Townsend Security Data Privacy Blog

Earlier this month we released a comprehensive upgrade to our secure managed file transfer solution – Alliance FTP Manager. This latest release incorporates a number of existing Townsend Security products that were previously priced separately and features new capabilities. FTP Manager 5.2 brings together the existing products Alliance FTP Security, Alliance Cross Data, and Alliance All-Ways secure into a single product.

This is a really a big win for our existing customers as well as IBM i customers. Our existing Alliance FTP Manager customers automatically receive the upgrade to FTP Manager 5.2 and so do all of our existing Cross Data and All-Ways Secure customers. We know there are a variety of security challenges facing IBM i customers who send data over networks and FTP Manager 5.2 provides those customers with the most comprehensive and flexible Secure Managed File Transfer offering available.

Highlights of FTP Manager 5.2 include encrypted PDF and encrypted Zip functionality. The new encrypted PDF functionality allows customers to generate encrypted and un-encrypted PDF documents using a familiar interface. And now that FTP Manager 5.2 fully supports zip encryption to the WinZip standard it will provides IBM i customers with a new tool to meet compliance regulations. Users can create Zip files on the IBM i platform and then use a variety of delivery methods to send the Zip files to customers, vendors, and employees.

There are a lot of exciting things on the horizon for Townsend Security and our customers. This release of FTP Manager 5.2 is just the start…..October promises to be a month full of major accomplishments and milestones.

IBM i (AS/400, iSeries) users send a lot of sensitive information to their customers, vendors, and employees which needs to be protected with strong encryption. Our customers today are using our PGP encryption solution to protect files. But there has been a big need to generate and protect information in common PC formats. With our upcoming release of Alliance FTP Manager for IBM i, we are stepping up our support with encrypted Zip files and encrypted PDF files.

Zip compression is very commonly used to send files via email. Not only does zip compression make our email attachments smaller, but the most popular zip compression programs now support 256-bit AES encryption of the contents. The ability to encrypt Zip files with AES provides a much better level of security than older zip protection methods. In the new release of Alliance FTP File Manager for IBM i we fully support Zip encryption to the WinZip standard. This means that you can create and protect Zip files on your IBM i platform, and then use a variety of delivery methods to get the Zip files in the hands of your customers, vendors, and employees. This will immediately give IBM i customers a new tool to meet compliance regulations.

The new Zip support provides rich capabilities to IBM i users. You can create encrypted or un-encrypted zip archives, include sub-directories, and use wild cards to select files. When uncompressing and decrypting you can specify any directory as the target for the files. This capability integrates with our automation facilities for processing received files. Lastly, we provide a Windows command line Zip application to help our customers who don’t already have a Zip application. I’m confident that this new capability will help our customers achieve a better level of security.

The other new security technology in FTP Manager for IBM i is our encrypted PDF support. In this first implementation, our customers will be able to create encrypted PDFs with their own content, and then use the automation facilities to distribute the PDFs via email, FTP, and other distribution methods. Encrypted PDF support includes the ability to set fonts and colors, embed watermark and graphic images, set headers and footers, and create tables and lists. The resulting encrypted PDF file is compatible with any PDF reader that supports the AES encryption standard for PDF. We’ve tested with a wide variety of PDF readers on PCs, Apple Macs, Blackberry, Linux desktops, and so forth. This will give our customers an additional tool to secure their sensitive data.

These new technologies for the IBM i customer will increase their abilities to meet compliance regulations and secure sensitive data. I hope you get the idea that we are dedicated to helping you protect your sensitive data and corporate assets. You are going to see a lot more of these types of new capabilities as we go forward.

Patrick