How Organizations Are Using MFT Today

Once housed in the echelons of “industry best practice,” managed file transfer (MFT) is now becoming common practice for organizations across any industry. Here are how some of those businesses are using MFT today to secure and automate their file transfers.

Automation

One of the most prominent uses for MFT is replacing manual processes and custom scripts with set-it-and-forget-it ways to manage files at scale.

• Adams County Colorado: One of the largest counties in Colorado uses GoAnywhere MFT to double-check payroll and process online payments without any user intervention (or, without any risk of user error). Says Evelyn Aldis, an ERP Systems Analyst for Adams County, “For projects like this payroll project, we prefer using the run-time mode so we can verify that the files are correct before they go out. As soon as my staff approves the file, they just click a button, and it goes."
• Pennsylvania Housing Financing: When they first started, this financing agency had a mishmash of custom scripts; some DOS-based, some Windows-based, and some done with custom code in the iSeries. GoAnywhere MFT helped them leave disparate, disorderly routines, and streamline their file transfers into one central, automated process. “Somebody will come up with a need, and we'll say before we write any code...let's check and see what GoAnywhere does,” notes Kevin Wike, Manager of Application Development. “And most of the time, it has the ability to do it.”
• Braum’s Ice Cream and Dairy: This ice cream industry IT team had a clunky process for interfacing with banks across each of their nearly 300 retail stores. Now, GoAnywhere MFT does the process for them – from downloading files to contacting the bank to uploading finished documents and notifying accounting – automatically.

Related Reading: How to Improve Efficiency with MFT

Visibility

• Seeing Beyond Legacy File Transfers: A global insurance company wasted precious time trying to gain visibility as its legacy file transfer solution contained no alerting, notification, or reporting functionality. After implementing GoAnywhere MFT, they were able to see into all areas of their file transfer process with ease, be it in the cloud, on-premises, or via their web applications.
• Visibility for Timesaving: At Kansas City Public Schools, Don McIntyre, Enterprise Integrations & Applications Developer, calls Fortra's JAMS and GoAnywhere "My two favorite utilities." Here’s why. In addition to supporting and automating 70 to 80 complex functions, including Active Directory provisioning, updating inventory systems, and retrieving third-party data, McIntyre uses GoAnywhere visibility to quickly diagnose problems and keep an eye on things. He explains that when it comes to job status, “I don’t have to hunt. JAMS will give you a percentage complete. It knows how long it should take, and it’ll give you a percentage according to that. I can tell when something’s awry, if I see that, it’s 1,000%.”

Related Reading: Why it’s Smart to Bundle Cybersecurity Solutions

Compliance

• HIPAA: The University of Texas Medical Center was relying on manual processes for file transfer, which required the use of VPNs, SSL, custom scripting, and a single, dedicated employee whose full-time job was to get the scripts over the line. They needed to reduce reliance on this single staff member, be able to monitor the transfer process 24/7, and send files in a way that was both secure and HIPAA-compliant. They chose GoAnywhere MFT to tick all those boxes and automate the entire process.
• PCI DSS: Think Mutual Bank faced the daily problem of transferring data between their core banking system, IBM i, and their business system, MS SQL. Additionally, they needed a solution that could do it while maintaining PCI DSS requirements, said their Lead Systems Administrator, Van Sy, “GoAnywhere does that, all in one package."

Security & Encryption

• Protecting Passwords, Keys, and Certificates: Electronics retailer P.C. Richard & Son found themselves dealing with ad-hoc RPG programs that were creating batch FTP scripts over their many disparate applications. Looking for a solution so they could bring all their certificates and PGP keys under one roof – and automate their five to 600 projects a day – they chose GoAnywhere MFT. “The first thing we did was to take all of the user IDs and passwords for all these different servers that we were talking to and put them in one place that we could secure and keep everybody out of, so that people could build FTP transfers, but they didn't need to know passwords, they never needed to see user IDs,” explains programmer/analyst Roc Chandler.
• Open PGP Encryption: Founded in the 1830s, retailer Woolrich chose GoAnywhere as their solution to modernize processes and “perform PGP encryption on the System i" to allow them to communicate with their vendors. But after leveraging the file exchange tool for Open PGP encryption, they were able to “[find] other places where we can use it,” such as transferring encrypted information to their health insurance provider and sending payroll information to the bank – all using encryption and GoAnywhere” to do it.
• SFTP and Secure Forms: Melia Hotels International was using an in-house file transfer solution developed over two decades ago, which did not allow them to connect with outside companies like American Express, or integrate with cloud platforms and repositories like Amazon3, Google Drive, and DropBox. After choosing GoAnywhere MFT, they were able to automate 98% of their 10,000 file exchanges daily using GoAnywhere File Monitors and seamlessly integrate third-party exchanges into the same software, all while beefing up security with built-in SFTP and Secure Forms capabilities.

Efficiency

• Streamlining batch file transfers: A leading children’s hospital found themselves overwhelmed by their over 150,000 weekly transfers, more than 200 projects in the works, and “vendor, internal, and external requirements for file security,” which often required PGP certificates and/or SSH keys. Leveraging GoAnywhere MFT’s template for projects, they were able to report, “What took our old solution a week to complete, GoAnywhere can handle in one day,” speaking of a 5,000-file migration.
• Standardizing and Securing File Transfers: Nemours Children's Health System ran into complications as their continued expansion increased their need to provide accurate data quicky to a widening range of disparate vendors and clients. "There was clearly a need for standardization," said Michael Kuck, Application Engineer at Nemours. After using GoAnywhere MFT, the health group was able to reduce the load on crucial servers, consolidate multiple platforms into a single source, quickly automate new projects, and make high-volume transfers while staying HIPAA compliant and managing PGP encryption and decryption. Said Kuck, "GoAnywhere has simply redefined our process of automating file transfers.”
• From a month to two hours: A “small shop” long-term insurance carrier was looking for a way to streamline its month-long job of sending 200 to 300 hundred sales reports out to agents manually. “We started looking around for an easy way to import and export DB2 files to Excel or even comma delimited - anything other than manually using the IBM products,” noted Earnest Iannucci, Vice President of IT. Now, a process that would take them a month and “maybe...four or five days after that” is done “within, literally, two hours the next morning and everything just goes out.”

There is so much more to MFT these days than a simple file transfer solution. GoAnywhere MFT is the leading MFT solution for the reasons noted above, and as David York, MIS Manager, Woolrich, remarked, “Once we had GoAnywhere MFT in place, it seemed like a different world opened up for us.”