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< News Black Friday Sales Splash Creates Data Surge 12 Nov 2024 Data transfer traffic is already surging across Australia as many online retailers jump the gun and promote Black Friday Sales early this year. Australians are set to spend a record $6.7B during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, according to Roy Morgan Research. An increase of 5.5% on last year, this level of spending will mean Black Friday has well and truly eclipsed Boxing Day as Australia’s top shopping event of the year. 50% of Australians plan to participate in the annual sales splurge, according to Future Publishing Australia’s inaugural Consumer Confidence Report. Of these, 45% plan to find their Black Friday deals online. Data Transfer Tsunami The surge in sales will in turn create a tsunami of data transfers, as businesses transact, process orders, and share a variety of e-commerce files with their supply chain partners. For some businesses – those still using outdated file sharing technologies like email and FTP – this will be a hugely stressful period. They’ll need to be hyper vigilant for lost orders, failed file transfers, and man-in-the-middle hack attacks. Other businesses - those taking advantage of modern, automated file transfer technologies such as Managed File Transfer (MFT) - will surf the data tsunami with ease. MFT will comprehensively address the risks and challenges of moving information, both within their organisation, and with external suppliers, partners and customers. Through centralised control, encryption, automation and auditing, MFT will provide the security, efficiency, reliability and scalability that FTP and email never could. “Cyber Trust” Consumer trust in retailers’ e-commerce transactions will be an even more important factor in eventual sales numbers this year. High profile hacks of consumer data over the past 12 months are leading consumers to question the security of a company’s systems before handing over credit card and other information. Companies will need to be able to provide reassurance – and proof – that transactions and personal data will be secure. Companies with MFT will be better able to provide that reassurance, keeping a clean history as responsible guardians of customer data. Shopper Shift Chris Ferguson, commercial director APAC at Future Publishing Australia, described the popularity of Black Friday in the local market as a “pivotal” change in the retail landscape. “Consumers are increasingly drawn to the prospect of early savings and the convenience of online shopping, so retailers anticipate and accept this new reality to capture their share of the market.” He said that, despite the current economic climate, his research showed Australians remained committed to their festive spending plans. 56% of Australians still plan to spend the same amount as last year on Christmas gifts, while 21% intend to spend even more. Australian Retailers’ Association CEO Paul Zahra said retailers were “pulling out all the stops to ensure they have the best product lines and gift solutions, customer service offerings and enhanced online platforms to make shopping during this peak season more seamless than ever.” He said most discretionary retailers expect to make up to 66% of their annual profit during peak season. Surf the Tsunami Generic Systems Australia are Australia’s experts in deploying Managed File Transfer and other layered defences, such as Advanced Threat Protection . We routinely help local organisations better manage their file transfers, seamlessly scaling up to meet the heightened demands of sales events like Black Friday. If you’d like to discuss how we can help you, please feel welcome to contact me . I’m always happy to have an obligation-free chat and explain how simply we can level up your file transfer approaches. I can even arrange a simple, zero-cost Proof of Concept. Previous Next

< Case Studies Bargain Retailer finds GoAnywhere Really “Delivers the Goods” Decades of experience helping Asia-Pacific customers have established Generic Systems Australia as our region’s local experts in secure managed file transfer. In this case study, we share how a US retailer is leveraging both robustness and advanced features of GoAnywhere MFT , the world’s leading MFT solution . Grocery Outlet is a chain of more than 300 family-owned deep-discount grocery stores based in Berkeley, California. The retailer helps more than 1.5 million shoppers each week save big, making it the US’s largest extreme value retailer. Homegrown: Good for Produce; Not for File Transfers Steve Tuscher is the Director of IT at Grocery Outlet, overseeing technology which manages more than 33,000 file transfers each day. “We had always transferred files between our systems with homegrown FTP scripts,” he said, “but knew we needed a better solution. Writing the scripts for these transfers was time consuming. However, the real challenge the IT team faced was tracking down what happened if a file exchange failed. The grocer primarily wanted to send files back and forth reliably and in a controlled manner. They also sought a solution that included error reporting functionality that was platform independent, as they exchange files with multiple vendors, suppliers, and other trading partners daily. “One of our vendors suggested a file transfer tool but it was priced out at US$100,000, and we didn't want to do that,” said Steve. “We knew of GoAnywhere Managed File Transfer (MFT) because they'd been in the AS400 (IBM i) world for a couple decades at least, the same as we have been. So we thought we'd give GoAnywhere MFT a shot. He added: “It's been a great product. It worked from day one and it's worked ever since.” Bargain Retailer Gets Money’s Worth While GoAnywhere does the heavy lifting on the large volume of daily files transferred, Steve discovered another surprising benefit of GoAnywhere MFT — managing the many emails the company received and creating a reporting system for them as well. “After we learned that GoAnywhere could retrieve mail from an Exchange mailbox, we developed an automated script to do that. It checks for incoming mail every three seconds and launches a job based on if there's new mail on the IBMi. We then take that request, run another job, then return the email with a report. It's a handy little reporting system that's very popular,” he said. GoAnywhere not only provides users a way to simplify and secure their file transfers, keeping sensitive data secure both at rest and in motion, it also helps retailers meet relevant security and compliance regulations, with auditing and reporting functionality, as well as strong encryption and security protocols. “All the other extras that came with it, and all of the ways we're using GoAnywhere now have been a bonus,” said Steve. In particular, he called out the solution’s scripting language. “The robustness of that language has been a real surprise – a pleasant surprise,” he said. GoAnywhere’s ease-of-use, and ability to manage the many file transfers occurring each day without the need to write homemade FTP scripts enables Grocery Outlet’s IT team to spend their time on more critical, and less manually intensive tasks. Improved Workflows and Partner Relations Grocery Outlet extracts much of its data from FTP scripts. With GoAnywhere, the previously complex process now runs unattended every night. “It's been great. Just having the ability to run an FTP script to get data, zip it up, and send it somewhere has been phenomenal,” Steve said. The GoAnywhere solution saves Grocery Outlet’s IT team time in two ways: problem resolution and eliminating the problems all together. “Typically, you'd copy some script and create a new script, and it would generally run. The problem is that when it wouldn't run, you wouldn't find out about it until it was too late, or until people were waiting for their orders or in a crisis. “The real time saving in GoAnywhere is that it basically never fails. That thing is rock solid. I can't remember the last time we had a failure due to GoAnywhere. If there's a failure, it's because the receiving side is down or not available.” With GoAnywhere quickly replacing all internal FTP scripts, the grocer transformed their data delivery across all their business partners and all internal systems. Steve noted his surprise at being able to do so as quickly and as easily as they did. The biggest surprise for the company, however, was how they use the email retrieval function. “That has been a huge homerun application for being able to request and report on your phone, and have it delivered back to your phone, like a sales report, within seconds. The response time is amazing! Literally within seconds you’re able to get a nicely formatted HTML email report on your phone, no matter where you are, via GoAnywhere. That has been great,” Steve said. He said he tried to stay up to date on updates to GoAnywhere, so that Grocery Outlet could take advantage of new features. Quick ROI Steve is enthusiastic in his recommendation of GoAnywhere, exclaiming: “It will be the easiest implementation you've ever had. It will be the best value of software that you've ever had. And you'll be sorry if you do not explore this package.” Previous Next

< News Get Your Files Managed At First Sight 6 Feb 2026 ! Widget Didn’t Load Check your internet and refresh this page. If that doesn’t work, contact us. Previous Next

< News Five Indications Your Organisation Could Benefit from an MFT 20 May 2025 Data is the lifeblood of a modern business. Your ability to safely store and move data is fundamental to your daily operations. Your efficiency in moving and using data determines the overall speed at which your business operates. So it’s worth taking a few moments to consider how to potentially improve the way your team currently stores, protects and moves your valuable organisational data. Are they still relying on outdated file transfer protocols like FTP? Are they trusting your data to a hodge-podge of risky ad-hoc cloud dropbox-style services? Are they relying on years-old hand-coded file transfer scripts? There’s a better – safer, more robust, faster, more efficient, fully automated – way: Managed File Transfer (MFT). Here are five key indicators that your business may be ready to benefit from an MFT solution. Using Outdated Ways to Send Data? A surprising number of organisations still rely on outdated protocols and clunky scripts to move precious data around. However, these legacy methods increase the risk of human error, take time away from more critical tasks, and are difficult to maintain. An MFT is easy to use, easy to audit, requires little maintenance, and removes manual tasks from your stretched IT team’s To Do list. Increasingly Targeted by Cybercriminals? Your IT team can tell you how many cybercrime incursions they’re seeing daily. The number may shock you! With hackers escalating their efforts to extort your business and customers, it’s more essential than ever to secure your data and maintain a ‘circle of trust’ with your supply chain partners. An MFT solution, such as GoAnywhere MFT, employs the latest encryption algorithms to reduce the risk of data breaches during transit. Features like Access Controls, and Multi-factor Authentication, safeguard sensitive information from unauthorised access. New Government Regulations? In response to the impacts of escalating cybercrime on businesses and citizens, governments are imposing ever greater requirements on businesses to ensure they protect consumers’ personal data. From health data (hospital records, test results), to banking data (debit and credit card numbers, bank account details), to identity data (home address, government id), businesses that fail to take responsible measures to protect sensitive data face growing sanctions. Worse, a breach may not only cost your organisation time and money to remediate, it may also ruin your reputation. An MFT solution helps ensure your file transfers comply with regulatory requirements. Features such as auditing, reporting, role-based access, secure protocols, centralised security controls, encryption, and key management protect employee and consumer data from security mishaps. Cloud Dependencies? Many organisations have moved business processes to the cloud, and regularly exchange files with trading partners there. But transfers to and from the cloud – especially those over public telecommunications networks – require extra protection. From streamlining and automating cloud file transfers to platforms like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, to integrating with popular web and cloud services like SharePoint and Google Drive, using an MFT makes working with partners in the cloud smooth, reliable and safe. Evolving Network Conditions? Research shows that a single hour of system downtime can easily cost a medium-sized business a six-figure sum. As organisations and trading partners become increasingly integrated, it’s critical that file transfers are performed without delay or disruption. Whereas a document containing a batch of important transactions may once have been delivered over several hours, today’s fast pace of business requires it to take mere seconds. An enterprise-calibre file transfer solution should have a high availability plan in place. The right solution will provide active-passive and active-active (i.e. clustering) methods for organisations who need to keep their processes running no matter the situation at hand. Clustering provides the best high availability by running multiple servers simultaneously. Therefore, if one goes down, file transfers and workflows will continue to run on other servers so communication with your trading partners won’t be interrupted. The Leading MFT If any of these indicators ring true for you, it may be time to consider upgrading to an MFT solution. The acknowledged leading MFT, GoAnywhere, is an all-in-one solution, automating and encrypting file transfers from a centralised dashboard. GoAnywhere saves businesses time, money, and reputation. Local Expert Help At Generic Systems Australia we have decades of experience installing and customising MFT solutions to suit the needs of Australian and New Zealand businesses. If you’d like to explore how MFT can boost your organisation’s security and efficiency, please feel welcome to get in touch . I’m always ready to have a broad-ranging, no-obligation discussion. If you’d like, I can even organise a quick proof-of-concept to demonstrate how MFT can be easily tailored to your organisation’s specific needs. At Generic Systems Australia, we’re your local experts in Managed File Transfer. Previous Next

< News 55 Trillion File & Object Transfers in 2025 13 Jan 2026 One of the things I mused over during the new year break was “How many files did Australians transfer during 2025?” I asked an AI to assist me in a sweep of available data sources and come up with a reasoned estimation. Humans + Hidden When most people think about digital activity, they picture emails, cloud uploads, or the occasional shared document. Yet when we model Australia’s full digital ecosystem across 2025, a very different picture emerges. Human‑initiated file sharing — email attachments, messaging app files, cloud uploads — accounts for only a tiny fraction of the nation’s digital movement. Analysis places that figure at around 82 billion files per year, a substantial number on its own. But layering in the automated and infrastructural systems that underpin modern digital life, the scale expands dramatically. To reach an estimate of the total, four additional categories need to be accounted for. Automated system backups are the first major contributor. By estimating the number of organisations using cloud‑based incremental backup and applying conservative daily change rates, we arrived at roughly 11 trillion backup‑related file movements annually. Next came cloud sync events , driven by photo libraries, document updates, and multi‑device workflows. With around 60% of Australians using at least one active sync service, this added another 115 billion events. The real explosion came from Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). Every webpage, app screen, and embedded image is delivered as a collection of discrete objects. By modelling daily request volumes and average objects per request, we estimated 34.4 trillion CDN object transfers in 2025. Finally, we incorporated machine‑to‑machine (M2M) activity—the internal chatter of microservices, logs, IoT payloads, and replication events—using a conservative multiplier. This added another 11.4 trillion movements. Together, these layers produced a staggering total: approximately 50–60 trillion digital file and object transfers across Australia in 2025. Humans are barely the spark; the infrastructure is the inferno. Implications for Organisations The scale of data movement across Australia has profound implications for organisations. When file movement becomes this vast, distributed, and automated, traditional ad‑hoc transfer methods simply can’t keep up. Security gaps widen, auditability collapses, and operational risk multiplies. That’s why Managed File Transfer (MFT) technology should no longer be considered “nice to have”. MFT provides a controlled, encrypted, policy‑driven framework for moving data across systems, partners, and cloud environments. It brings visibility to the invisible, governance to the chaotic, and reliability to the mission‑critical. In a world where trillions of transfers happen without a human ever touching a keyboard, MFT is the anchor that keeps organisations secure, compliant, and in control. Here to Help At Generic Systems Australia , we’re Australia’s and New Zealand’s experts in helping businesses implement and take leverage MFT solutions. We’ve assisted dozens of organisations to make their file transfers resilient, secure and reliable — boosting their efficiency in the process. If you’d like to discuss what MFT can do for your organisation, please feel welcome to get in touch with me. I’m always happy to have an obligation-free chat and explain how easily we can transition you from your current approach to the world’s leading MFT solution, GoAnywhere . Previous Next

< News Stop playing Cyber Security Whack-a-Mole! 27 Aug 2024 The increasing number and sophistication of cyber incursion attempts is stretching corporate IT departments to their limits. No sooner is one attempt identified and blocked, but another pops up. Georgia in Accounts just clicked on a bogus link in a phishing email. Rowan in Marketing is about to send a spreadsheet containing sensitive customer information to a direct marketing agency. Arush from Sales doesn’t realise the bank account details he’s emailing to HR are about to be intercepted in a “man-in-the-middle” attack. The CEO’s personal assistant, Grace, doesn’t realise she’s corresponding with an AI bot designed to cleverly gather identity information about her boss. It’s relentless - a new cyber attack every six minutes! 1 High Stakes The escalating frequency of incursions means a company’s stressed-out IT team must stay vigilant. In this high-stakes game of cyber security Whack-a-Mole, the cost of failure is simply too high: the cost of cybercrime to businesses has increased by 14% year-on-year1. share markets punish companies which fail to safeguard their data2. class actions – by those whose personal data was stolen, and shareholders seeking compensation for share devaluations – ensue3. damaged customer trust stymies revenue and market share growth4. cyber insurance premiums skyrocket5. Ditch that Rubber Mallet Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way your team could opt out of the never-ending game of cyber security Whack-a-Mole…? A way to automate your organisation’s cyber defences, assigning cyber sentries to detect and block cyberthieves, whenever and wherever they pop up? Good news – there is! And it’s surprisingly affordable and effective. A proactive and layered strategy for storing, transferring and securing data is essential for keeping cyberthieves at bay. The foundation of that approach is a technology called “Managed File Transfer”. Paired with secure content engines and secure digital rights management, Managed File Transfer (MFT) is the optimal way to prevent data theft and cyber breaches. An MFT solution such as the class-leading GoAnywhere MFT keeps your organisation’s valuable data safe - at rest, and in transit. Coupled with an Advanced Threat Protection Bundle , it enables organisations to safely collaborate without exposing their systems or team to the risks of malware. This automated defence system protects your data in three important ways: 1. Prevents files containing malware from being shared. GoAnywhere with Advanced Threat Protection scans all inbound file transfers. It can also detect and automatically strip out active content like embedded malware, triggered executables, scripts, or macros used to extract or hold sensitive data hostage. This “sanitisation” of files and emails doesn’t delay delivery, even as it guards against today's leading malware and ransomware (e.g. CryptoLocker, CryptoWall, TorrentLocker, Dridex Dyre, BlackEnergy, etc.) and tomorrow's even more sophisticated threat variants. 2. Blocks sensitive data from being shared. Files with Personal Identifiable Information or other sensitive data can be prevented from being transferred. GoAnywhere with Advanced Threat Protection can inspect file contents, and then stop and block files from being shared, based on policies you define. 3. Redacts sensitive information from files before transfer. GoAnywhere with Advanced Threat Protection can ensure sensitive data is neither transmitted nor received, detecting and/or removing geotags, document properties, email addresses, and other metadata from documents, and replacing sensitive text with asterisks. Using Optical Character Recognition, it can even remove text contained in scanned images. “The only winning move is not to play” 6. In today’s interconnected business environment, ever-increasing cyber attacks are inevitable. However, foiling these attacks no longer requires your IT team to play a never-ending game of cyber security Whack-a-Mole. At Generic Systems Australia , we’ve helped hundreds of business leaders and IT teams across the Asia-Pacific region rest easy, knowing that their valuable data is protected by the automated sentries of GoAnywhere with Advanced Threat Protection. We can do the same for you. It’s surprisingly affordable, and our Migration Services mean you can keep running your business without disruption as we you transition to a more secure approach. In fact, we’re so confident in the capabilities and business case for our MFT solutions that we’re prepared to offer you a zero-cost Proof of Concept. If you’d like to take me up on this offer, or perhaps just discuss how your organisation’s file transfers can be made more efficient and secure, please feel welcome to contact me , Bradley Copson. I’m always happy to have an obligation-free discussion. At Generic Systems Australia , we’re your local experts in Secure Managed File Transfer. Sources: 1. Australian Signals Directorate Cyber Threat Report 2023 2. For example, Medibank Private’s share price plunged more than 20% in the weeks following its loss of the personal information of 9.7m Australians. 3. For example, Medibank Private is facing class actions by both shareholders and consumers alleging “breaches of the company’s duty of care to protect consumer information, manage risks and make timely disclosures to shareholders”. Optus Communications is also subject to a class action alleging “Optus failed to protect, or take reasonable steps to protect, the personal information of its current and former customers”. 4. For example, Optus Communications saw its customer growth halved in the quarter following its systems being breached. 5. Australian Financial Review 12 September 2022: “Cyber insurance premiums soar 80pc as claims surge”. 6. A quote from the 1983 John Badham film, “WarGames”. Previous Next

< News The Missing Link in Your Cyber Security Strategy? 22 Apr 2025 Is Secure Managed File Transfer a “missing link” in your company’s cyber security strategy? Protect Your Data, Not Just Your Network The increasing frequency of hacks and other cyber incursions suggest that the cyber security measures being employed by Australian and New Zealand organisations are not keeping pace with cyber threats. As Forbes observes, “Companies keep pouring tons of money into protecting their network… but the real crown jewels are in the data that sits behind the network walls. That data is often not protected." “Locking the door” through corporate network protections is a good start. But it’s not enough. An organisation’s crown jewels should also be kept in a vault. This ensures that, even if a hacker gets inside, they won’t be able to exploit the data they find. Encrypting your data keeps it in the vault. And the security guard that puts your data in that vault is Managed File Transfer (MFT). How MFT Secures Your Data To be truly secure, data must be protected not only when it’s stored, but also while it’s enroute to and from storage . MFT solutions such as the class-leading GoAnywhere MFT encrypt data at rest and in transit, complying with the highest data security standards across the US and Europe, such as HIPAA, HITECH, PCI DSS, SOX, and the GDPR. MFT manages inbound and outbound file transfers across an organisation, using industry-standard file transfer protocols such as SFTP, FTPS, and AS2 to send files securely, and encryption standards such as Open PGP and AES to protect data in transit and at rest. The "Managed" in MFT MFT software automates and streamlines the exchange of data for you, reducing manual processes and eliminating the need for any legacy tools and scripts you might currently be using. Data (including documents, images, videos, and other files) can also be exchanged via MFT across your private networks, systems, applications, partners, and cloud environments from a single point of administration. More than Transfers MFT software isn’t only for sending files between users and systems. It can also automate business processes, ensure secure connections, track file transfer activity, and more. File Encryption GoAnywhere MFT employs integrated encryption technologies to secure sensitive data. It also includes a key manager which enables you to create, import, export, and manage your keys and certificates within the product. Automation User errors and manual processes can also cause data breaches. By automating the encryption and exchange of sensitive files, processes and workflows can run without user intervention — especially useful when dealing with a high volume of file transfers. Email Enhancement GoAnywhere MFT offers a secure email module which allows users to send one-off file transfers securely, through a HTTPS connection. Cloud Connections MFT can help you build better connections between your network and web/cloud applications. GoAnywhere MFT offers built-in cloud integrations with applications such as Dropbox, SharePoint, and JIRA, and popular cloud services including Amazon, Google and Azure. Auditing & Reporting GoAnywhere MFT provide audit reports to meet compliance needs. All file transfer and administrator activity is stored and easily searchable. For organisations that need to report on file transfer activity to remain compliant with regulations and laws, the audit logs can be automatically generated and distributed as PDF reports. These are just some of the many MFT features which can help you protect your files. Add the Missing Link The rise in the rate of cyber crime suggests it’s a case of “when” – not “if” – your organisation will be targeted. So now is the time to get ahead of the hackers and explore how MFT can enhance your data’s security. Why not arrange a free trial and see how MFT can work in your organisation? The benefits are immediate, from file transfer automation to solid data encryption. I’m always happy to have an obligation-free discussion, explain how quickly and easily my team of technical experts can transition your organisation to the world’s best MFT solution, and offer you a zero-cost Proof of Concept. Previous Next

Advanced Threat Protection Take your secure file transfers to the next level. Seamlessly integrate your managed file transfers with advanced threat protection and adaptive data loss prevention to keep your sensitive data secure. The SFT Threat Protection bundle enables you to collaborate safely without malware entering your organisation, and without your employees losing or mishandling data. What Does Advanced Threat Protection Do? Sharing information incurs risks… There’s the risk of opening your systems to threats, such as malware or even threats hidden within file transfers. There’s the risk of exposing the wrong content, whether sent by mistake or hidden in metadata. Advanced Threat Protection enables you to inspect managed file transfer content for threats as well as leakage. Seamless integration between Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT and the Clearswift Secure ICAP Gateway features: Anti-virus and malware protection Deep content inspection Adaptive data loss prevention Media type protection 3 Ways to Enhance File Transfer Security Prevent Files with Malware from being Shared. Simply check a box in GoAnywhere to turn on easy anti-virus protection through the Secure ICAP Gateway to scan all inbound file transfers. Detect and automatically strip out active content like embedded malware, triggered executables, scripts, or macros used to extract or hold sensitive data hostage. Advanced Threat Protection sanitises — without delay in delivery — as only the malicious active content is removed, allowing the file transfer to continue unhindered. This morph-free protection guards against today's leading malware and ransomware (i.e. CryptoLocker, CryptoWall, TorrentLocker, Dridex Dyre, BlackEnergy, etc.) and tomorrow's even more sophisticated threat variants. Block Sensitive Data from Being Shared. Prevent files with Personal Identifiable Information (PII) or other sensitive data from being transferred. GoAnywhere Threat Protection can inspect file contents, then stop and block files from being shared, based on policy. Redact Sensitive Information from Files Before Transfer. Ensure sensitive data is not transmitted or received. Detect or remove geotags, document properties, email addresses, or other metadata from documents, replacing sensitive text with asterisks. Detect and remove text contained in scanned images with Optical Character Recognition. Detect and remove offending content with text redaction. Encryption Isn’t Enough Encrypting sensitive file transfers is vital for ensuring the privacy and integrity of your data and complying with data governance regulations. However, while encryption can protect your files, you can do more to ensure your messaging security, by staying aware of what is being transmitted. Adding threat protection to GoAnywhere enables you to empower some senior individuals the power to transmit PII, while excluding others. Further, even if your transmission process is secure, you may want to audit who is sending what. The Secure ICAP Gateway enhances your encryption by limiting both who can transfer data, and what that data contains. Two Leading Solutions, Seamlessly Integrated The Clearswift Secure ICAP Gateway adds significant value to GoAnywhere MFT because of its threat protection, deep content inspection engine, adaptive data redaction, and flexible policy settings, while managed file transfer makes defining file movements a breeze. Additional features you can add to your file transfer process are structural sanitisation, document sanitisation, data redaction, anti-steganography, and optical character recognition. It’s the best and most thorough security for file transfers. Other Ways Clearswift Can Help You Integrating Clearswift’s core ICAP Gateway and threat protection with SFT can resolve gaps in your process and provide additional benefits. It can audit and control data in file transfers, for example, detecting when customer, employee, or patient records in a file are uploaded to SFT, counting the records, and maintaining an audit log of what data was shared with whom. When you add Clearswift solutions to your SFT instance, you get Lexical Expression Qualifiers, which can detect records based on multi-field matches, and trigger different actions based on number of records detected (e.g., audit, refer to sender, redact, block). Clearswift can also ensure you accept only the correct file types, by enforcing "True Type" controls which ensure you don't receive binaries, executables, scripts, or other unwanted file types. Clearswift solutions defend your system based on file byte pattern rather than by name. And, it works with nested files over 50 levels deep!

< News Summer Software Sales 10 Dec 2024 It's December, and the thoughts of many in business will no doubt be turning to closing out the year ahead of well-deserved holidays. But did you know this can also be a great time to negotiate a sweet summer deal on enterprise software…? Much of the world's enterprise software is sold by US-based companies, who follow a calendar accounting year. December is the final month for them to achieve their full-year sales targets, stretch bonuses, etc. So: strike while the iron - and season - is hot! Use your negotiating advantage to squeeze a special deal on that new software solution you've been eyeing. Of course, if that solution happens to be GoAnywhere MFT - the world's leading Managed File Transfer solution - then reach out to me, and we can apply the summer squeeze together! 😉 #MFT #SFTP #managedfiletransfer #goanywhere #enterprisesolution Previous Next

SECURE YOUR CLOUD DATA Whether you are already moving select pieces of your business to the cloud, just starting the cloud conversation, or are considering establishing a hybrid environment, you're in good company. Organisations move to the cloud in some fashion for its flexibility, scalability, and faster deployment. However, there is still hesitancy in adapting cloud technology due to security concerns as well as compliance requirements, and a lack of visibility and control. A 2023 Cloud Security Report, which surveyed the challenges and priorities of more than 750 cybersecurity professionals, found that 39% of respondents already have more than half of their workloads in the cloud, and 58% planned to get to that level in the next 12–18 months. However, Cloud security continues to be a significant concern, with 95% of surveyed organisations concerned about their security posture in public cloud environments. In this article, we explore how a robust Managed File Transfer (MFT) solution can help protect your data transfers, in transit and at rest, without compromising the convenience or cost-effectiveness of moving your business to a cloud-based environment. Cloud File Transfers Most organisations oversee dozens (if not hundreds or thousands) of in-house file transfers a day. Whether it’s sending files to employees, transferring reports to trading partners, receiving data from third-party vendors, or collecting sensitive information from customers, it’s all part of the exchange of information that is regularly processed. Where do cloud-based file transfers fit in? Cloud infrastructure can give companies a lot of leeway. Some data can be managed in the cloud, or all of it can be — the choice is entirely up to you. Moving data to the cloud can be as simple as transferring files and folders to whatever storage platform you use with your provider. And with strong encryption and security policies in place, you can control who has access to that business-critical, sensitive data in the cloud. Data that’s been entrusted to the cloud is kept in physical servers and data centres managed by cloud computing services. Almost all file movement between a business, its employees, its trading partners, and its remote locations can happen through the cloud. Sensitive information can move quickly and efficiently between the business and wherever it’s stored (even on servers around the world), which gives organisations the ability to operate smoothly and access their data from anywhere. Because everything is stored off-site, local outages and user errors are minimised, bettering the chances that important, scheduled transfers will complete successfully. The Current State of Cloud D ata Security For cloud computing platforms like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, security of customer data is one of their highest priorities. They have a variety of resources in place to protect their clients’ privacy, but despite their best attempts, these measures don’t always stop data loss, compromised information, or unexpected cloud server outages. Cloud security is a two-way street. Researching each cloud provider’s cybersecurity methods and selecting the best one for your organisation is imperative — a positive step toward ensuring your data’s integrity. But it’s not the only step. IT teams are just as responsible for the security of their sensitive business data as the cloud platforms that hold it. Whether your organisation is thinking of deploying to the cloud or already has, you'll need to perform due diligence regarding your processes and policies. Start by asking questions like these: What are our top security considerations? How will our IT team processes change? What vulnerabilities have been introduced or addressed from moving to the cloud? Do we have points of failure that should be planned for? Are cloud file transfers properly encrypted to minimise risk of data breaches? Protecting Your File Transfers Many of these questions are subjective, of course. Each IT team is likely to answer them in different ways, based on your company policies and processes. But to achieve the best possible cloud security, don’t overlook the current state of your file transfers. Encryption is often the last line of defence between a malicious user or human error and sensitive information. If, however, data is properly secured with strong encryption protocols during transfers as well as when idle and sitting on a server, a cloud breach is far less likely to result in data exposure. For those who must comply with regulations like HIPAA, GDPR, GLBA, PCI DSS, and SOX, following encryption requirements in the cloud comes with extra benefits — as long as the keys for encrypted data are safe, breached information can’t be read, preventing hackers from selling or otherwise exploiting your or your customers sensitive data. File Transfers and the Cloud When moving your data between your network and the cloud, it’s considered best practice to always encrypt your files and protect your communication using secure network protocols like SFTP, FTPS, or SCP. Your files, databases, and even entire folders should be encrypted at rest, too, whether or not the cloud platform you’ve chosen already secures it. A common dated (and not recommended) approach to file transfers uses custom scripts created by internal programmers. The scripts often include commands for encryption, which may or may not be simple to modify, depending on your team's given skillset. While this file transfer process "can" work for a while, as it addresses basic company needs initially, as the number of file transfers rise, so does the difficulty of maintaining a homegrown solution. And that’s not including other possible roadblocks, like an inability to handle logging capabilities or alerts when a file transfer fails. Managed file transfer solutions provide organisations with helpful, robust features that enable them to grow with their data exchange requirements –– especially beneficial when moving to a cloud environment. GoAnywhere Managed File Transfer GoAnywhere MFT eliminates the need for homegrown scripts and multiple programs by streamlining the file transfer process. It can be installed in a cloud-based environment (single or multi) or on-premises via a variety of platforms, giving you full control of your deployment. Transfers can be scheduled and automated with custom workflows (projects), and data can be sent securely between systems, employees, customers, and trading partners. Meanwhile, administrators are given a single point of control with extensive security settings, audit trails, and reports, greatly reducing the possibility of user errors and oversights. GoAnywhere also provides high return on investment by reducing the time spent on manual labour, improving the quality of file transfers, making security more cost-effective, and helping organisations meet a variety of requirements including PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, and FISMA. MFT Security and Encryption All file transfers are protected with popular encryption protocols, including SFTP, FTPS, FTP, SCP, AS2, HTTPS, Open PGP, and ZIP with AES. In the GoAnywhere MFT solution. A built-in key manager allows administrators to create, import, export, and manage Open PGP keys, SSH keys, and SSL certificates. And for those who must comply with FIPS 140-2, validated encryption ciphers can be enabled for SSL and SSH protocols. GoAnywhere offers connections to a variety of servers and guarantees file delivery by using connection retries and file auto-resume. Admins can monitor transfer success, review account activity, and authenticate user access from anywhere via GoAnywhere’s browser-based interface. Beyond basic encryption practices and features, GoAnywhere also addresses several business requirements for the cloud. GoAnywhere and Amazon EC2 For organisations that use AWS as their cloud provider, GoAnywhere MFT easily integrates with Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2). You can find, and quickly install, GoAnywhere MFT on Amazon's AWS Marketplace. You can use GoAnywhere’s secure FTP technology to protect sensitive file transfers with strong encryption technology and modern authentication methods. This creates encrypted tunnels between client and server systems and provides confidentiality and integrity to critical transmissions. Secure FTP also protects any user credentials that flow over the connection. Do you need to address high volumes of file transfers in your organisation? With GoAnywhere’s clustering technology, file transfers and other processes can be distributed across multiple Amazon EC2 instances for load balancing. And when an instance is taken offline, file transfers and jobs will be automatically routed to other installations in the cluster. GoAnywhere and Microsoft Azure For organisations that use Microsoft as their cloud provider, GoAnywhere integrates with Azure to provide IT teams with secure file transfers between all active parties. Installing and running GoAnywhere MFT on Azure is an effortless process, as everything you need is included, reducing the need for additional third-party solutions. You can install GoAnywhere on your choice of Azure-supported Windows or Linux operating systems, then set up your trading partner accounts and file transfer processes. GoAnywhere’s intuitive design and modular features allow you to be up and running on Azure quickly. If you want to scale GoAnywhere on Azure, file transfers and other processes can be distributed across multiple Azure VM instances for load balancing. Connections to a variety of databases including Microsoft SQL Server through GoAnywhere, and user accounts can be authenticated against Microsoft Active Directory to simplify user management for your file collaboration needs. Conclusion Organisations worldwide have already, or soon will be turning their focus to the cloud. Yes, security will continue to be an issue in all configurations of technology on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid situations. And moving to the cloud isn't without risk. To help prevent data loss, IT teams must do due diligence and take steps to protect their data — starting with their cloud file transfer process and solutions. Implementing a managed file transfer solution like GoAnywhere MFT enables businesses to control how their data is protected, in transit and at rest. Through strong encryption protocols, file monitoring, and integration with Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure, IT teams can rest assured that organisational and customer data is safe in a variety of environments without running outdated, unsecure expensive, time-consuming scripts and programs. Is it time to enhance the security of YOUR cloud data? If you’d like to discuss how GoAnywhere MFT can enhance the security of your organisation’s cloud data, please feel welcome to reach out to our Business Manager, Bradley Copson. He’s always happy to have an obligation-free discussion, explain how quickly and easily we can transition your organisation to the class-leading MFT solution, and offer you a zero-cost Proof of Concept. At Generic Systems Australia, we’re your local experts in secure Managed File Transfer. RESOURCES HOME