Hermes Counts on MOVEit for Enterprise-Level Security and Compliance

MOVEit File Transfer is an enterprise data transfer server that boasts end-to-end encrypted transfer and storage of data, as well as delivering powerful administration and reporting capabilities.

The Challenge

With awareness of data breaches at an all-time high, financial institutions are working hard to implement policies and solutions that protect sensitive financial information along with their reputations and industry competitiveness. In today’s digital world, critical financial data is being sent back and forth between businesses and individuals at speeds faster than anyone ever thought possible. While this information exchange allows financial institutions to deliver higher levels of service and capitalize on emerging growth opportunities, it also leaves them vulnerable to security breaches and data leaks.

Hermes a multi-specialist asset manager, owned by BT Pension Scheme (BTPS), deals with a huge amount of sensitive data and, therefore, turned to Ipswitch to provide them with a secure and reliable solution to help protect the transfer of data and information. Requiring a fully versatile solution they installed Ipswitch’s MOVEit File Transfer.

Hermes offers a range of investment solutions ranging from alternative strategies, such as fund of hedge funds and commodities, to engagement focus funds, real estate, private equity and specialist equity products. Its pension fund management service, Hermes Pension Fund Management Limited (HPFM), runs alongside its multi-specialist structure and acts as the executive arm of the BT Pension Scheme (BTPS). Hermes currently invests assets on behalf of 204 clients across these product areas and has over £20 billion under management.

The Vision

“We needed to host an FTP site so that people could post information to us, which, obviously, needed to be very secure due to the sensitivity of the data,” explained Jamie Dewar, Technical Services Manager, Hermes. “We didn’t host FTP before as we were a ‘pull only’ organization and just used the basic Microsoft mainline tools. However, due to changing business requirements we required an enterprise-class FTP solution that was highly secure.”

The Solution

MOVEit Managed File Transfer is an enterprise data transfer server that boasts end-to-end encrypted transfer and storage of data, as well as delivering powerful administration and reporting capabilities. It can be accessed through the firewall from both inside and outside of a network for transfers including End-User-to-End-User, End-User-to-Backend- System and Backend-System-to-Backend-System.

“Having recognized the need for a solution, we evaluated several products that were placed in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant,” said Mr. Dewar. “We take into consideration what other people think of the product. We look at best reviews, what other people are using and what the people we are working with are using. We then evaluated Ipswitch’s MOVEit File Transfer and it did meet our requirements of flexibility, reliability, and security. We also liked the way the server partitions itself up in MOVEit, that everything on the server is encrypted and that MOVEit automatically replicates any changes to its config to the mirror MOVEit servers at our DR site.”

Regulations

Financial organizations come under heavy scrutiny by regulatory bodies, and need to adhere to strict regulatory compliance.

MOVEit File Transfer was designed from the beginning to be a security solution and to support a wide variety of popular public protocols and standards. MOVEit File Transfer utilizes FIPS 140-2 Validated Cryptography including 256-bit AES encryption that is used to securely store every file, message and Web form posting received. It also supports end-to-end encrypted transfer and storage. As it provides its own, separate, secure permission and storage capabilities, hackers cannot access the data MOVEit File Transfer handles, even if they subvert the underlying OS.

Reliable and Flexible Solution

MOVEit’s API interface option provides third-party programs (including Web applications) with programmatic access to MOVEit transfer, storage and user database services, and to its user, folder, permissions and reporting functions. This option has enabled Hermes to easily integrate its new job scheduler, which it uses to download vital information. “It fits in well with our overnight processing, which used to be manual. We’ve got a new job scheduler and MOVEit ties in nicely with the job scheduler through the APIs, feeding error codes back to the job scheduler,” said Mr. Dewar.

“We need to know if a data transfer has or hasn’t worked. Rather than email data around we place it in designated folders. MOVEit File Transfer polls these folders according to its schedule, then performs whatever action it has been configured to do – FTP, archive, copy and so on. If required, we can also configure it to send us success/fail emails to relevant parties. The advanced error checking and reporting has been very useful as well. If something hasn’t happened, it’s easy to find out why.”