A significant benefit of using a Managed File Transfer product is to “reign in” the prevalent use of standard FTP and other unsecure protocols. Organizations cannot afford to risk the exposure of confidential and personal identifiable information, so encryption and audit trails have become a critical feature of effective Managed File Transfer solutions. This is essential for complying with PCI DSS, GLBA, HIPAA and the growing number of state privacy laws.

Listed below are some of the critical features we believe you need to look for when researching Managed File Transfer solutions:

• Allows for remote administration and monitoring (preferably through the browser)
• Runs on a variety of operating systems (e.g. Windows, Linux, IBM i, AIX, etc.)
• Has a short learning curve without the need for programming or special skills
• Supports secure FTP protocols of SFTP and FTPS
• Supports popular encryption standards such as Open PGP, SSH, SSL, TLS, S/MIME and AES
• Includes key management tools for SSH keys, Open PGP keys and SSL certificates
• Can compress data using ZIP, GZIP and TAR
• Supports HTTP and HTTPS protocols
• Can integrate with back-end database systems such as DB2, SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Informix, MySQL and Sybase
• Has a built-in scheduler for running transfers at future dates and times
• Provides commands and APIs for interfacing from customer applications
• Produces comprehensive audit trails of all file transfer activity
• Sends instant email alerts when problems occur
• Does not require your trading partners to purchase the same software
• Allow unlimited users and trading partners
• Uses non-proprietary (standards-based) protocols

The two popular Secure FTP protocols are named SFTP (meaning FTP over SSH) and FTPS (meaning FTP over SSL). Both SFTP and FTPS will create encrypted tunnels between your system and your trading partners. In essence, anything that flows over those tunnels will be protected, including any user ids, passwords, commands, as well as any data that is transmitted.

One of the main differences between SFTP and FTPS is the way authentication is performed. With SFTP, clients can be authenticated with just a password or a Private Key. With FTPS, clients and servers can be authenticated with certificates, which are either self-signed (by your organization) or signed by a Certificate Authority (e.g. Verisign).
Choosing the right type of Secure FTP protocol to use will depend on your trading partner’s capabilities and authentication requirements.

You should not leave it up to your users to decide which secure protocol or methodology works best. This can create a hodgepodge of approaches, none of which may meet your overall security and authentication policies.
This is an area where IT’s expertise is required to ensure that the right form of encryption is utilized, that authentication mechanisms are properly implemented and that regulatory requirements have been met.

One possibility emerged when designing an interface to the Network Monitoring System (NMS) for WBS’s new Class 1 Data Center. WBS needed something that could be automated, send alerts when required and communicate with a variety of systems. Many individual applications could perform different portions of the task. However, creating a custom application or staffing a separate development team was not an option for this project.

The NMS monitors environmental conditions in the Data Center. Drastic changes in any one condition could indicate a problem with the environmental systems and jeopardize the Data Center’s operation.

The requirements for an automated interface with the NMS were unique. First, the application would need to make limited connections to the system as multiple connections bogged down the system and reduced performance. Second, the environmental data resided in a proprietary database and required translation to an SQL database. Third, staff needed notification if a situation developed.

Although GoAnywhere Director was purchased for the secure transfer of files at the Washington Companies, it also provided the flexibility and notification tools this situation required. Within a short period of time, a separate project in GoAnywhere Director was configured to assist the NMS.

Multiple data records were required for environmental system reporting, but GoAnywhere Director only needed one connection to the NMS to gather the requested information. A single connection eliminated the load issues on the server.

The next task focused around simplifying the monitoring system communication with the reporting and logging database. The data translation capability within GoAnywhere Director could gather the pertinent information from the monitoring system and translate it into the reporting SQL database.

Finally, GoAnywhere Director’s ability to repeat this process in short intervals and send a customized email or SMS for any system alert, made the NMS project come together.

“Not only would we highly recommend GoAnywhere Director because of its flexibility and ease of use,” says Paul, “Linoma Software has provided great pre- and post sales support to get us up and running. Now that we are becoming more familiar with its capabilities, we are finding more places to use the product, with no additional cost.”

About Washington Companies

The Washington Companies are a group of individual companies headquartered throughout the United States and Western Canada. They conduct business internationally.  The Washington Companies’ core endeavors are: rail transportation, marine transportation, environmental remediation, restoration and construction, mining, heavy equipment sales and service, aviation technology, and real estate development. A discreet business services company, Washington Business Services (formerly Washington Corporation), provides administrative, IT and other shared professional services to the group.

To view the previously recorded Webinar, please select from the list below. If you would like a live personalized Web demo for yourself and your colleagues please fill out our request form or contact us.

Watch this webinar to learn how to secure, automate and manage file transfers within your organization. The following topics are covered by Linoma Software’s Chief Architect:

• Vulnerabilities in traditional FTP
• Secure FTP protocols of FTPS, SFTP and SCP
• How to authenticate Secure FTP connections
• OpenPGP encryption
• Key and certificate management
• Automatic error notification
• Logging and audit trails

Download the presentation slides.

GoAnywhere Director is an Enterprise solution for Managed File Transfers, which includes a full suite of processes to securely transfer and convert data with detailed auditing and message alerts. Using GoAnywhere Director, customers can connect to almost any system or trading partner using a wide variety of standard protocols including FTP, SFTP (SSH), SCP, FTPS (SSL/TLS), HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, POP3 and IMAP. It also supports standard Open PGP and ZIP with AES encryption for securing sensitive documents.

GoAnywhere Director Version 3.0 is now available from Linoma Software.  This latest version incorporates S/MIME digital signatures and encryption for email, support for Secure Copy Protocol (SCP), automatic processing of inbound email, enhanced logging, and version controls to streamline customer upgrades. Excel 2007 translation is also supported in version 3.0, in addition to its ability to read and write Excel 2003, CSV, XML and fixed-width text documents – which eliminates the need for other file translation software.

Version 3.0 also introduces more business process controls, including support for multi-part conditional statements, loops, delay operations, complex variables and advanced error-handling logic. This allows customers to set up sophisticated projects in GoAnywhere Director for multi-step processing of files, eliminating manual intervention and custom programming/scripts. For instance, a single project could be defined to loop/scan and retrieve files from a FTP server, decrypt those files, then parse and import their contents into a database. Errors can be easily monitored and routed to send alerts or call other processes.

“We are very excited about the 3.0 release,” says Bob Luebbe – Chief Software Architect at Linoma Software. “GoAnywhere Director has the power, flexibility and price-point to allow organizations of all sizes to completely streamline and secure their data transmissions. With its intuitive interface, customers can be productive in just a matter of minutes.”

GoAnywhere Director also interfaces with popular database systems including DB2, Oracle, SQL Server, Informix, PostgreSQL, Sybase and MySQL databases. This allows customers to easily extract data from their corporate databases to securely share it with their trading partners, as well as the ability to pump incoming data into their tables automatically.

No programming or special technical skills are required to use GoAnywhere Director. A graphical interface is provided for remote administration and monitoring from any browser or internet-enabled phone. Projects in GoAnywhere Director can be launched from a variety of 3rd party applications, schedulers and languages including CL, RPG, Java, C, .NET and PHP.

GoAnywhere Director can be installed to a variety of platforms, including IBM System i, IBM System p (AIX), IBM System z (Mainframe), Windows, Linux, SUSE Enterprise Linux, UNIX, HP-UX, Mac OS and Solaris platforms.

A free, fully functional trial of GoAnywhere Director is available for download.

Most managed file transfers use a popular protocol known as FTP. This is a very aged protocol, since it was designed and implemented in the infancy of computing networks; even before the Internet was even heard of. Few managers realize the security and management risks that have blossomed in their organization with the prevalent use of FTP. Fewer still have begun to take measures to bring the use of FTP into compliance with regulations such as PCI, SOX, HIPAA, State Privacy Laws or other mandates.

The best solution to securing your FTP implementations will be one that best centralizes and manages the control of those transfers. The practice of distributing file transfers off the main information system complicates management and opens security holes. How does centralizing FTP reduce the number of management issues?

Centralization:

• Maintains the rigor of the native operating system’s security mechanisms.
• Sustains the compliance requirements that have been already been implemented on the host system. This includes authority controls and reporting prerequisites.
• Provides a single-point of maintenance for all FTP user profiles and passwords.
• Contains standardized data encryption techniques and centralized key management.
• Instead of building subsystems for encryption on individual user platforms, IT can engineer a comprehensive solution that provides better control and security.
• Provides a centralized logging system of all file transfer activity for auditing purposes, along with descriptive error logs and message alerts when transfers fail.