We asked Björn Matthiessen CEO of Secure MSP to tell us about the security enviroment in Germany and how they view the impact of European wide legislation based on thier own experiences.
Providing end-users with a secure and easy document exchange solution is a problem that many IT organisations across various industries face. Take German law firms, for example: being subject to strict privacy regulations, they are forced to store their data exclusively on German servers and to encrypt all their sensitive traffic. However, the need to exchange a large number of files, contracts and reports with clients and various other parties must be catered for as well.
The downsides of common workarounds…
Of course, there are the typical workarounds. Most commonly, emails are used – but apart from the annoying fact that size limitations may force users to split large documents into various ZIP files, security is a real problem in many cases. While sending contracts in unencrypted emails is out of the question, common encryption solutions often result in time-consuming software maintenance and key management. Larger organisations may opt for FTP, but its downsides are just as obvious – it will keep your administrators busy managing a complex and unfriendly user solution that is, above all, not designed to meet today’s security standards.
…and new opportunities in the Cloud
So what about moving to the Cloud? After all, virtually unlimited storage space and easy access make it an attractive alternative to eMail and FTP. However, to make it a secure, privacy-compliant, and workable collaboration platform, a solution is needed that covers three crucial requirements:
1. All data leaving the company network must be encrypted
2. Customers must be able to determine the physical location of their storage
3. It must be easy to handle for both users and for administrators
The question I have to ask is will the same regulations imposed on German companies become prevalent within the UK cloud computing space? If so are there lessons to be learned from other markets such as Germany and could you apply solutions that are already tried and tested within our market?
Securemsp cloud services
To cater for all those requirements, the German managed service provider, securemsp, has developed a set of Cloud services allowing organisations to use the Cloud for secure, easy document storage and exchange.
All data is centrally encrypted before it is sent to the Cloud, which means that also the encryption key is stored and managed centrally within the company network. There are physical locations in various countries to choose from and, what users and admins may be happy to hear, the Cloud storage is accessed via shared folders in the Windows environment that most users are familiar with.
The service range covers various common business needs, providing organisations with secure and easy access to the Cloud. To learn more about securemsp, please visit www.securemsp.com.
