Secure file transfer keeps coming up as a prominent business need that requires a high degree of oversight and attention.
Some organizations treat secure file transfer in a more reactive, ad-hoc fashion: data must be moved from one location to another, involving IT personnel to evaluate security requirements and pick a solution. However, with the rise of security requirements for the data transferred, an increasing number of organizations are finding that Managed File Transfer (MFT) solutions can help reduce IT teams’ overhead and help them become more proactive while providing better data integrity and security.
What is Managed File Transfer?
Managed file transfer (MFT) servers are designed to provide more flexible file transfer options to support a wider variety of business needs than single transfer protocols. As secure file transfer has evolved from its initial FTP roots, most organizations have progressed from ad hoc SFTP or FTP/S file transfer solutions to more intelligent file servers that support many additional features to simplify administrative operations.
Main benefits of an MFT solution
- Optimizing network resources for a high volume of file transfers
- Providing more extensive audit, logging, and reporting capabilities for larger organizations
- Centralizing file transfer operations to reduce the need for custom programming to transfer data between systems
- Reducing administrative workload with automated activities
Best activities to automate in an MFT solution
The following are the most impactful automated MFT capabilities:
- Automate everyday file transfer activities
Recurring tasks that involve data transfer, for example, preparing and sending a report on daily transactions, are an ideal use case for managed file transfer. You can set up your MFT server to look for any new data in a particular folder and regularly send that data to the appropriate recipient.
- Routinely schedule software updates
More advanced MFTs allow administrators to set conditional rules that trigger an action based on a particular event. Administrators who need to push software updates to a large number of machines, for example, may pre-configure those machines to accept transfers from an MFT server and push the updates through the MFT after compatibility verification.
- Insightful responses to events
MFTs that enable automated alerts and notifications based on file activity can help administrators keep an eye on their file security. For example, an MFT’s event listeners could be configured to look for any file movement or deletion in a particular directory, and if a server event was detected, send an email to the administrator or invoke a batch file or PowerShell script in response.
- Enforce file retention policies
If your servers are reaching capacity or you’re an organization required to retain documents for a specified period, an MFT that supports file retention policies can schedule regular archiving or deleting of outdated or oversized folders and files.
- Support backup and recovery operations
MFT servers are an ideal solution for disseminating backups and archiving data. They can be configured to compress and transfer data to a more affordable storage location for archiving or operate as a synchronization manager to replicate all users and settings from a primary server to any number of backup or clustered servers.
We hope you’ve found the above tips on automating file transfer operations with an MFT server to be valuable. Cerberus FTP Server’s Enterprise Edition is the ideal MFT solution to help save your organization time and money by eliminating human error and manual processing.