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. Keeping the SFTP Server in the DMZ, however...

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 discipline – extracting methods, classes, bundling parameters and local variables into DataObjects. The code, depending on how messy...

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...

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. With tight deadlines and many moving parts, file delivery during game production must be efficient to ensure milestones are met without delay. Unfortunately...

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 From...

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, Open PGP, and GPG. Need to protect your files in...

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...

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 could ease your mind. Compliance Audit of File...

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...

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 execute video file transfers via email. So what’s...

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 processes as efficient as possible, that same document...

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 hackers could access sensitive data sent via FTP. With...

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...

Yes. Emailing someone is still one of the easiest ways to share data. However, there are some important caveats to sharing files this way that can put your organization’s file transfers at risk. Email File Transfer Challenges These are the four big challenges that organizations should be aware of when transmitting files via email. Email is sent "in the clear" meaning that it is not encrypted...

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...

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 agencies, county, and city government. Why FIPS...

There seems to always 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 can not simply associate the CRUD concepts to the HTTP methods. That is: C reate => HTTP PUT R etrieve => HTTP GET U pdate => HTTP POST D elete => HTTP...

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...

In the world of file transfer acceleration, there are multiple approaches using both WAN Optimization appliances or pure software solutions like FileCatalyst. Hardware sometimes give the impression of perceived value; there is a tangibility that you just don’t get with software. But can a hardware solution on its own really replace software for file transfer acceleration? The answer is no...

HIPAA, established in 1996, was signed into law to outline the appropriate ways to use and disclose patient health information. Read on to learn how to develop a HIPAA- and HITECH-compliant IT framework for your organization. Why Does HITECH Exist? HITECH laws were enacted to up the ante on healthcare organizations to meet HIPAA legal compliance for data security and privacy , which, of course...