How a Hosted Secure FTP Solution Saves Time & Money

As a business owner, you will at some point have a very important decision to make: do you set up your own FTP solution in-house using your own resources, or do you choose a trusted third party like Sharetru and go with a hosted secure FTP solution? Using a hosted secure FTP solution can save you both time and money in a large number of ways that are very much worth exploring. How can an SFTP provider help your business achieve your goals?

What is a Hosted Secure FTP Solution?

A hosted secure FTP solution, as its name suggests, means that your business is actively utilizing an FTP service that your own IT department or other in-house staff didn't set up on your behalf. In order to maintain as much control as possible over their data, many businesses opt to create their own FTP solution from the ground up using resources that they buy and configure. While it's true that no third party will be responsible for the equipment being used or the data itself, this is still a major infrastructure requirement that may not be worth the added control that you're getting when you consider all of the additional responsibilities on top of it. So, an in-house FTP server has significant cost both in terms of capital expenditure (capex), maintenance and management - not to mention security and bandwidth.

If something breaks down with an in-house FTP solution, you're responsible for fixing it. If new security protocols or technologies become available, it is your responsibility to implement them. If it comes time to upgrade or completely replace hardware, you're on the hook for both buying the right products and installing them yourself. Managing your own FTP solution can quickly become a full time job in and of itself, which is problematic if your own IT department is already spending a huge amount of time managing other areas of your business - if you even have an IT department in the first place. All of this costs a huge amount of time and money that, thankfully, you no longer have to spend.

Built-in Security

When you choose to go with a hosted secure FTP solution, you're getting the immediate benefit of state-of-the-art security that you never have to worry about maintaining yourself. Sharetru, for example, always gives you the ability to transfer your files using SFTP, FTP-SSL, HTTPS and other high security protocols that will help make sure that your confidential information stays that way. It isn't that this technology would be unavailable to you if you went with your own solution - it's that you would be responsible for the implementation and maintenance of it. With a hosted solution, on the other hand, none of this is a concern of yours and, along with the fact that SFTP automatically encrypts all transfers at both ends, security becomes something that you don't even have to worry about at all.

Outsourcing to a hosted FTP solution also relieves you of protecting your FTP server, and the rest of your network, from unwanted attacks. This cannot be ignored, as placing an FTP server on the Internet from your own network is guaranteed to cause a constant bombardment of unwelcomed activity.