@36281 With file transfer limited via email, employees often have
to find unique ways to transfer large files such as audio, video
and photos, raising security issues among some IT Pros.
For Columbus, Ohio-based Grange Mutual Casualty Group,
transferring sensitive documents is part of a daily routine for its
agents out in the field. Brian Smith, a system administrator at
Grange is in the middle of the roll out phase of a secure FTP
server to handle file transfer for agents and third-party business
partners.
Smith said it is important for Grange to allow agents to easily
transfer medical data and other sensitive customer information to
increase efficiency and speed the company's processes. However,
locking down that sensitive data is the company's highest priority,
he said.
"We're trying to avoid transferring data though email, because
any number of things can happen with something as simple as
mistyping an email address," Smith said. "We're able to have an
entire ftp environment encapsulated in its own world, but it also
has a lot of functionality and it can be tied into Active
Directory."
Grange chose San Antonio, Texas-based GlobalSCAPE Inc., for
secure FTP. GlobalSCAPE, a vendor with roots in the consumer market
with its CuteFTP product, a zip utility used to download music and
other files, has been trying to compete for a larger share of the
enterprise business. It faces competition from Dublin, Ohio-based
Sterling Commerce and Scottsdale, Arizona-based Axway Inc., which
have the most market share among enterprises for secure FTP.
Meanwhile, Lexington, Mass.-based Ipswitch Inc., which has WSFTP, a
competing consumer FTP utility, is also moving into the enterprise
market with a secure FTP server and other services.
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Most vendors offer products that are beyond basic FTP, allowing
businesses to securely transfer billing data, funds transfer and
large data recovery files. To avoid sniffing and other security
issues, the vendors add support for SFTP to provide secure file
transfer or FTPS, to enable data encryption.
Frank Kenney, a research director at Stamford, Conn.-based
Gartner Inc. said the vendor that does well in the enterprise space
must integrate easily with company systems. Companies will seek out
vendors that embrace Web services and offer adapters and APIs to
simplify deployment and interoperability, Kenney said.
"Companies need to manage how files are coming into and out of
the environment and if they leave Port 21 open they'll have
issues," Kenney said. "If companies are not going to give their
employees an alternative then they'll have data sent using peer to
peer connections, instant messaging and other ways that can cause
serious security issues."
Robert Oslin, director of product management at GlobalSCAPE,
said the vendor has been responding to the needs of its business
customers by adding features via modules. While there are no plans
to add support for UNIX based systems, integration with other
company systems is being addressed, he said.
A popular module is a secure adhoc transfer, which allows
companies to set up temporary secure FTP accounts letting customers
and business partners transfer large files to the company
server.
Many companies use scripts to allow business partners and
customers to transfer large files.
"It's become a maintenance nightmare," he said. "Many businesses
had multiple scripts to manage and they wanted to consolidate, but
they need something that can bring the different pieces together
and do everything."
For Grange insurance, the roll out of a secure FTP server allows
the company to automate transfers between its mainframe and outside
vendors. The company plans to launch a temporary account creation
site to allow its employees to create temporary file transfer
accounts, Smith said.
"It's allowing us to increase security while offering more
functionality to our end users," he said.