Blog

Blog

7 Steps to Protect Yourself Against Corporate Spear Phishing

Anyone with an email account is used to spam. It happens one day: you get that first unsolicited email, and then a flood of ads, flash sale offers, and foreign bank transaction requests rushes into your inbox. In that moment, the battle for your virtual sanity begins. But while spam emails are mostly harmless—you tend to see them from a mile away and respond accordingly—spear phishing emails...
Blog

Top Takeaways from the 2017 Cybersecurity Trend Report

Note from the Editor: This article shares highlights from an older report. For the latest on data security and best practices for keeping file transfers safe, visit our Data Security page or check out the latest additions to our blog.Do you ever wish you knew how other businesses are dealing with today’s security threats? The 2017 Cybersecurity Trends...
Blog

The State of File Transfer Security

Note from the Editor: This article shares highlights from an older report. For the latest on data security and best practices for keeping file transfers safe, visit our Data Security page or check out the latest additions to our blog. The 2017 Cybersecurity Trends Report was recently released by Crowd Research Partners. The report covers many aspects of cybersecurity, such as general...
Blog

Still Using SHA-1 to Secure File Transfers? It’s Time to Say Goodbye

  Securing information is rising in importance for organizations worldwide. Using outdated technology is extremely risky, yet many organizations continue to do so because of legacy systems that don’t allow them to upgrade, lack of resources and time to upgrade, or they are simply unaware of the risks. The commonly used SHA-1 algorithm is a perfect...
Blog

HIPAA Compliance: Guide Details How MFT Helps

  Are your file transfers HIPAA compliant? Is your healthcare organization at risk for fines, or worse - a data breach of sensitive patient information? Many healthcare IT teams meet these broad questions with unease. After all, the ramifications of a healthcare data breach can impact organizations and individuals for years to come as well as have a...
Blog

Why Healthcare Organizations Need a Secure Data Transfer Solution

The last few years were scary in terms of healthcare cybersecurity. A hack of Banner Health breached up to 3.7 million records. Another data breach at 21st Century Oncology resulted in multiple lawsuits being filed against the organization. When a third party gained unauthorized access to computer systems at Valley Anesthesiology and Pain Consultants, almost 900 thousand patients, employees, and...
Blog

10 Shocking PCI DSS Compliance Statistics

If you work for any organization that processes credit or debit card information, you’ve heard of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), the regulatory standard aimed at preventing costly data breaches like the ones you may have heard about at Home Depot or TJX. But how much do you really know about PCI DSS compliance? Here are some interesting PCI DSS compliance statistics...
Blog

3 Data Breaches That May Have Been Avoided through PCI DSS Compliance

  "Dear Valued Customer, As you may have heard, on September 8, 2014, we confirmed that our payment data systems have been breached, which could potentially impact customers using payment cards at our U.S. and Canadian stores."   This is an excerpt from an actual email distributed by a large retailer, in the wake of a massive data breach...
Blog

3 Steps to Safeguarding Company Data and Limiting Risk

    Security professionals of today are inundated with headlines about the potential consequences of a data breach. Making headlines for a data breach can cost you – and more than just reparations or a fine. Data breaches are the worst of bad press and can impact your finances for years to come. As security professionals work to manage vast...
Blog

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,...
Blog

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...
Blog

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...
Blog

How to Solve 4 Common Email Security Challenges

  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 ...
Blog

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...
Blog

How to Build a Framework for HIPAA and HITECH Compliance

  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...
Blog

Addressing HIPAA and HITECH Compliance Challenges

  HIPAA and HITECH regulations were designed and enacted to increase the security surrounding personal health information from those who should not have access to it. Next to finance, the healthcare industry is one of the most regulated industries around. While debates on the cost, structure, and delivery of healthcare continues, most people agree that...
Blog

Are Insurance Companies Managing Their Risk of Data Breach?

    Insurance companies are the experts at analyzing and managing risk. They identify, quantify, and set pricing based on the calculated costs of risk. Naturally, the higher the perceived risk, the higher the cost to mitigate the potential losses.   Yet, here is the irony. While those in the insurance industry excel at evaluating risk management...
Blog

Are You Next in Line for a Data Breach?

  A Data Breach is Closer Than You Think As the percentage of data breaches increase, the risk of organizations losing your sensitive data also increases. No one wants to receive the news that some or all of their personally identifiable information (PII) was stolen. Sure, there are people who are victims of various phishing scams, but it's more...
Blog

The Culture of Data Security

  Here at Fortra, we hear a lot of buzz about protecting both customer and company data, but it's alarming how many IT departments and enterprise users are still not protecting their data correctly. According to the Ponemon Institute, fewer than 50 percent of organizations have comprehensive encryption protection in place. Prevention vs. Remediation ...