharing supports virtually any mobile device, we applaud Mayer’s decision to take a stance on Yahoo’s mobile state of affairs, driving toward consistent mobile access and security across the organization.  She’s tackling the first important step by defining which devices can be used.  The next step will be defining how users can access and share content securely on these devices, and this is where Accellion becomes important. IT needs management and control over mobile file sharing to protect valuable and confidential enterprise information.  Stay tuned as the next generation of iPhone users unfold at Yahoo! (and countless other enterprises) around the globe.

 

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Customer Spotlight: Texas Juvenile Justice Department takes action to protect youth data.

Tuesday, August 14th, 2012

For the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD), the ability to communicate quickly and securely makes all the difference for the youth they serve. Operating dozens of treatment facilities, correctional institutions and halfway houses throughout the state, TJJD needed a way for its 2,500 employees to share confidential data efficiently and reliably between parents, medical staff and legal counsel.

Before switching to Accellion, staff members often turned to mailing hard copies of documents, burning CDs, or encrypting individual emails in order to work around a cumbersome file transfer and encryption mechanism provided by a dedicated TLS link. TJJD clearly needed a better option, fast.

After undergoing rigorous testing, Accellion was successfully deployed at TJJD, and the number of licenses has since grown from 100 to 600. Josh Kuntz, ISO with TJJD, cites the user-friendly nature of the Accellion solution as the driving force behind this rapid growth.

“Adoption of Accellion has taken off because it allows users to work as they always have,” said Kuntz. “It looks email and acts like email, making it a no-brainer to use.”

TJJD staff members from medical services employees to legal counsel and case workers are now using the Accellion solution to securely share confidential youth data, meeting the requirements of new legislation such as Texas Family Code, Chapter 58, which requires TJJD maintain the integrity of all juvenile justice information. The solution has also been invaluable for community interactions, allowing TJJD employees to better communicate with family members.

“95 percent of our data must be kept confidential for one reason or another, driving us to find a secure mode to exchange information with parents, between staff members, and with the community at large,” said Kuntz. “Accellion was the only solution that met our strict security guidelines, yet made it easy for non-technical individuals to use.”

Click here to read the full case study.

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Cloud Security and Storage Snafus Cause Alarm

Wednesday, August 1st, 2012

Service outages, application access errors, and security hiccups – that’s exactly what we’ve seen happen in recent months with cloud storage providers Dropbox, YouSendIt, and Box. All were reported to have experienced unexpected issues:

Perhaps Eric Chiu, founder of HyTrust, Inc., a virtualized infrastructure security and management vendor said it best to TechTarget, calling Dropbox “the poster child” for an application that’s infiltrated the enterprise with huge security implications.

Osterman Research, in a recent research report “The Need for Enterprise-Grade File Sharing and Synchronization” found that 49% of organizations believe the problems created by these tools are about as serious as they were 12 months ago, but 42% reported they are more serious.

Before putting your data on the line and exposing it to a potential security glitch or exposing your users to unnecessary usage issues, you must weigh the risks and benefits of a particular provider. And, don’t overlook the hefty regulatory implications if a security snafu hinders your compliance with HIPAA, SOX, and other data privacy mandates.

Many organizations are turning to enterprise-class solutions such as Accellion. While we offer the flexibility of public, private, and hybrid cloud deployments, 80 percent of our enterprise customers go the private cloud route – benefitting from around-the-clock availability, security, and confidentiality of company information.

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Posted in Cloud, Data Breach, Data Security | 3 Comments »

“The Met” Safeguards The Olympic Torch

Thursday, July 26th, 2012

 

We’re just hours from the Opening Ceremony for the 2012 Olympic Games, marked by the arrival of the Olympic torch in London. The torch is ready for a place to call home, as it’s been on an intense journey through more than 1,000 cities and towns in the U.K over the past 70 days.

There’s a lot riding on this time-honored tradition (dating back to 1936) that includes more than 8,000 torchbearers, who were selected through a nomination process, and millions of spectators along the route. With security a top priority for all involved, the host city police force – The Metropolitan Police (The Met) – takes their job very seriously, preparing for the past 18 months as intensely as the athletes scheduled to compete.

An Accellion customer, The Met spearheads safety procedures for both the Olympic Flame and the torchbearers, synchronizing activities with National Olympic Coordination Centre and maintaining teams on the ground that shadow the torch as it passes through 95 percent of the country.

While the torch ends its travels tonight, with the final torchbearer lighting the Olympic cauldron, The Met’s job is far from over. The police force will also guard the security of the Paralympic Torch Relay in August, with four flames coming together from London, Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff.

We’re proud to call The Met an Accellion customer and of all they did to bring the torch safely to Olympic Stadium. Let the games begin…

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Bringing the Tour De France to Your Living Room

Wednesday, July 11th, 2012

With the 99th Tour de France underway, Australians are paying special attention to the daily rankings, with all eyes on native, Cadel Evans. He captured the title last year (the first Australian to earn the honor), leaving many to wonder – can he pull out the victory two years in a row?

For Aussies looking to track who’s gaining ground and who’s losing steam, most turn to one broadcasting source: SBS Television. SBS is on location in France, filming highlights throughout all 3,497 kilometers in order to provide viewers with compelling daily footage. And, Accellion helps make it happen.

How? SBS broadcast teams on-site in France capture video of Tour activities; files are sent to the editing and productions staff in Sydney via Accellion Secure File Transfer; and SBS creates timely programming content. It’s sharing that’s simple, safe, and seamless which is why SBS has relied on us for years to support programming processes for both the Tour de France and the FIFA World Cup. We’re honored to play such an important role in two renowned worldwide events and when the new Tour champion is announced on July 22, we’ll definitely be watching. For more information, download the case study

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How Protected is Your Brand from a Virus?

Thursday, June 14th, 2012

Your brand reaches far beyond your logo, tagline and website – encompassing all interactions with current and potential customers, and often boiling down to how professional (and pleasant) it is to do business with you. How you communicate with investors, partners, and prospects says a lot about your company and helps you create a rapport and level of trust with those critical to your company’s success. The last thing you want is an employee sharing a file from their mobile device and inadvertently also sharing a virus with a valued customer, contaminating external recipients along with all you’ve done to build your company’s brand.

Continuing our discussion about the risks of the growing Bring Your Own Device trend, employees are sharing files from any number of mobile devices and antivirus protection needs to follow suit. According to Juniper Networks’ 2011 Mobile Threats Report, there was a 155 percent increase in malware on mobile platforms in 2011 as compared to the previous year.

But, just because mobile malware is on the rise, doesn’t mean your risks have to increase at the same pace. If your employees are sharing files, you need the ability to run antivirus – on any device, at any time – before the document goes out. It seems like a no-brainer, but vendors such as Box, Dropbox, and SugarSync would disagree, with Gartner’s new “Mobile File Synchronization Evaluation Criteria” report (May 2012) showing all three in the “No” category when it comes to offering antivirus on mobile files.

More mobile devices plus more malware has to equal a file sharing device that comes with antivirus protection. Does Accellion offer antivirus? The answer is a resounding “yes” as no enterprise file sharing solution is secure without it.

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Ace the IT Exam

Thursday, May 17th, 2012

Do iPhones, iPads, and Androids seem to be multiplying at your school location? While the proliferation of mobile devices brings huge advantages for teachers, administrators, and students in terms of anytime, anywhere access, they introduce major headaches for IT for the same reason: anytime, anywhere access. With students and staff now relying on personal devices for work purposes, school IT administrators are faced with a major test – how to support necessary information exchanges and real-time collaboration, while keeping users safe and data secure.

Institutions such as Harvard Business School, Anchorage Public Schools, and Pepperdine University have passed the “Consumerization of IT” exam with flying colors – turning to Accellion’s secure workspaces and mobile file sharing capabilities to support around-the-clock information access directly from users’ desktops and mobile devices.

Users at elementary schools all the way through to the country’s top universities, are doing some pretty cool things with Accellion via a range of devices: including sharing financial aid information, collaborating on research around the globe, sharing design files for campus magazines, patient data from the on-campus health center, lunchroom planning documents, and faculty research, to name just a few.

Consider a school board that sets the educational curriculum for the upcoming school year, and shares this information via Accellion with affiliated school principals. The principals then review and provide comments, with Accellion automatically notifying the board when changes have been made. The updated curriculum is opened up to department heads and teachers, where they, in turn, create and submit corresponding lesson plans. That’s the type of collaboration that’s happening via Accellion today.

When it comes to “smart” file sharing and collaboration, students, faculty and administrators at schools, colleges and universities need to be able to easily and securely connect via devices of their choosing. And, that’s exactly why they choose Accellion.

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