Industry: Legal
Information integrity and security are requirements for anyone looking to succeed in the legal industry. Maintaining these high standards can only happen with a rigorous approach to how sensitive files are handled every step of the way as they move from one entity to another throughout a legal proceeding. These documents can contain anything from evidence in a case to personal details for attorneys and their clients, to class action suit specifics, and so much more.
One worldwide provider of legal services, serving law firms, corporations, financial institutions, and government agencies recognized how vital it is to ensure file transfer security. The organization helps its clients streamline the significant administration of business operations, class actions and mass torts, court reporting, and eDiscovery, as well as regulatory, compliance, restructuring, and bankruptcy matters. The company selected GoAnywhere MFT from HelpSystems to secure the transfer of many forms of legal information both internally and externally, encrypting data at all points in the process and leveraging automation wherever possible.
Making the Case for Secure Managed File Transfers
For years, they relied on manual scripting for file transfer processes before implementing several file transfer products across the organization. In addition to GoAnywhere, these included Microsoft’s robocopy command and IIS, as well as products from Ipswitch, IBM (Aspera), and others. Today, the company is consolidating solutions to streamline and standardize operations, with GoAnywhere MFT being implemented at office locations around the world.
GoAnywhere was initially selected based on the feature set of the product, particularly the Advanced Workflows capabilities. “Clients might send us terabytes of data, but we don’t want the end user community—the people who are processing the data here—to get to a folder where the client is still dropping the information,” said their lead application services administrator. “We don’t want them interacting with the data while it’s still being transferred. GoAnywhere has a holistic view of how we manipulate data from the time it leaves the client until it gets back.”
“When we initially chose GoAnywhere, our approach was ‘Let’s see what this can do,’” added the company’s systems administrator, reflecting on the early days of using the solution. “We were so impressed with how well it did, that we decided to deploy it throughout the organization.”
Day-to-Day Business Benefits
The IT team has set up GoAnywhere to grant access to users in a way that they can’t see information they shouldn’t be privy to, particularly when dealing with interdepartmental data transfers. For example, they use GoAnywhere to move data in and out of critical business systems such as SAP and Workday.
Other high-value uses include:
- Transferring data in and out of the company’s secure data centers
- Transferring data to and from their client base
- Moving data to processing locations once it has been transferred to the company
- Querying locations for new data (internally and externally) and then performing automated tasks such as file/folder moves and/or transfers
- Providing a secure email function either natively within the GoAnywhere web-based client or a plugin within Outlook.
Controlling User Actions
GoAnywhere allows the service provider to keep their many data centers secure from an access perspective. “No users can copy data directly into a machine from a desktop,” said the application services administrator. “You’ve got to use an intermediary product, and that product of choice is GoAnywhere. We’ve got it in all our data centers.” By doing this, we keep client data secure and protect employees by preventing mistakes. “It’s all logged,” he said.
Automated Processes
The IT team needs to be able to get to a client’s uploaded information within minutes, every hour of the day. GoAnywhere is often set up to check a particular location every few minutes (or even seconds), and then run a job to carry out a defined action if a file is found.
“What I really enjoy about GoAnywhere is the fact that you can use Advanced Workflows to grab an encrypted spreadsheet, read it, and then translate it into a different kind of file,” said the systems administrator. “Once you get that set up, it happens daily or hourly, or however you want.”
Achieving Compliance
The company must be able to show they are protecting client data both during and after any file transfers. The detailed logging GoAnywhere provides helps them achieve this with minimal effort, particularly when regulations from the government are involved (e.g., HIPAA).
“We have to be able to pass audits,” the applications systems administrator said. “We get audited a lot, whether it’s internally or externally. This may be for the government, it may be our clients, or it may be a court or set of judges somewhere. We can’t fail them—period. It’s our business and our livelihood. GoAnywhere helps us pass these audits.”
GoAnywhere enables the systems administration team to create workflows that keep them in compliance, such as their client access report. “We run a report that shows what everyone has access to,” said the systems administrator. “If something is outside our rules, it will send the issue to the proper team to let them know it’s out of compliance.” This might include an employee who’s trying to set up a test GoAnywhere account using a personal email address.
Additionally, some clients ask for specific reports, such as a list of all users who have email addresses pertaining to people in their company or at client locations. The company has created a custom query report written as a job that can find that information quickly.
GoAnywhere Use Case: Bankruptcy Clients
One common use of GoAnywhere occurs with the company’s bankruptcy clients. Between the client and court, the firm will be selected as the administrator for all emails, documents, and data, and they’ll collect and host all of this information throughout a Chapter 7, 11, or 9 bankruptcy.
“This data will be hosted online in some format so the different parties—judges, lawyers, and clients—can get to it to process the solution to its finish,” said the applications administrator. Individual access and permissions for these secure file transfers are handled via GoAnywhere.
Support Excellence
The support infrastructure in place at HelpSystems is another reason the company has no issue continuing to use and expand its reliance on GoAnywhere. Tech support at HelpSystems understands how the service provider’s IT team installs, configures, and uses the product. Lead tech consultants were onsite to either provide training, support, or assistance in creating many of the automated tasks within GoAnywhere.
“The support we get from HelpSystems is outstanding,” noted the applications administrator. “If we have a problem, we know whether it can be resolved, and what it’s going to take.” This is particularly important for priority one concerns.
The IT team is pleased that HelpSystems support resources reach out regularly to see how they’re doing and what they can do to help. “When we have new ideas on how we might use the product, we’re able to run them by folks in the know at HelpSystems and get responses and assistance quickly,” said the applications administrator.
“There are other file transfer applications out there that you cannot reach by phone for support,” added the systems administrator. “You have to email and hope that they check it, even if it’s a priority one.”
The Jury’s in: This MFT Solution Is a Success
The company now has GoAnywhere installed in 11 data centers on 33 production servers around the world, from Toronto to Tokyo and in many locations in between. They continue to roll out new instances on a regular basis.
“From my perspective, it’s really helped a lot of our internal clients who needed to get complex processes done,” the systems administrator said. “They can come to me or my team and get help.”
GoAnywhere doesn’t just shorten the time it takes to do something; it can eliminate all time spent accomplishing some tasks. This allows employees to focus their valuable time on other projects. “I’ve seen this happen across all our departments in some form, and it’s very rewarding,” he added.
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