As discussed above, data leakage is a concern on every Executive management’s minds these days and it sit relatively high on the list of what keeps them up at night. What keeps them up at night, is that as we see more and more organizations try to stay ahead of their competition and curve by moving to doing business digitally and in real time with more and more regulations and compliance laws. The results of this is that more and more employees are now sending emails or large file where 10 years ago we sent our communications via, snail mail, messenger or overnight. It is fact this is the way we do business today in the real world.

I think however the real question is how do we ensure employees aren’t circumventing the system and sending things out via third party (gMail, Hotmail, etc). We don't, unless the company locks down access to third party sites. However if you lock these sites down you will have to give the employees another means to still send their files and communications. This is a drivers for technologies like (secure) file transfer solutions. As file sizes continue to grow so does the need to have technology in place to support those larger file transactions. This is where products like Accellion come into play, as well as others out there in the market place (Globalscape, Biscom and others).

My opinion is that organizations are still faced with the potential threat of data leakage regardless of the technologies you implement to steer your employees away from third party technologies. As much as we want to trust our employees are following the corporate rules and protocols, this is real life and today. You can give your employees the tools to help transfer those files but the question is what content resides within those files being sent? So how do you know that corporate information of a sensitive nature isn't leaving your networks? The fact is that with a solution like Accellion you are giving your employees keys to the moving van with out the ability to really have insight to what the moving van is taking or in this case sending.

Accellion yes is good to send large file but at the same time these files could be as large as whole hard drives. Who's to say that a so called trusted employee isn’t sending out back up copies of their hard drives or other information? You don't.
The only way to ensure you are protected from both accidental and intentional data leakage is to have DLP technology build into your current offering or the ability to integrate third party DLP technologies into existing technologies, both of which Accellion doesn’t presently provide within their offerings.

So as we continue to evolve into the digital future large files or other digital communications are only going to continue to grow. The nature and content of these communications and the need to secure the content of those files in transit will also grow. This will mean more content moving in and out of a network which will result in organization needing to make sure what content intending to leave your network satisfies corporate policies.

To do this you will need to look at more closely at your file transfer solutions to ensure DLP solutions are integrated or can be integrated from a 3rd party. This way the organization can prevent data leakage before it occurs. By placing DLP technology ahead of the horse you can ensure your companies, name, reputation and corporate assets. Then you can give the employees the technology and freedom to send those large files and digital communications without any worries of keeping the executive up at night.

Data leakage will not end by giving your employees a tool to send large file but by having the technology in place to prevent this from happening in the first place.