There are thousands of ways you could share large files, both with your colleagues or with friends and family: you can choose from half a dozen popular file storage and synchronization services, specialized one-time services, or even email. But there are some differences in best practices when it comes to personal versus work file sharing, and these only get more complicated when you factor in home-office versus the corporate campus.
Large File Sharing Considerations
Facilitating large file sharing for business can be daunting. First, there’s ease-of-use to contend with: you don’t want people opting for insecure, unapproved methods (or simply usurping the printer and handing out hundreds of pages to their teammates). Then, you have to think about security. Do you need it? And how strong of a vault should you keep your business’s data in?
Questions to consider:
- Where are your users and trading partners? Will they be at home, in the office, or a mix of both?
- What compliance requirements are there to consider?
- What types of data are users sharing? How sensitive is it?
- What file formats are being shared? PDFs, large files, videos, photos, datasets, or other? How does that change or limit the file sharing solutions used?
- What kinds of safeguards should be in place?
- Where is data being stored? On-site? In a cloud service? On users’ desktops?
Share Large Files at Home vs. in the Office
Offices typically have safeguards in place to keep the network and all devices secure, but most employees working from home don’t benefit from that infrastructure. While VPN is one secure solution, adding data security considerations throughout everyday tasks is a low-maintenance way to ensure that when you share large files, you’re doing so securely.
Related Reading: 5 Ways to Tighten Cybersecurity Working from Home
1. Email
A main office communication method is email, and that tends to be plan number one to transfer any data. But emails can run into a couple of roadblocks, including file size restrictions. Most email clients won’t transfer files over 25 MB, and even then, the message can take a long time to send. Plus, it’s not necessarily the most secure way to send sensitive information.
Rather than classic email, you can share large files securely with secure email tools. These will share a link to the file(s)—of any size or format—with your recipients rather than sending the attachment directly to their inbox, which gives you more control over how many times the recipient can download the data, and can even allow you to set a view-by deadline.
Other ways to make sure that a large file makes it to the recipient is to compress your files or send multiple emails, each with a portion of your file attached.
Related Reading: 9 Mistakes You Might Make When Sending Big Files
2. Compress Data
Zip your files! A ZIP file can be created to package, compress, and encrypt one or more files. This option is great for reducing space, organizing files, and minimizing transmission times. Further, compressing your data can allow you to use email, since data can often be reduced to one-tenth of its original size.
Compressing data is convenient and can often add security where needed. You can specify passwords for zipped files to boost data security, and most operating systems have native compression and extraction capabilities, but you can also opt for a free or paid compression service from a third party.
3. File Sharing and Collaboration
When you need to work together on files, a cloud-based storage service or file sync and share solution, along the lines of Google Drive, Box, or Dropbox, are straightforward options. However, despite many personal tools available that also offer business-specific features or enterprise tiers, only file sharing tools built with the enterprise in mind are created around data security from the ground up.
For large datasets or video files, a fast file transfer service can be an asset. These types of software often allow you to work on data as it arrives, even if the entire dataset isn’t in your hands yet. This tends to be especially helpful for video formats or remote offices.
For work-specific data sharing, especially for organizations that contend with strict compliance requirements, an enterprise file sync and sharing (EFSS) can provide the features of today’s popular cloud services with the security and tracking your data needs.
4. Hand the Data Over
The least technical option is to simply hand the data over, physically. You can print your files, save them to a USB, or even send external hard drives by courier. While these methods can be efficient for data delivery, especially to share large files that might otherwise need dedicated tools or lengthy transfer times, they’re less useful if you need to go back and forth on changes or collaborate to achieve a finished product quickly.
5. Share Large Files for Free
Free tools abound on the internet—it’s one of the Web’s many virtues. Some are available for download, some can be used right in your browser, and some you might use just once. But the major limitation of free tools is the lack of control you have over both your data and security.
Before using a free tool, it’s important to consider how it could impact your file sharing. First, check the creator: is it a shadowy entity that you can’t find any information about? Or a well-established brand offering a “lite” version of their software? That’s your first clue to how secure your data will be when using the tool.
Other features to review include:
- Do you get a delivery receipt? Are you informed of whether your file made it to the final destination?
- Is your data secure as it moves?
- How long does it take?
- How secure is the tool itself? Does it hold onto your data? Does it need access to your servers to send the data?
Related Reading: Which is Better: Free SFTP Software vs. Enterprise-Level SFTP Software?
6. SFTP
SFTP, or SSH File Transfer Protocol, is FTP’s more secure sibling, and still one of the most reliable ways to upload and download data between systems. It’s used to secure and send file transfers over secure shell (SSH), and implements AES, Triple DES, and similar algorithms to encrypt files as they transfer between systems.
SFTP also allows for authentication with either a user ID/password combo or an SSH key, or both. By using an SFTP client and server software, users can connect to servers and upload files to or download files from that server, and because both authentication and the files are encrypted, your connection is secure.
7. VPN
While VPN (Virtual Private Network) should be any remote worker’s first step when accessing or transferring work-related documents, VPN can also be a great tool to share large files securely. VPNs work by routing your internet connection through a server, which helps keep your data and connection private and secure. As part of this security, some VPNs also conceal the size of your files from your internet service provider, which can allow you to get that otherwise too-large file through.
There are a couple of drawbacks to this method, because it’s not a true large file sharing solution. First, large files can slow down your VPN connection, and second, it’s not guaranteed that your files will arrive with the same quality in which they were sent.
8. Automation and Translation Tools
Often, the latest destination on a file’s journey isn’t the final destination. If files arriving on your machines are destined for other locations or formats, a file transfer automation tool might be for you.
File transfer automation allows you to pre-select when files should move between systems or users. You can program when files should be sent out or set up automation to kick off next steps once files are delivered. With the right software, this can also include automatically translating between file formats to more easily import data into your database.
Automation is a great time-saver, especially for recurring file transfers or when sharing large file sets.
9. Do It All with MFT
Aside from physically handing your data to your recipient, a robust managed file transfer (MFT) software solution can do all of the above from one centralized, user-friendly interface.
GoAnywhere, one of the leading MFT solutions, is a secure file sharing solution that centralizes and streamlines file sharing between internal users, trading partners, and systems. MFT can automate your large file transfers to save you time on large or recurring data exchanges, translate file formats, and secure it all with popular transfer protocols, including SFTP, and encryption technologies like ZIP with AES.
Additional features include file sharing tools like Secure Mail, a secure messaging system that allows for file sharing of any size, Secure Folders, Secure Forms, and GoDrive, a collaboration platform built for the enterprise. Plus, as part of Fortra’ suite of data security solutions, you’ll have access to experts and solutions that can address all areas of your data security, including securing your network or monitoring the contents of shared files with Clearswift.
And when it comes to the free aspect, you can get a sampler with either a 30-day free trial, or select from free secure file sharing tools, including an FTP server, client, and Open PGP encryption software.
Looking for more? Here are 19 Ways to Transfer Big Files
The Best Way to Share Large Files Securely
GoAnywhere MFT is a secure file transfer solution that offers centralization, flexibility, and simplicity to users, whether or not they have programming experience. Discover how GoAnywhere can help your organization secure your data today.
