How MFT Helps Collaboration in Hybrid Environments

Whether your organization’s employees are back in the office at their desks full time, or more commonly pop into your brick-and-mortar location two to three times a week in hybrid fashion, it’s important to consider how they can securely collaborate. The changing work landscape, with workers spread throughout the world, and schlepping their laptops between home and “the office” requires secure collaboration solutions and managed file transfer (MFT) should be at the top of your hybrid wish list. 

Sharing information inside and outside of your organization requires a level of trust in the security of the files as they are being transferred. File sync and share is increasingly advantageous, provided solutions are in place to ensure that sharing is secure and that organizations can maintain compliance with any industry requirements for file handling.

How Does MFT Help Hybrid Organizations with Collaboration? 

With a robust, secure file transfer solution, such as Globalscape Enhanced File Transfer (EFT), hybrid organizations can quickly and easily establish workflows and oversight and ensure only authorized people can access files. This can ensure the layered security needed when working with people in and out of the organization and your on-site locations. Globalscape offers a variety of features to make this process easier, including: 

• Secure Mail: This feature allows your users to send secure email messages on an ad hoc basis with unique links to files for download. This is a great alternative for your hybrid users as there are no limitations on file size or type to contend with. 
   
• Encrypted Folders: Your users can quickly exchange files between the desktop and server over HTTPS. And as files in Encrypted Folders are stored on a standard file system, backend applications and programs allow for direct access. You can add additional security with the DMZ Gateway, a reverse proxy. This permits server requests without opening any inbound ports.

Collaboration Benefits with MFT 

A robust file transfer solution can meet the needs of hybrid-run organizations by offering a variety of enterprise-level tools and functionality for secure collaboration, including: 

• Elevated File Security: End-to-end encryption is a must for organizations exchanging sensitive data. While many popular collaboration tools offer some level of encryption, for hybrid collaboration an MFT solution is ideal to help you meet specific industry compliance requirements, such as those of HIPAA, PCI DSS, and more. With Globalscape EFT, your encryption can be automatic for any of your shared documents and detailed audit trails and reports can be generated. 
  
  Globalscape EFT’s robust security features complement the Mobile Transfer Client (MTC) dual-factor PIN authorization for device registration, the ability to set granular permissions at the folder, subfolder, as well as individual file level, and AES 256-bit encryption on any files synced to mobile devices. 
   
• Transparent, Remote Administration: With a user-friendly, browser-based interface, admins tasked with the dual role of ensuring both on-site and remote workers can collaborate easily and securely. They can manage applicable security settings, users, and shared folders as well as deactivate and wipe any MTC folders from stolen or lost end-user devices – a feature that becomes more important as devices travel more frequently from the workplace to the “work from wherever” location of hybrid employees. In addition, the mobile client facilitates: 
  • User monitoring of shared files 
  • Receipt of email notices for file downloads or modifications 
  • Viewing and recovering previous file versions 
  • Locking files to restricting access 
  • Revoking sharing when needed 
  • Managing shared folder access with granular permissions 
     
• Ease of Collaboration: Globalscape EFT eases work exchanges with a variety of features, including:
  • Generating automatic email invitations to shared users 
  • Creating public links to share files outside your organization 
  • Allowing for easy drag-and-drop of files between desktop and WTC folders
  • Entering file comments and reviewing comment history 
  • Organizing files into user-defined folders and subfolders 
     
• Scalability and High Availability: Enterprises with thousands of users needn’t worry about access to business-critical files. Globalscape EFT offers scalability through clustering and has true active-active support for availability, as downtime for a hybrid organization is just as critical as for traditional 8 to 5 on-location situations.

Desktop Client and Mobile App Add Additional Collaboration Ease 

No matter where your users are working from, Globalscape EFT can provide access files from any internet connected computer with the Web Transfer Client (WTC) over HTTPS. Collaboration doesn’t have to be halted depending on the device used – as each time a user is connected to the server, the files and folders are automatically updated to the latest version.