RED DEER, Alberta -
Employees at Community Savings Credit Union here were having a hard time e-mailing large attachments to a vendor last year, using document compression software that was secure but much too complicated for the average user, according to Steven Hay, team lead, system engineers at the $2.3-billion CU.
Though the compression software offered 256-bit strong encryption for data security, the problem was that the software required multiple steps, each with several technical options, from non-technical users.
To make matters worse, Community Savings had an updated version of the software, but the vendor had an outdated version.
"That created a two-day delay in the project," Hay said.
The e-mails containing nonpublic data weren't the only problem, he continued. Even when e-mailing large sets of attachments containing public data, employees sometimes would fail as they tried to break up the attachments and e-mail them separately.
"It's difficult to expect the standard user to go into compression software and break up files and zip them or send each file one by one and make sure they're using the same version of the software," Hay said.
The cumbersome process wore thin on the Community Savings information services department, he added.
"Our first priority is our members and employees, and we'd stop what we were doing in IS to help them send attachments," he explained. "The support requests were a nagging factor on our time when we were busy with other projects."
After too many e-mail delays and help desk calls, Community Savings made the move in January to install an e-mail appliance that is part of the secure file transfer system offered by Accellion Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif.
"The Accellion appliance is a concept that a lot of credit unions could benefit from because it addresses two issues: first, the security of sensitive files, large or small, and second, large files," Hay said.
Now Community Savings employees can quickly send any attachment via e-mail to each other, members or third parties. For those files that are five megabytes and larger, users simply click on an icon within their existing Microsoft e-mail client. The Accellion appliance then takes the attachments and stores them for retrieval by the recipient.
The recipient doesn't actually receive the attachment but a secure e-mail link to the attachment. Recipients can then click through, login and download the files during a 60-day window.
"Users don't have to be technically literate," Hay said. "The just follow the directions to the file."
The appliance can store up to 60 gigabytes of data, but Hay said storage rarely exceeds five gigabytes at any given time.
"The appliance took away all the pain of the employees struggling to use the compression software," he added. "And in IS, we don't miss giving all the support time that the software demanded. We just don't get those calls anymore."
About 5% of the CU's employees need to send large files, including core financial data, pictures, blueprints, diagrams and software patches, and therefore are permitted, via an interface with Microsoft Active Directory, to use Accellion.
Whereas Accellion works for most file transmissions, Community Savings hasn't abandoned secure File Transfer Protocol (FTP).
"We'll always have FTP processes in place so that we can automatically send and receive files on a scheduled basis," Hay said. A typical Accellion configuration, such as the one deployed at Community Savings, would cost between $5,000 to $10,000, according to Accellion.
more
Read more about e-mail technology at cujournal.com and search the following bolded terms in the archive:
* Keeping Hackers Out
* Small CUs, Big E-Mail Risks?
* How Larger CUs Set E-Mail Policy
* e(ncrypting) e-mail
For info on this story:
* Community Savings CU, www.communitysavings.ca
* Accellion, www.accellion.com
