Benefits of Managed File Transfer for Finance

For most companies, keeping their data and information safe is a critical element of doing business. But when it comes to banks and financial institutions, it’s absolutely essential.

Not only is the financial data itself important, but also the accompanying Personal Identifiable Information (PII) relating to customers and employees. Any breach in the system risks exposing financial details, PII, or both.

Managed File Transfer (MFT) adds additional layers of security by stopping many of the common breach points like email. With an MFT, all data flows from other systems through the MFT platform before it is distributed to its final location. Admins are able to manage data through the MFT platform and see all of the data going through it, as well as get automated alerts when important files arrive at their destination as expected–or get a notification when they don’t.

MFTs move data through secure protocols like SFTP, removing the risk of transferring through unsecure methods. They also have many other beneficial features that help safeguard financial data.

How do MFTs safeguard financial data?

Typically, when someone needs to transfer a file, it’s done through a number of different methods. And each method has its own set of transfer protocols. Email, for example, is a simple and straightforward way to send a file to somebody as an attachment. It’s also not secure because messages aren’t encrypted, people can spoof the name of senior staff members, and many email addresses are publicly available at places like company About pages.

An MFT helps consolidate file transfers by acting as a centralized hub that all data flows through first. Instead of managing multiple different file sharing tools with different protocols like SFTP and SCP, managing servers, and making sure software is up to date with the latest patches, an MFT like Couchdrop handles all of this for you.

Couchdrop is a cloud-native MFT solution that scales to meet your needs. There’s no need to maintain servers, do regular updates to meet compliance requirements, or manually connect different storage systems because Couchdrop does all of this and more for you. It is extremely versatile and can help you connect your different storage platforms together and securely transfer files between them.

Secure file transfer for financial institutions with Couchdrop MFT

Couchdrop MFT offers secure file transfer to help minimize risks and avoid security pitfalls. These include not storing data at rest, file encryption, security compliance, and more.

Data isn’t stored at rest

One way that Couchdrop stands out is by letting you bring your own cloud storage like Dropbox or Google Workspace, which most clients choose to do. Couchdrop then connects to cloud storage using public APIs and retrieves data via commands from SFTP or other available transfer protocols like SCP or FTP. The data is never stored on Couchdrop servers, which brings an added layer of security for financial and banking sectors.

File Encryption

Secure MFTs like Couchdrop keep your financial data safer than a safe with encryption that has yet to be beaten. Couchdrop uses AES encryption and allows users to add PGP encryption to files automatically through automated file workflows. Files with PGP encryption can also be decrypted in workflows by including the private PGP key and passphrase.

Security Compliance

Couchdrop meets security compliance standards for privacy and data transfer. This includes GDPR standards for the European Union for PII. Couchdrop is also a SOC2-compliant organization and keeps up to date with the latest compliance updates.

Other features of Couchdrop MFT

Couchdrop offers several other features that can help with access, security, and ease of use, including:

• 2FA and SSO including SAML
• Restricting to specific IPs
• Data sovereignty and geo-located nodes
• Temporary shared links and password-protected files
• Restricting access to unsecure transfer protocols like FTP, or only enabling them for specific users.
• Usernames can’t be changed once set and users are deactivated, but not deleted, to keep a record of their activity.

Using Couchdrop, your FIs can also create file automations to speed up file transfers and make them more secure.

Automated file transfers for security and improved workflows

One of the best ways to improve security for banks and FIs is to use automated file transfers through an MFT. File transfer automations do two important things: First, they remove the need to have an employee move the files manually, freeing up more time for other tasks. Second, they reduce the chance of errors because the automations stick to defined parameters, ensuring important files are moved to the right place at the right time through secure methods.

With Couchdrop, FIs have the added benefit of moving files between different storage platforms. These files are moved through SFTP to the storage integrations you add to Couchdrop. You can move files from NetSuite to SharePoint, SharePoint to Dropbox Teams, and even a local file server to cloud storage like Microsoft Azure.

Moving files through SFTP into various destinations can speed up workflows while ensuring customer data is never exposed.

Automation use cases for finance

File automations can benefit any type of organization that regularly needs to move files. But they can greatly improve workflows for banks and financial institutions. Some ways our customers use workflows include:

• 2FA and SSO including SAML
• Restricting to specific IPs
• Data sovereignty and geo-located nodes
• Temporary shared links and password-protected files
• Restricting access to unsecure transfer protocols like FTP, or only enabling them for specific users.
• Usernames can’t be changed once set and users are deactivated, but not deleted, to keep a record of their activity.

Couchdrop automations have many more features including the option to encrypt/decrypt files, multi-step automations with substeps, sending webhooks, and more. For a complete breakdown of what automations can do, see this article on Couchdrop automations.

Consider Couchdrop MFT for finance

It’s possible to move to a modern infrastructure and securely transfer files for banking and finance using a Managed File Transfer platform like Couchdrop. With Couchdrop, there are a variety of sharing tools that allow you to share files between cloud storage and on-premises servers using secure file transfer protocols like SFTP. For more information on this, see our article SFTP for banking and financial institutions.

With Couchdrop, you can keep customer PII and financial data safe while still having options to share files to get them where they need to be. Give it a try and see if Couchdrop will work for you by starting a 14-day free trial today.