Managed File Transfer - Some of The Questions That Need To Be Considered

General Requirements

• At a contextual level what is the business requirement?
• Are you looking to consolidate existing FTP Servers?
• Are the files going between systems or individuals or both?
• What is the frequency of files being transferred?
• How much data per month is being moved?
• What is the peak number of simultaneous file transfers likely to be?

Governance, Compliance and Security?

• Regulations, which ones need to be met – PCI DSS, GCSX, FIPS, ISO2700x, HIPAA, SOX and so on?
• Are you clear on how to become compliant?
• Encryption, is this required for Data at Rest, or in transfer
• Is authentication required via Active Directory or LDAP?
• Do you require content aware monitoring and filtering, for example virus checking of files?
• How long should files be available for download?
• Is Non-Repudiation important?

Reporting, Auditing and Logs

• Do you need comprehensive file tracking and reporting?
• How do you track and manage Logs?
• What are your data reporting requirements?

System Architecture

• High Availability and DR
• Hosted Service or In House system
• Protocol Support, typical protocols are FTP, FTPS (FTP over SSL), SFTP (FTP over SSH) and HTTP/S, AS2?
• Do you require File Manipulation, workflow automation or multiple scripts for FTP transfer?
• Event Handling and Process Automation, do you need to capture a wide variety of file transfer events and provide a set of common built-in actions that can be executed in response to those events?
• Integrating with the back end, for example your SAN or NAS or other file storage.
• API Interface – are you linking systems together?
• Integration with Outlook or Notes – the ability for end users to send files via their email client seamlessly.
• Web Transfer – allows 3rd parties to transfer file via a standard web browser without the need for an FTP client