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Blog

What is Secure File Transfer?

  Image Moving sensitive, often-proprietary files from one person—or organization—to another has become a complex aspect of the business world today. This complexity comes not only from the size and number of files that need to be shared, but also from the need to protect them at all points during their journey from sender to...
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Data Breach and Incident Response Plans | 2019 Templates & Best Practices

  Image Every year, organizations hope that statistics for data breaches will improve, that things will be better than the year before. And every year, they are dismayed to discover that even though they’re pulling in new cybersecurity tactics to thwart cyber attacks, so are hackers pulling in new methods to discover their...
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What is FTPS?

  Image Whether you’re looking to upgrade from your current FTP file transfers or have new requirements from a trading partner or customer, you might be wondering what FTPS is. You may ask: how does FTPS work, and does it differ from secure file transfer protocols like SFTP and AS2? Good questions. Let’s start by defining what FTPS...
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High-Performance Computing (HPC) in Oil & Gas

When it comes to the digital oilfield, High-Performance Computing (HPC) is an asset to be relied upon. From upstream discovery and the mapping of ocean floors to production, optimization and design; powerful HPC systems are analyzing, interpreting and manipulating unfathomable amounts of data. FileCatalyst has been helping a number of natural resources companies accelerate...
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Which is Better: SFTP vs. MFT?

  Image SFTP, or MFT: that is the question. Even though we’re not all famous poets like William Shakespeare, many IT professionals will ask this question at some point or another. Should they use an SFTP or managed file transfer (MFT) solution to transfer sensitive files securely—and why? It brings up an interesting choice. By...
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The Best Cybersecurity Strategies for Banks and Financial Organizations

  Image Banks and financial institutions, take note: though the year is almost over, no one is safe from a data breach. Industries across the board have seen 4.5 million records stolen so far in 2018—a staggering 133% increase over those compromised in 2017. As you create updated cybersecurity plans and data breach prevention...
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AI Across Industries – Where We Are, Where We’re Going

HAL 9000 might be closer, more useful and friendlier than we think. Artificial Intelligence (AI) might not be here in a fully realized form yet, but it’s already disrupting a lot of industries that we work in. As our customers discuss, question and evaluate the ways they can leverage AI to help streamline their workflows, I thought that I’d share some of the ways industry...
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IP-Based Workflows – The Paradigm is Shifting, are You on Board?

Since returning from IBC 2018, I have been thinking about IP-based workflows and the great discussions we had about this emerging trend at our booth. While IP-based workflows are seeing increased adoption and bringing new opportunities, there are also challenges ahead. IP-based workflows aren’t exactly new, but adoption has greatly increased in the media space as of late....
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Why You Should Cluster Your File Transfer Systems

  Image What’s the true cost of downtime for your organization? You may think of it in terms of lost revenue—according to studies released in the last couple years, the average cost of system-wide downtime is $100,000 an hour, and that’s on the low end (it can get up to $300,000 or more). But there are other factors involved in the...
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Chris Speaks at IABM: How Far Can We Go With The Cloud?

This year was another successful IBC for FileCatalyst, and we thank everyone who visited us. Our booth was bustling with activity; from people asking questions about how our fast file transfer solutions can fit in their workflow to people engaged with our in-depth demos that walked them through the user experience firsthand. Big thanks to every attendee that stopped by our...
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Which is Better: SFTP vs. FTPS?

  Image How do you transfer sensitive files? Business requirements and security standards have increased in recent years across industries and continents, but many organizations have struggled to keep up. Manual scripts, legacy tools, and single-use software are still utilized by IT and security teams despite their risks, causing...
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Making Sense of the Numbers: Breaking Down Our Speed Chart

Image FileCatalyst World Speed ChartWhen we attend trade shows, like the IBC Show on the horizon, our FileCatalyst World Speed Chart always garners attention and starts conversations at our booth. The question people always ask about it is, “How?” And I can’t blame them. To take a file that would usually take five hours to transfer,...
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There are Threats to FTP Servers, are You Mitigating Them?

I just finished reading an article by Marianne Kolbasuk McGee about the threats facing healthcare companies when it comes to FTP servers. I thought it would be a good idea to outline these threats, provide some thoughts, and outline some of the ways FileCatalyst addresses them. The State of FTP Servers The FBI has warned the healthcare sector that the File Transfer Protocol ...
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SFTP: The Smart Way to Transfer Your Cloud Data

  Image With the growing buzz about everything "cloud computing," most organizations are either starting to consider the cloud or have already moved some of their business processes to a cloud platform. No matter where you stand, technology is no stranger to the cloud. Consumers use cloud applications, services, and storage daily,...
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Using FileCatalyst to Remedy Healthcare IT Issues

When it comes to healthcare, file transfers aren’t something to be left to Dropbox or FTP email attachments. The requirements are many; files must remain confidential, visible, and secure – every time. Achieving this is becoming ever more challenging as the sheer size and volume of file transfers grow with every year. I came across an interesting article titled “7 File Transfer...
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Globus Toolkit to End Support after 20 Years

  Image The Globus Toolkit has been an open source project since its inception, allowing the community to provide enhancements that have made it what it is today. But after a nearly 20-year run as what many see as the benchmark of grid computing, the Globus team at the University of Chicago will no longer support the Globus Toolkit. ...
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From the Magnetic Drum to the Cloud - A Brief History of Data Storage

Image In my earlier blog post, “A Day In Data: How Much Data We Generate and Consume in a Day” I examined the common data-related tasks and the amounts of data these tasks generate and consume in a day. When I finished my research, I was blown away by some of the figures I found. Did you know that 2.9 million emails are sent every...
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How to Achieve Fast Uploads to Cloud Storage

We see a lot of confusion among IT professionals about the pros/cons of cloud-based object storage like Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure Blob. There tends to be a general lack of awareness regarding the smaller players, like Backblaze B2 and Wasabi for instance, and their benefits. The most confusion, however, revolves around migrating data to these various cloud storage solutions...
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A Day In Data: How Much Data We Generate and Consume in a Day

Image I‘ve been thinking about the amount of data created and consumed in a single day, and it got me curious to look into the figures. I found the results very interesting – so I thought I would make an infographic to visualize my findings. I decided to focus on the more personal, everyday tasks most people perform in a day, such as...
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The GDPR is Coming… What’s it Mean to You?

There is a new wave of regulation coming in the form of the European Union Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR). These provisions and regulations have been in development over the last four years, and starting May 25th, 2018; it will begin to be enforced. After that date, substantial fines will be imposed on those who don’t comply with new regulations. Before we dive into what...