What is MFT Software?
Managed file transfer (MFT) is designed to connect all your information sources and consumers in a way that ensures governance and control of data movement across your organization and into your partners’, suppliers’, and customer’s organizations.
Secure, reliable, and scalable MFT software quickly connects to internal systems and your business ecosystem, while moving data quickly and remaining compliant across all data interactions.
Benefits of Investing in the Right MFT Software
Data security
Eliminate security gaps and governance challenges with structured access control.
Consolidation
Consolidate all integration processes onto a single platform for central control and management.
Collaboration
Connect internal and external file sharing and collaborative workflows.
Auditability
Track all files that are received by or sent from your organization.
Process automation
Build, transform, and automate integrations by leveraging APIs.
Capabilities Offered by the Best MFT Software Options
Flexible Deployment Options
MFT vendors that don’t support flexible deployment options do not embrace modern IT strategies, so it’s critical an MFT software can be launched on-premise, in the cloud, or both.
If you are considering an on-premise MFT deployment, you should ensure the MFT software:
- Can run on your current operating system
- Is an agile technology that runs smoothly in the background & doesn’t take over system and network resources
- Has the ability to scale to support your future needs and grow as your business grows
- Ensures 24/7 access to data and systems with a high-availability setup
- Is able to deploy a proxy server
- Can publish APIs to extend their capabilities to build custom integrations & consume APIs to integrate the enterprise service bus (ESB) and essential applications
- Offers a native certificate manager to update digital certificates between trading partners
Comprehensive Audit Functionality
A full audit trail of a file’s life cycle is required to maintain government and industry compliance and often to meet SLAs and KPIs. A must-have for many organizations, leading MFT software offerings eliminate the manual data fetches for auditing/reporting and automate the tracking process so you know every aspect – when it was sent and received, who touched it and when – in case of an audit.
Non-Repudiation Capabilities
Non-repudiation is proof that what was sent by a certain system or person was actually received by another system or person, and that it is indeed the same file. This ensures integrity of the document. MFT solutions do this via digital signatures in combination with cryptographic data hash functions, such as the SHA-1 and SHA-2 algorithms. While required in many industries, including healthcare, banking, insurance, and securities, non-repudiation capabilities are critical to knowing your data sets are authentic and will benefit every organization doing digital business.
Complete Security and Governance Enablement
The best MFT software provides extensive features and functionality to secure your file transfer environment and govern your trading partner community.
- Secure access control via LDAP
- Enable antivirus and content scanning through ICAP
- Authorization (OAuth 2.0), authentication (SAML), encryption, certificate management
- Perimeter layer security with bidirectional proxy architecture
- Reporting, audit trails, and visibility dashboards
Additional Questions to Ask MFT Software Vendors
You owe it to your company and customers to have a firm understanding of your business data movement, especially when it comes time to explore modern managed file transfer (MFT) software. Whether your company is looking for deployment on premise or in the cloud, you first need to get to know the MFT vendor and the technology to see if they mesh with your organizational needs. This white paper offers an in-depth look at the 20 questions you should be asking vendors before moving ahead with an MFT software.
Managed file transfer with CIC MFT
CIC MFT easily centralizes and governs all managed file transfers moving throughout your business ecosystem. Our advanced MFT software enables the data protection and data security you need for all system-based and ad hoc file transfers.
Rapid connections
Set up connections and start transferring files in hours instead of days, or even weeks.
Multi-protocol support
Support all secure protocols required to handle data exchanges with any internal and external system.
Compliance
Gain real-time visibility, complete control, and governance to help meet all compliance mandates.
File acceleration
Move data, of any size or volume, 3.5x faster than competing solutions.
Flexible deployment
Deploy on your cloud or the Cleo Cloud platform, with the flexibility to self-manage MFT processes, or have Cleo manage them for you.
