Meet a Leapfiler - Part Deux
It's time for another segment for Meet a Leapfiler so you can get to know our team a little better. Anthony joined us recently as our Technical Solutions Manager to ensure that our client service team is keeping all of our clients happy.
When we first met Anthony, some of us couldn't help but gushed out loud, "Oh my goodness it's Jean Claude van Damme!"
As it turned out, Anthony is a multi-talented ninja. Not only can he do splits, but he's been doing anything and everything that the team needs him for and more.
Q: So how's the last few weeks been here at LeapFILE?
A: Terrible. I mean really, really awful....... :)
No, seriously, these first few weeks have been great. LeapFILE has assembled an exceptionally talented group of people, and they have warmly welcomed me into the family. There has been a lot of work, to be sure, but I don't think I would have it any other way. I am honestly blown away by the energy and innovation here and I am really looking forward to the days/months/years ahead!
Q: What do you think about the team?
A: LeapFILE is the type of environment that naturally encourages a strong sense of passion and hard work. I am humbled by the sheer amount of raw talent that I see on the team and I have been having a blast working with everyone here. Each day I am more and more impressed with our level of quality and service, for both our released products and our products that are still under development.
Q: How do you enjoy your role here so far?
A: My role... Actually, my role here seems to be a bit fluid. It's really quite exciting! I never know what the next day is going to bring, and I love that.
The bottom line is that LeapFILE allows me to do the things I enjoy the most: developing technical solutions, providing support and training to a wonderfully diverse client-base, playing with the latest technology, working with a top-notch team of like-minded, driven individuals, and getting to sit next to Jeh. What more could you ask for? Beer, you say? Yeah, we have that too!
Q: What brought you here and what are you looking forward to?
A: I am looking forward to Oxygen, of course!
I guess I'm a bit of a startup junky. I don't think any other working environment offers the types of challenges and rewards that one can experience in a cutting-edge startup. LeapFILE's vision just made sense to me, and after 5 minutes of my initial conversation Jeh "Pinky" Lin, I knew this was the place for me. One thing that really stood out for me was the fact that LeapFILE is the first company I have worked for that produces a product that I can and, more importantly, WANT to use on a daily basis.
Q: Any other celebrity doppelganger you prefer over Jean-Claude van Damme?
A: Hah! Maybe I should stop doing the splits between the tops of our cubes, huh?
Personally, I don't see it. I mean McConaughey, Pitt, Depp, DiCaprio, The Rock, sure, I'm right there with you on those ones, but JVCD? Ahh, who am I kidding, I'd be lucky to have that comparison made. I'm just hoping its JCVD of the late 80's variety... Do you think Jean-Claude will read this?
I suppose our readers can be the judge here :)
Regional Bank Partners with LeapFILE to Protect Customer Data
As many of our clients already know, financial services, banks and accounting firms make up a large majority of our 2,000+ clients, and this includes 20 of the top 100 accounting firms. We are very popular in this space because of federal and state data compliance laws for securely transmitting electronic documents.
Loan Officers Need a Secure Solution to Protect Their Clients Data
I spoke with a large regional bank that needed a secure solution for their Loan Officers. Today, they email these documents back and forth with their customers. Because these documents often contain personally identifiable information (PII), such as social security numbers, account balances, etc, they needed a way to transmit this information securely. In addition, their loan officers are busy enough already, and didn’t have time to learn how to use new software.
Security Doesn’t Have to Equal Difficult to Use
With LeapFILE the Loan Officers can now securely send loan documents and forms containing their customer’s personally identifiable information. They can also receive these documents securely from an unlimited number of their customers. In addition, because LeapFILE’s Outlook plug-in integrates seamlessly with the Loan Officer’s Outlook client, sending a document securely to their customers is just like sending an email, no new software to learn, no training or downtime required. No headaches. That was easy.
Staffing Firm Chooses LeapFILE for Massachusetts 201 CMR 17.00 Data Compliance
As many of our customers already know, Massachusetts 201 CMR 17.00 (CMR 17), arguably the most comprehensive state data privacy law went into effect on March 1st. The law requires the development and regular audit of plans for protecting personal information of Massachusetts residents by companies and individuals who store and use this information.
CMR 17 Data Compliance for a Massachusetts Staffing Firm
I spoke with a Massachusetts based staffing company with multiple offices across the state. They sponsor many contractors who from time to time request direct deposit. In the past, the contractor would email their name, social security and bank account numbers to their recruiter who could be located in the field or one of their many offices. The recruiter in turn would email this information to payroll to setup their direct deposit. CMR 17’s technology requirements call for the encryption of data during transmission as well as any data on mobile devices such as laptops and PDAs. Their concern, which was valid, was that by emailing this information they were not encrypting the personal information in transmission. They had to find a solution that was both secure and easy to use.
LeapFILE for Sending Data Securely and Meeting Data Privacy Laws
With LeapFILE, contractors are now directed to the staffing firm’s branded exchange site where they can easily send their direct deposit form directly to payroll or their recruiters. With little to no training required, the recruiters can also send information securely between themselves, other contractors, candidates, offices, etc, all while staying in compliance of one of the most comprehensive data privacy laws in the country. End result, the staffing company is compliant, their recruiters are happy, their contractors are happy, problem solved.
An Update on HIPAA - New Breach Notification Rule
HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act has been signed into law as part of the Recovery Act, making changes to to privacy and security rules of HIPAA which are effective immediately. New Breach Notification Rule for HIPAA applies to vendors of personal health records and third party service providers.
Definition of Breach:
Defined by the Department of Health and Human Services, a breach is "an impermissible use or disclosure under the Privacy Rule that compromises the security or privacy of the protected health information such that the use or disclosure poses a significant risk of financial, repetitional, or other harm to the affected individual".
Unsecured "protected health information" (PHI) is information that has not been rendered unusable, unreadable, or indecipherable to unauthorized individuals through the use of a technology or methodology specified by the guidance.
Requirements of the new breach notification rule:
- Individuals must be notified within 60 days of breach
- Notification need to include a description of the breach, description of the type of information that were involved, steps that affected individuals should take
- Required to provide a notice to prominent media outlets (i.e. press release) if over 500 residents of a state are affected by the breach
- Must submit breach notification to the Secretary of HHS
Recommended steps:
- Identify which types of protected health information are unsecured
- Evaluate how the unsecured information can be made secured
- Evaluate approved technologies and methodologies
- Select a reliable service provider
- Establish security guidelines and train your staff on the proper procedures
Many common day-to-day practices are vulnerable to data breach. Just think for a minute about how you communicate information to your own staff, clients or partners. For example, email attachments are one of the most common use case of unencrypted file transfers that could easily lead to breach of sensitive information. It is critical to select a reliable service provider to transfer or store private data. A few things to look for while picking a service provider:
- Track record of reliability and strong industry reputation
- SAS 70 certification
- Service Level Agreement
At LeapFILE, we've been providing a secure file transfer solution for thousands of businesses - helping users and IT to easily comply with regulatory requirements. Let us know if you have any questions about how we can help!
Unlocking CCH Files with Right Click
In life we often take the little things for granted, however, things we’ve grown accustomed to expect as standard may be far more unique than we originally thought.
While I was at the Boomer Technology Conference last December, one of our customers gave a presentation to show the different technologies they used to communicate to their clients and why it worked for them. The overall message: implement technology that is easy to use or your staff won't use it. He pointed out that their firm used LeapFILE for secure file transfer because LeapFILE allows them to right-click in CCH Engagement to securely send files to their clients through Outlook. I didn’t think too much of it until I had a conversation with another accounting firm. He let me know he used CCH for paperless, so I asked him if he used Engagement. When I told him he could right-click on a file within Engagement and send the file using Outlook via LeapFILE all in one step, he said that’s something he must test out. His firm signed up about a week later. I figured I was on to something so I started asking all the firms I talked to if they used CCH, and if so, I let them know about this “neat little trick”.
It wasn’t until the end of December that I learned the real significant of that right clicking. I just started working with an accounting firm looking for a solution to securely send files over email that wouldn’t break the bank and would be easy for their accountants to adopt. Of the several products they researched, they narrowed the field down to two viable options under consideration with LeapFILE being the last product for them to evaluate. During our demonstration, I asked them if they were CCH users and if they used Engagement. When I received the “yes” answer and explained the right click capability to them, they were in utter disbelief. Apparently they had tested several services with Outlook Plug-ins before and could not see how LeapFILE could do this while the rest our competitors could not. I set them up with a trial account as a POC, and through their testing, also determined that LeapFILE allows the same actions to be done in CCH Document as well.
As an old time LeapFILEr once said, “Not all Outlook Plug-ins are created equal.” Right-click on a file to securely send a file through Outlook. To think that something that seems so simple and expected turns out to be an absolute treasure.
Any File, Any Size. The Goodness of Java Applet
- Upload and download files of any size
- Auto resume broken upload and download
- Can be used with all browsers and all platforms like Windows, Mac and Linux
- Drag- drop multiple files and even folders
- Shows file compression and transfer progress
New Deployment Options for Administrators
In our ongoing product enhancement efforts, the team rolled out a few changes last week that I’d like to share with you. Some of our enterprise customers requested these features and today we are very happy to announce the new feature availability to all our users.
Customize your welcome email
First, we have provided an option for the administrators to customize the welcome email which is sent to users when their accounts are created. This enables administrators to enforce company policies in their implementation. You can include HTML and embed your company logo as well. The temporary login information from LeapFILE will be appended below this message. If you use our AD integration, then you do not have to use this feature.
Customize your help desk URL
Second, the support link in the application can be turned off or customized to point to your helpdesk. If your company has its own helpdesk team managing LeapFILE, then you can update the URL to redirect user queries. While most customers enjoy and even rely on LeapFILE’s client support, some still want to make use of their own help desk. This option will make that preference possible now.
Administrators can find these options under Account -> Account Setup. So go ahead and start using these new features :)
Want more? Talk to us. Our solutions are customizable to fit your business requirements.
Single Sign-On… in 60 minutes or less!
- No more password fatigue
- Reduced IT costs due to lower number of IT help desk calls about passwords - According to recent research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), password management costs $250 per year, on average, for every computer user in an organization. So, if an agency has 10,000 employees, it is shelling out $2.5 million annually just for assisting staffers who have lost or forgotten their passwords.
- Security and real time access control
- Centralized reporting for compliance adherence
- Supports latest as well as conventional directory services
- Import the virtual machine into your existing VMware infrastructure
- Power on the imported VM and give it internet access and AD server IP
- Prepare your Firewall and configure access rules
- You’re done! We will configure the rest of it :)
You spoke. We listened.
Over the past few months, we have focused on building innovative products like Oxygen while maintaining and enhancing our existing product, LeapFILE Transfers.
We are very aware of the trust that you have placed in us, and our responsibility to deliver what you have asked for. Today, we're happy to announce the following enhancements to the desktop client and Outlook plug-in for LeapFILE Transfers:
- Redesign LeapFILEComhub service for Terminal server and Citrix systems. The desktop client will now stream data to the service via IPC.
- Increased the number of streams and packet size for upload throttling
- Support for non-English systems. You can now install and use desktop client on Windows OS using any language like German, French or Chinese etc.
- Error message pop up in the system tray for failed transfers and connectivity issues
- Improved proxy and firewall support.
- Sync desktop client and plugin settings at login and every 30 minutes.
- Better temporary file clean up.
- Improved Outlook plug-in for RTF file handling.
- Saved copies of sent items are marked as read.
- Added time stamp in subject line and body of the message for easier sorting and achieving compliance goals.
If you are excited and would like to see the new features in action, check out the latest desktop client installer.
As always, we would love to hear your feedback. Tell us what you think about these enhancements. Leave a comment or talk to us via Twitter
Biggering a Big Idea
When we launched LeapFILE Folders at DEMO fall '09, we thought it was a pretty big deal that we were enabling users to collaborate with team members and clients directly from their desktop file explorer without emailing, browsing or uploading/downloading. In addition to easy collaboration, the system provided IT with complete control and visibility of corporate data, including remote wipe. The response to our launch at DEMO and our early private beta program feedback substantiated it was a big deal.
In continuing the momentum, we also stepped up our marketing efforts, including participation in major tradeshows like Enterprise 2.0 and Defrag, and hiring a well known PR firm. A funny thing happened along the way. We realized that our new technology could serve as an aggregation platform, which would connect all users from their desktop to any and all corporate file sources. LeapFILE Folders has now evolved, naturally and organically, into LeapFILE Virtual File System ("VFS").
The power and possibilities of VFS are limitless. You can see examples of what VFS can solve here and here and here. The response from our customers so far has been overwhelming and shown us that this is the right direction. To achieve this enlarged vision, we've decided to defer attendance of Enterprise 2.0 (we're signed for 2010 in Boston) and Defrag. We are going to miss those who were planning to meet us at those events.
Instead, we are going to take the necessary time to ensure that our product meets scalability demands, performance expectations, and feature robustness. If you follow and know us by now, this is not a time out. We're working harder than ever and reloaded with talent on every front.
In fact, the next time you see us on the conference and trade show circuit, you may know us as the "Next Big Thing". Enterprise 3.0?
