Why Businesses Need MFT

Reputations can be built or ruined in a matter of a few keystrokes. Just ask any business victimized by a data breach – either malicious or due to human error. The loss of reputation, trust, money, and time can be nearly incalculable. But, it’s not only a data breach that can severely impact a business. Server downtime, an overwhelmed or understaffed IT staff, compliance regulation violations, and more can all leave their mark on a business if not properly addressed.

Businesses invest heavily in personnel, training, office space, and advertising. Investing in a secure file transfer method should also be high on your must-have strategic planning list. Utilizing a secure file transfer solution, like managed file transfer (MFT), assures trading partners and customers that you’re proactively protecting data coming into and out of your organization 24/7.

MFT Provides File Security

A secure MFT solution, like GoAnywhere Managed File Transfer, ensures sensitive files get where to they need to be and are properly secured while in transit and at rest. Files are encrypted and decrypted using Open PGP or AES and industry-standard protocols protect transmissions via SFTP, SCP, FTPS, AS2, and HTTPS.

This automatic enterprise-level security and encryption of inbound and outbound data takes a lot of the headache, as well as the risk, out of the equation when it comes to exchanging files. It also removes much of the risk of “operator error” such as files being sent to the wrong person or encrypted with the wrong public key.

Does Your Current File Transfer Solution Have the Ability to:

Set password policies and expiration intervals
Define administrator user permissions for separation of duties
Block Brute-Force and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks with an automatic IP blacklist
Create and manage SSL certificates, SSH keys, and Open PGP keys through integrated screens
Authenticate SFTP connections with passwords and/or SSH keys
Authenticate FTPS and HTTPS connections with passwords and/or SSL certificates
Utilize only FIPS 140-2 certified encryption algorithms to meet U.S. Government (NIST) standards
Authorize selected services (e.g. FTP, SFTP, FTPS, HTTPS, and AS2) to certain users and groups
Generate full audit trails of all user events and file activity with reporting

These security features, as well as many more, are necessary to thoroughly protect your business at all levels.

Meet Compliance Regulations with MFT

If your business is in one of the highly regulated industries, such as healthcare, insurance, banking and finance, putting managed file transfer in place is one of the easiest moves you can make to meet PCI DSS, HIPAA, FISMA, SOX, and the GDPR compliance regulations.

GoAnywhere provides for both high security as well as the need to track file activity through detailed audit logs and reports. Using an MFT solution helps organizations of any size comply and avoid hefty penalties, fines, and loss of reputation, as well as loss of customer or partner confidence and potentially, loss of business.

MFT Automates for Efficiency

Reducing the time and labor involved in file transfers, especially if your organization sends hundred, thousands or even tens of thousands of files to trading partners each week, can make an immediate impact on your operations – saving time and money.

Managed file transfer software can help you significantly cut down on your risk of human error. You can stop worrying about key personnel taking a vacation when a critical file needs to be sent to the bank or wondering if a file actually got to the recipient as intended. GoAnywhere automates routine tasks in the way you need them to without requiring complex programming or scripting.

With Advanced Workflows, you can open up a project with any number of automated tasks chained together. For example, you could set a task to retrieve data from a database server, set a second task that converts the data into an Excel document, and a third task to encrypt the document. Finally, you can create a task to distribute the encrypted document to an SFTP server.

GoAnywhere’s dashboard-style, intuitive user interface makes it easy to free up your IT team for more critical projects and initiatives that impact your bottom line.

MFT Provides Flexibility

Businesses need to pivot all the time and a secure MFT solution can adapt to these ever-changing needs. GoAnywhere can be deployed on your premises, in the cloud on platforms like Microsoft Azure and AWS or via MFTaaS, or within hybrid environments for ultimate flexibility.

Plus, you can run the solution on popular platforms like Linux, Windows, AIX, IBM i, and more.

While comprehensive and easy to use, a strong MFT solution also needs to grow and change as your needs change. GoAnywhere offers a variety of modules to suit your business needs such as:

Advanced Workflows: Lets you define your file transfers and business processes
Secure File Servers: This solution provides for extensive management controls and audit log reporting.
Secure Folders: Give trading partners and customers quick access to authorized folders and files via a HTTPS web interface.
GoDrive: Collaborate between workers easily and securely.
Secure Mail: Send encrypted messages and files over a secure HTTPS connection.
And more

MFT Supports Remote Workforces

With more businesses restructuring their operations to support distanced or remote workforces, the security of file transfers is even more critical. In many cases, offsite employees turn to email or popular cloud-based file sharing solutions, like DropBox and SharePoint. While easy to use and convenient, these solutions do not have the security needed by most organizations. Nor can they easily support large file transfers. A managed file transfer solution tackles remote file transfers – large and small – with ease.

If a file transfer solution is not intuitive and easy to use, remote staff will be less likely to use it. GoAnywhere’s dashboard-style user interface gets most users up and running in less than an hour.

MFT Enhances Business Relationships

Organizations using MFT can assure their trading partners that they’ve put a safe and audited method in place for transferring information within and outside of their enterprise. Adding this additional layer of protection to data over more outdated methods like basic FTP or scripting helps limit the risk of data breaches as well as unauthorized access to important files.

When dealing with multiple organizations, you need to also adapt to different file exchange protocols. While some may require EDI, other organizations may only need or want to exchange via cloud or email. GoAnywhere has this flexibility built into it as a central point of administration.

MFT Delivers a High ROI

Leveraging the power of GoAnywhere delivers a high rate of return. The interdependence businesses have with trading partners coupled with more remote workforces demand more security and automation. A comprehensive MFT solution could potentially serve you better and quickly pay off.

Ask yourself these questions of your current file transfer solution:

Does it immediately notify me of a failed transfer?
Does a failed transfer automatically restart and resume where it failed?
Does it offer encryption features?
Can my solution create project workflows for automation?
Does my solution provide automation to free up IT for more important tasks?
Is my current solution scalable to meet future file transfer needs?
Does my solution meet compliance requirements with full auditing and reporting functions?
Does my solution offer clustering and load balancing to meet workload demands and redundancy?

If some of your answers make your heart race just a bit, it might be time to take a look at GoAnywhere MFT.

Related Resource: ROI of MFT Calculator

Meet Your Business Requirements with MFT

You may already know your current solution isn’t hitting the mark for your critical file transfers. If you’re ready to compare solutions, check out our MFT Buyer’s Guide with all the details you’ll need to for a comparative evaluation.

Want to see how managed file transfer could fit into your business needs for security and automation? We have 15-, 30- and 60-minute demos to lay it all out.

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Why Businesses Need MFT