The File Transfer Balancing Act – Achieving Compliance without Compromising Business Agility

Executive Summary

The global economy is pushing businesses in virtually every industry to work faster and smarter. The company that can’t respond to a customer need almost immediately is destined to lose out to a more nimble competitor that can meet that need. It comes down to agility – how fast a company can adapt to change and respond to demands.

While agility is crucial, companies can’t act with an “anything goes” abandon. Rather, they must meet the rapid-fire business demands within the context of an increasing array of regulations designed to protect private information and preserve the integrity of business processes. Regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), and the California Information Practice Act (SB 1386) have a daily impact on how companies conduct their business.

The push and pull of these two incongruous forces – agility and compliance – have a tremendous impact on how companies of all sizes share and exchange information (files) rapidly and securely, both among colleagues within a company and with partners, suppliers and customers outside the company.

Because of its ubiquity and ease of use, email became the de facto standard method for sending and receiving information. However, email has many shortcomings, especially for handling large attachments and very sensitive information. Technical and security concerns have led email administrators to block employees from sending and receiving many types of file attachments.

Still, employees must do their jobs, and they will find ways to send and receive the files they need, whether or not these methods are provided or approved by company management or the IT department.

This whitepaper discusses the issues important in designing a process for userto-user secure file transfer that simultaneously enhances business agility while ensuring that your methods for handling private information adhere to your security and privacy policies. The secure file transfer process discussed in this whitepaper is based on Accellion’s secure file transfer solution, which is currently deployed in over 20 countries, supporting the exchange of business information between internal and external users. This solution has been chosen by numerous companies in industries that are regulated by Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and other legislation in order to increase their security posture.

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