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The effect of digital technology adoption in the oil and gas industry

A recent article by CIO UK points out how digital technology is rising exponentially in the oil and gas sector. From seismic imaging to e-learning, 80% of senior executives in the industry believe digital advancements have revolutionized how they work. The remaining 20% believe digital technology has had a tangible impact. No matter who you ask, it’s evident the adoption is positively affecting...
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Managed File Transfer 101: What's in it for Me?

Note from the Editor: This blog is a recap of an older webinar. To view the most recent webinars, you can do so here.Meet MFTThe term MFT (Managed File Transfer) is not new, but you may have begun to hear it more frequently. Changes in data security and transmission regulations have brought this established technology to the forefront, but what...
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A Corporate Cloud-Based Large File Attachment Solution

Looking for a corporate cloud-based large file attachment solution? With file sizes growing and email servers still having file size restrictions, companies are in desperate need of a solution. The options most companies have are: free or paid online service hosted by a third party, in-house file transfer mechanism, or self-hosted solution on the cloud. Going with the free or paid solution...
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SFTP Server in the DMZ or Private Network

Many organizations have an SFTP server installed where their trading partners can connect to securely upload and download sensitive files. SFTP Server in the DMZ Traditionally SFTP Servers have been installed in the DMZ (or public facing) segment of the network since organizations were fearful of opening inbound ports into the Private (internal) network. ...
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The Do’s and Don’ts of Cleaning Coding, Clean Code Series (Part 2)

Sometimes the hardest part of clean code is getting everyone else on board. In my last post on clean coding I talked about why clean code was important, how it saves money in the long run and increases productivity. Now I want to talk a little bit about some of the do’s and don’ts of clean coding. Proper clean code without side effects takes...
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Archives – A Perfect Fit for File Transfer Acceleration

A recent article at tvtechnology.com, discusses the ambiguity of the term “archive,” and uses the Library of Congress archives as an example of how digital media is changing the way films are preserved for future access and use.It was not within the scope of the article to discuss how files are shuttled between locations, but it seems clear that file transfer acceleration would be extremely useful...
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Driving Efficient Video Game Production: 5 Invaluable File Transfer Features

Video game development requires vast amounts of communication and collaboration at every step of the process. As development occurs, teams must share and exchange files within the office, across the country or even around the world. During development, Electronic Arts’ “Battlefield 4” game files were as large as 50GB, making file transfer a...
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NASA’s 622 Mbps Link to the Moon: How to Increase Transfer Speeds for Large Files

In a recent press release NASA announced that now they have a 622 Mbps Laser link to the moon. The press release also mentions that NASA was also able to transfer data at 20Mbps from earth to the space craft via this link. I’m wondering what effective rate was NASA getting when transferring data on this link? The data should be transferring at the theoretical limit of 622Mbps. Data Throughput...
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OpenPGP, PGP, and GPG: What is the Difference?

The privacy capabilities of encryption methods such as Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) allow organizations to achieve a hightened amount of data security and protection. There are various approaches and elements of comparison for these encryption methods, however, and each one comes with their own histories, features, and capabilities. These are: PGP,...
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Prioritizing Transfers in FileCatalyst Direct

FileCatalyst routinely helps users make full use of your bandwidth for file transfer. Scenarios in which bandwidth is optimized include cases where certain file transfers have higher priority than others, or when files being exchanged with a particular customer are more important than files exchanged with others. FileCatalyst Direct offers up a number of controls in its FileCatalyst HotFolder and...
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Could Your FTP Server Pass a Compliance Audit?

If an auditor showed up to your office tomorrow and wanted to examine your file transfer security policies and procedures for compliance, how confident are you that your organization would pass with flying colors?If there’s any doubt that your file exchange process can meet stringent compliance requirements, a secure managed file transfer solution...
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REST Development: Why HTTP Status Codes are Important

There are many ways in which REST developers can tackle error handling. Most REST services will send some kind of error condition structure which embeds an error message describing the error and some kind of code. This is a good start. However, for some REST services the HTTP status code is not well defined. In some cases, the REST services send an “OK” status code of 200 regardless of whether an...
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Sending large media files: How free services stack up

Ever run into issues sending large media files via email? The answer is probably yes, especially if you work in a field which requires the transfer of large format video or audio files on a daily basis. While email is great for many types of workplace communications, file size limitations (usually around 10 to 25MB) make it next to impossible to...
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What Is Your High Availability Plan for Your SFTP Server?

As organizations and their trading partners become more and more integrated, it's critical that file transfers perform without delays or disruptions. For instance, a document containing a batch of transactions could traditionally be delivered within a window of several hours without causing any issues. But today, in the effort to make business...
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Keeping File Transfers Secure from Hackers and Cyber Threats

Keep Your Files Secure In the battle to secure information, it helps to know a little bit about how it can be compromised. Using FTP is one way to expose critical vulnerabilities and can allow credentials to be hacked. However, these holes in security can also be easily closed if you know how. How Hackers Discover Vulnerabilities Here's how...
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Java and Windows 7 Services

I recently had an interesting support case that I thought deserved to be shared with everyone. Essentially the customer was unable to run FileCatalyst Server as a service on Windows 7 Premium with the Windows firewall up. After attempting several things we discovered that it was a permissions issue with Java and Windows 7 services. To fix this I edited the fcconf.conf file as an administrator and...
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Comparison of web-based file transfer methodologies

Transferring large files over the internet has never been a simple task. Anyone that has ever tried to transfer a file larger than 100MB can vouch for the slow transfer speeds, multiple disconnects, data corruption, complexity of the task and security issues surrounding FTP. The same problem exists for web developers trying to implement web-based file transfer functionality. Ideally, the end user...
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FIPS 140-2 Plays Vital Government Business Role

What is FIPS 140-2?FIPS 140-2 is a standard with which cryptographic-based (encryption) security systems must comply when protecting sensitive data in U.S. government agencies and departments. This FIPS 140-2 standard also extends to other entities that may exchange sensitive data with the federal government, including defense contractors, state...
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REST – HTTP POST vs. HTTP PUT

When to Use HTTP Post vs HTTP PUT vs HTTP PatchThere seems to often be some confusion as to when to use the HTTP POST versus the HTTP PUT method for REST services. Most developers will try to associate CRUD operations directly to HTTP methods. I will argue that this is not correct, and one cannot simply associate the CRUD concepts to the HTTP methods. That is:Create => HTTP PUTRetrieve =>...
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FileCatalyst IBC 2012 Wrap-up

FileCatalyst exhibited at the IBC (International Broadcasting Convention) show in Amsterdam, the expo portion having run from September 7–11. It is one of the biggest shows of its type in the world, and I always find it interesting to be a part of the team in attendance. With IBC 2012 behind us, here are some parting thoughts: It was hectic, and I mean that in the best way. This year’s attendance...