Managed File Transfer Asserts Data Governance In Transit: Page 2 of 2

MFT products are offered as appliances, software, virtual appliances and, more recently, cloud services. The service model, exemplified by California's program, can work well within organizations. Regulatory compliance was the initial driver for the service, said Paddock, as a state agency was willing to underwrite a way to securely transfer protected health information (PHI) for HIPAA compliance. "Since then, customers have all sorts of data that was being delivered in various ways," he said. "Some use cases we didn't anticipate came upon us, but we knew this was a product we could build a service on."
 
This model could easily be applied to an enterprise with internal customers, for example, in a private cloud, which could leverage the products' management, visibility and reporting capabilities, including charge-back to internal clients. The California agency charges a fee to pay for the service, but it's strictly up to individual agencies to decide if they want to pay for it. "We can just offer the service," Paddock said. Those who see the light understand the importance of being able to track transfers."

With a wide range of products and services to choose from, enterprises should weigh several key criteria in their selection process:

• Broad policy and enforcement across applications and people throughout the enterprise.
• Visibility into processes and people involved in data transfer.
• Strong and timely auditing and reporting to confirm success file transfer and the application of corporate policy.
• Easy, seamless and ubiquitous integration with business applications, middleware, ESB, etc.
• Quick deployment of new instances. "Every customer is growing in size, volume and number of trading partners," said Kathryn Hughes, Axway director of product marketing.  "The ability to rapidly onboard and provision enables better business relationships and communications."
• Delegated administration, allowing, for example, business units to handle the day-to-day chores once the transfer mechanisms are in place. "I can't overestimate the importance of delegated administration," said Paddock. "The service couldn't work without the ability to make administrators out of customers." An easy-to-use administrative console is a key aspect of this capability, he said.