Reader’s Digest Condenses File Transfer Infrastructure with Ipswitch MOVEit Family of Products

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Reader’s Digest is the largest-selling magazine in the world, appearing in 50 editions and 21 languages. The magazine and its associated book, magazine, and audio products are marketed through a wide range of channels including direct mail, television, catalogs, and the Internet.

The Challenge

“I needed to implement security standards for all data coming through the firewall,” explains Dan MacDonald, director of customer technology for Reader’s Digest. “We didn’t have a consolidated data transfer security standard that everyone followed. In essence we were leaving the decisions as to what was sensitive to the end-users. I was uncomfortable with the level of security. We had an incumbent product and performed extensive research to create a short list including the products from Ipswitch.” According to MacDonald, after a focused onsite Proof of Concept it became very clear that Ipswitch’s MOVEit DMZ and MOVEit central products with the optional PGP encryption and Secure Messaging modules were a perfect fit. “We were impressed with the solution maturity, ease of administration and bulletproof security.”

The Solution

The MOVEit DMZ managed file transfer server improves productivity and collaboration between employees, partners and customers by enabling the quick, easy, and secure exchange of sensitive business data via encrypted messages, as well as by file transfers—without needing to install any software on end-user PCs, managing encryption keys, burdening email systems with large volumes of files, or allowing email attachments through firewalls. The MOVEit Central workflow engine automatically moves files on a scheduled, event-driven or on-demand basis between a wide variety of internal and external computer systems, including MOVEit DMZ servers.

The Results

“It’s easy to use and easy to understand,” says MacDonald. “Prior to deploying Ipswitch MOVEit solutions, if somebody in marketing needed to exchange a subset of customer names and addresses, they would attach a spreadsheet and send via email. We were leaving the decision of security to the user. Now they use Secure Messaging with absolutely no overhead from our file transfer support desk.” Plus, MOVEit’s file non-repudiation and reporting capabilities enables Reader’s Digest to prove who sent and received a file, and that it was not corrupted or changed during transfer.

The integrated encryption was also a major benefit to Reader’s Digest. “Being able to automatically secure files with PGP encryption through the MOVEit platform and automatically decrypt files as they’re delivered internally was a great benefit for us,” explains MacDonald. “MOVEit supported all of the industry standard file transfer protocols on the front end, so if the vendor wants to use a specific file transfer protocol like HTTPS, SSH or SSL they’re all supported. It gives us a lot of flexibility and of course piece of mind knowing that all communications are secured with a leading managed file transfer solution.”

MacDonald is so comfortable with MOVEit that whenever he comes across an industry colleague that has a requirement for a managed file transfer solution he is quick to point them toward MOVEit managed file transfer solutions and share his experiences with them. “One of our main partners and file providers is in the process of migrating to MOVEit,” he remarks. “Additionally, the folks at Ipswitch have been very responsive to any implementation questions that have come up. They worked very closely with us during configuration and deployment to help us design and build a scalable and maintainable architecture for the future.”

Reader’s Digest has MOVEit deployed globally and conducts over 25,000 file transfers per month with over 100 global partners. About 300 automated file transfer tasks have been created and scheduled. “We plan to continue our current effort to consolidate all file transfer activities onto Ipswitch MOVEit managed file transfer solutions,” concludes MacDonald. “My goal is to have absolutely every data file crossing our network securely passing through MOVEit.”