Axway Ad Hoc MFT – Where Email and MFT Converge

Twitter may be the cool new kid on the Internet, but email is still the most popular. It’s everywhere, used by nearly everyone. According to IDC/Ferris Research, email volume is growing at a rate of 66% annually. Research also shows that file attachment sizes are increasing by 192% a year, a result of more and more people relying on email to exchange large and/or sensitive files with partners, salesmen, customers and team members.

That’s a problem.

As file attachments get bigger and bigger, email administrators respond by imposing attachment size limitations on senders, recipients or both. The result of this is that
well-intentioned users turn to more expensive and more dangerous means of file transfer, such as sending them via unsecured FTP or downloading files to CDs and USB flash drives. These methods are risky at best and may lead to the kind of data breach that compromises business relationships, intellectual property and corporate brands.

Risk of data loss and security breaches:

How do you know if a file transfer exposes sensitive information assets such as customer data, product plans or business forecasts? How do you protect that kind of data as they travel over the Internet, or prevent them from leaving your email network in the first place?

Once a file is sent, do you have delivery confirmation? How do you know if the recipient is authenticated and authorised to view the attachment? What precautions are in place to enable or prohibit sharing large file attachments with your partners?

Without a governed policy-management system for ad hoc large file transfer, you’re risking legal liability, contravention of regulations and loss of priceless intellectual property — data might as well be written on a postcard or published on the Internet for all to see. A clear audit trail, delivery confirmation and the ability to securely share data with trusted partners is imperative.

Operational inefficiencies and higher costs:

Email wasn’t meant for sending 10 MB files, let alone very large (50 GB) files. Huge multimedia, CAD and PDF attachments simply won’t go through email servers, and even sending multiple files of up to 50MB can overload or even cripple email servers and networks, whilst adding significant IT costs (and headaches) regarding infrastructure, management and archiving. Plus, standard email doesn’t offer robust Managed File Transfer capabilities such as guaranteed delivery, checkpoint/restart, file delivery confirmation, tracking or auditability, making it almost impossible to prove a file was sent or check that it was received.

What’s more, when email systems and IT managers impose limits on attachment size, messages bounce and people find other ways of exchanging files, feeding the vicious cycle of higher costs and increased risk.

Wake Up To Ad Hoc Network File Transfer:

Axway understands that people will continue to work the way they do, and that means using an email interface for ad hoc file transfer. Combining support for very large file attachments with content-based policy management, encryption, authentication and tracking capabilities, Axway File Transfer Direct eliminates the infrastructure, cost and security concerns that surround sending large and confidential files via email — without requiring end users to significantly change the way they work or download and master new software.