We’re going to Vegas baby!
The BDS team is heading to Las Vegas next week and exhibiting at the International Legal Technology Association’s 2010 conference. ILTA puts out a quarterly magazine (Peer to Peer, in which BDS was featured a few months back), and is the show to attend if you deal at all with the legal IT space. Come by and meet us and learn about the new BDS 4.0 release, as well as our new iManage integration module.
Over a year in the making, we finally launched version 4.0. This is a pretty big release for us and adds a number of exciting features! Read the full release here.
The launch of BDS 4.0 sets a new standard for ease of use in a secure file transfer solution. Simple and straightforward for end users, BDS 4.0 raises the bar for system customization, flexibility, and features that administrators will love. Some of those features include:
- Automatic file compression to accelerate file transfers
- Ability to upload entire folders (and their sub-folders)
- Outlook 2010 add-in
- Collaboration
- User preferences
- Support for OpenLDAP and SunONE LDAP
- AutoPost and AutoFetch utilities for automated transfers
SpaceX is one of those uber-cool companies that is doing what many of us wish we could – launch rocketships. Big ones. I fondly recall my little Estes rocket with the D engine. Well, these days, Elon Musk, one of the founders of PayPal, Tesla motors, and other ventures, has stepped things up from cardboard tubes and solar ignitors with his company Space Exploration Technologies Corporation. He’s launching massive lift vehicles to help provide transportation services as it’s getting pretty hard to supply the international space station with the impending shuttle retirement. And with a bevy of private space companies vying for various forms of space travel for mere mortals, someone needs to be the picks and shovels of the new gold rush.
We had a great conversation with Branden Spikes, CIO of SpaceX and he told us how they use BDS to send their confidential and large files securely and quickly to scientists, researchers, contractors, vendors, and other collaborators. SpaceX employees were spending way too much time sending files instead of launching rockets, so we stepped in and let them focus on what they do best, and let us worry about secure file transfers.
According to Spikes, “One of the biggest benefits of BDS is that it can run on our own network in the way I want to run it. BDS was the only solution that offered this level of configuration and customization….In fact, we’ve reduced the time to encrypt and send files from two hours to less than two minutes.”
Read the full case study if you’re a space nut like me.
Come see us at Booth 437 at the upcoming ILTA conference (International Legal Technology Assocation) in Las Vegas August 22-26, 2010. The theme will be Strategic Unity, a concept for integrating technology with the practice of law.
This is a great way to network with other legal technology professionals to attend educational sessions, see what’s coming down the pike regarding compliance, and the latest secure file transfer and collaboration tools.
Register for a luncheon that Biscom and Keno Kozie will be hosting in Chicago on August 4th. This luncheon will be a way for legal IT professionals to discuss file transfer technologies, how to lock down files during transport, collaborating with clients and external counsel, and replacing FTP servers with a more manageable and secure solution.
Healthcare IT News just published an interview with Mark Haas, associate director of health information services at Mass General Hospital, one of the premier hospitals in the world. Mark discusses how MGH implemented Biscom Delivery Server to more than double the number of release of information (ROI) requests they can handle with the same staffing. MGH is now handling 52,000 releases per year with the help of BDS.
Another interesting statistic – MGH has reduced their costs for providing these medical records to insurance companies, law firms, and others who request them from $16.08/request down to $5.61 – a 65% savings. MGH also benefits by using BDS to comply with meaningful use objectives.
To see the full case study on MGH, go here.
Biscom and Adapative Solutions have just announced the world’s first SFT integration with Autonomy iManage for document management. By integrating BDS with iManage, users can send files in their FileSite repository through BDS directly without having to copy files to their desktop and then send. When receiving files securely through BDS, iManage users can also save files directly to FileSite.
For more information on deploying BDS with your iManage solution, contact Adaptive Solutions. See the full press release here.
Our latest newsletter has just been published with the latest news, tech tips, and announcement of BDS version 4.0 this summer.
Biscom has partnered with TOSS to provide a hosted solution for transfering files. For smaller companies who have confidential, sensitive, or very large files to transfer, the GetSaaS Secure Files solution by TOSS is a great way to deploy secure file transfer services to your users quickly and easily. The best part about this, you’re using the same trusted and proven software solution that Fortune 500 companies rely on to transfer their most critical files and data.
We’re excited to partner with a company like TOSS who has years of experience in managed services. Read the full press release here.
New press release on our partnership with Keno Kozie, a leading provider of information technology design, service, and support to law firms and legal departments.
See the full press release here.
Biscom and Pro2col Ltd, a privately held company specializing in the supply and integration of network security and secure file transfer solutions, will demonstrate BDS at InfoSecurity Europe, April 27-29, 2010, Earls Court, London, UK. Pro2col and Biscom will be exhibiting together in Booth R88.
Lora Bentley from IT Business Edge asked a smattering of people for their opinion on privacy — whether it’s alive or dead. I started thinking about this and to me, privacy is what we make of it — we can choose whether we keep our lives private (as much as it’s possible to do these days) or open ourselves up to the online world. To me, privacy is both alive and dead, and we’re ultimately responsible for it. That’s when a vision of Schrodinger’s cat popped into my mind — pretty esoteric reference to those who did not take quantum mechanics in college, but what can I say, I’m a bit of a nerd.
I also remembered an article that came out not too long ago about some teen who killer her boyfriend because she was drinking and driving. Not only was this a horrible event, for which the girl was going to be charged as a minor (she was only 17), but she posted a picture of herself on Facebook titled “Drunk in Florida” a month later. The judge caught wind of this and changed his decision, denied her youthful offender status, and instead charged her as an adult. Now, this girl, in my opinion, did not choose wisely regarding her online privacy. However, it was her choice. How much of ourselves we put out there is really up to us.
I don’t subscribe to the idea of complete privacy, because these days that’s pretty hard to do (who doesn’t buy an occasional something from Amazon?) However, we do need to be judicious. And of course, when it comes to obeying the law (e.g. HIPAA, SOX, GLBA, etc.), we should also be aware of the consequences if we don’t protect confidential or sensitive information.
File sharing sites have never been known for their security but now physicians are starting to put their patients’ data up on these peer to peer sites, potentially exposing private and confidential information, and clearly violating HIPAA requirements.
Healthcare IT News is reporting on this study and it’s really quite scary: http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/docs-file-sharing-risky-business-patient-data
The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) just published its March issue of Peer to Peer magazine. You’ll find an article I authored on data breaches, privacy laws, and how secure file transfer can help companies distribute their confidential information while complying with various legal requirements. You can also use this link to download the specific article as a PDF.
Just got back from the RSA conference in San Francisco last week. It was quite a show — some heavy hitters were in attendance, including Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, FBI director Robert Mueller, and a very cryptic NSA spokesperson. For you geeks out there, Whifield Diffie, Martin Hellman, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and David Chaum played big parts in the keynotes and panels. It was interesting to see both the public and private sectors well represented here compared to previous RSA conferences, and there was definitely more openness between the two. The paranoia level was high, with many keynotes commenting on organized cybercrime, cyberwarfare, cloud security. Janet Napolitano actually tried to recruit hackers and other security talent for DHS in Hollywood-esque fashion!
The sessions were actually quite good, with tracks in application development, law, hackers and threats, data security, policy and government, and governance, risk and compliance. One session I attended on data breaches was interesting; the speaker asked the audience to raise their hands if they had experienced a data breach, and three quarters of the room raised their hands. Data breaches are occurring, and to their credit, companies seem to be aggressively pursuing a strategy of prevention over cure.
Our Legal Practice Manager Charlie Magliato is going to be hosting a webinar on managing large email attachments, with special guest Bruce Bial, IT Director at Riemer & Braunstein. You’ll see how Bruce and his team implemented BDS to handle their secure file transfer needs and eliminated large file attachments from going through their Exchange server.
The webinar is scheduled for Thursday, February 25, 2010 from 2-3pm EST.
Click here to register!
The Ponemon Institute released a new study on the Federal government accessing your electronic health records. The study showed that people actually care about their privacy, at least when it comes to government workers.
See the article in Forbes.
Up to $204 per compromised record. That’s the latest data the Ponemon Institute has collected based on their annual study. Ellen Messmer’s PC World article on the cost of data breaches again supports the notion that, just like your doctor keeps telling you, preventive strategies will save you in the long run, in more ways than one.
The article also contains a link to the 2009 Data Breach Hall of Shame, which is interesting reading. Heartland Payment Systems topped the list with 130 million records breached through SQL injection! Ouch.
Google is not infallible? That’s crazy talk. Well, this apparent leak just goes to show that no company or organization is truly safe from data breaches. This was not an intentional or malicious data breach, and most data breaches are not — it was simple human error, which is never going to be extinguished as a potential chink in a company’s data protection armor.
If Google were using Biscom Delivery Server for its secure communication however, this could have been avoided. Even if it was sent out in error (which even the best DLP solutions may not catch), the recall feature of BDS could have prevented the leak.
Read about the leak here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/186719/google_blames_human_error_for_data_leak.html
Biscom was interviewed by the Boston Business Journal a few weeks ago, and the story just came out. At a time when many high tech businesses in Boston are hurting, Biscom stands out as a profitable, growing company, and it’s nice that we’re being recognized for that.
Biscom’s roots do go back to computer fax technology (Biscom invented the category of a computer-based fax server back in 1986), but Biscom has expanded its scope to include all kinds of document delivery, including secure file transfer, workflow, imaging solutions, cloud-based offerings, VM appliances, and Fax over IP.
You can read an excerpt here, but you’ll need to register to read the full story.
