The Inovis Blog

A few weeks ago, we asked you how many paper transactions you were still working with. Today’s question continues this thought. We’d like to know why you think it is that not all of your transactions are electronic. We’d also like to know what problems you’ve encountered with electronic transactions.

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System iNetwork’s John Grist recently blogged about a Sterling Commerce-commissioned study on File Transfer Protocol with Hilty Moore& Associates. Among other interesting nuggets, the research found that FTP use is up dramatically despite the fact that 93% experienced delivery stoppages at least 20% of the time. And this is despite known security concerns with FTP according to the article? Interesting timing that fellow Inovis blogger, Jon Gatrell, today posted on another story that hackers are sharing user IDs and passwords for FTP sites from major Fortune 500 companies.

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Finjin just announced that 8,700 server credentials were hacked from standard “in the clear” FTP sites on the internet. The FTP over the internet without a VPN or without using SSL. Secure File Transfer, often referred to as Managed File Transfer (MFT), is deploying encryption at the session level to ensure usernames and passwords aren’t visible in “clear-text” over the internet. Many scripts and basic FTP clients may not support certificate based encryption and without a VPN these credentials could be at risk for who ever would like to “sniff” packets.

Other MFT options would be on of the ASx variants (AS1=SMTP, AS2 = HTTPS, AS3 = FTP over SSL), these capabilities are essentially not just session level encryption, but also payload encryption with non-repudiation capabilities to confirm the contents sent, where the contents received. This confirmation of receipt is done via a “message” is referred to as Message Disposition Notifications. What’s your FTP strategy?

1. Empower business users to search for their PO themselves
2. Get notified of issues before they become business problems
3. Identify issues and prioritized them based on business impact
4. Use self-service certification tools for their suppliers
5. Provide up to date reporting and metrics from a single system
6. Support only 1 application for communications and translation
7. Notify trading partners of issues without picking up a phone or typing an email
8. Eliminate manual document reconciliation (FA’s, Invoices…)
9. Improve fill rates and on time fulfillment to maximize revenue
10. Take a day off and know that the right people will be notified when an issue happens

Did we miss anything?  Other things you would rather do?  Let us know.