You Cannot Just Throw Your Data into a Blender but Your IT Can Support Data That Easily!

As we all know data is everywhere. We all have our secret ways of storing our data and using our data. I remember having three computers: one for online banking, one for work, and one for home use by anybody. I sure do miss those Blue Screens of Death (BSOD) and waiting 10 minutes for each PC to boot up on Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/2010/XP. Ah, this is why I started loving Linux – thanks RHEL.

Keeping data secure

With most people now working remotely, what is happening to all that data? Companies think they have it all secure but probably nobody does 100% of the time – not even our Gov’t can claim that. What can a company do to better manage its data?

They can start by having written security policies. There can be 100 blogs alone on that subject so we will get straight to the good parts. In an organization, data that is produced by its employees is stored for however long their policies allow and other Gov’t regulations protecting Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Currently, other countries are enforcing those laws better than the U.S. is but someday we will get there.

When data is incoming or outgoing you need to scan for viruses, Data Loss Protection (DLP), and Personally Identifiable Information (PII). You need to protect it within an organization’s security policy. A lot of this can be done automatically if using the right tools.

Many vendors support ICAP so if you have Enterprise Virus Scanning and Data Loss Protection at Enterprise level many applications can support and leverage ICAP today. A good example is the Axway Managed File Transfer used to embed those types of technologies. Users used to have to pay AV and DLP vendors where now they simply leverage what is already deployed in the Enterprise for typical email. It doesn’t sound like much, but Exchange has taken over our lives.

The Solution

This is where Axway supports your data no matter where it is, on-premises, in AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or a hybrid – some on AWS, some on Azure, and some on-prem.

Wow, how can you do that?!

Axway’s API Management solution helps customers benefit from its long-standing expertise and solutions for B2Bi and Enterprise Managed File Transfers for large Enterprises and Gov’t Agencies. Axway’s B2Bi supports EDI business message formats, trading exchange formats, message-handling services, trading partner management/on-boarding, security protocols, and services such as digital signing, encrypting data, and or TLS authentication.

You can leverage API Gateway to enforce policies, enable users and partners much more easily, and enjoy benefits of an API first mentality. In addition to being able to leverage B2Bi solutions by Axway, it also helps with managed file transfers with your typical Ad-Hoc, EFSS, and FTP/S, SFTP, AS2, SSH, and HTTPS. With Axway’s API Gateway and Managed File Transfer, you get what most banks, healthcare, gov’t agencies, and supply chains around the world are using.

Let your customers easily communicate securely with you. Let your admins live in the world they want managing organizations’ important data limited to a few who need to know. Let them transfer those in a more secure and efficient way with possibly higher priority than other file transfers happening. Maybe you have an SLA you need to meet – it will also help with that.

What happens to your data is that when it is inbound you grab it and do whatever you want with it. Archive a copy for 7 years, push through secure protocols to another location for handling. Think Point of Sale Cash Registers update data daily. We help them do it securely and have been for years. Think of banks who must report data to the government financial agencies in many ways, we do that too!

At the end of the day, you can do whatever you want with your data – inbound and outbound. But you have to have multiple vendors to provide all this unless you are using Axway, which can solve your data needs – whatever they may be – and wherever your data resides.

At the end of the day we all have one of two reasons to protect our data:

1. Either to help your organization continue to be profitable and stay out of the news in a bad way, like not protecting your data (Data Breaches)
2. Or you are trying to save lives, which to me is more important at the end of the day as you can’t spend money while 6 feet under.

Included with API Management is a microservices mesh integration and support for non-Axway gateways like Amazon API Gateway. They help extend the solutions’ reach and address both API and microservices strategy on a single platform for all of the above use cases as well as numerous others. If you can imagine it, you can build it!

More to come! There’s a lot of interest surrounding the topic. Data is key to business success and if they own it, they need to act like it if they haven’t realized that already. Don’t get caught on the front page in a bad way because you didn’t protect your data.