Managing Secure Document Exchange

Document exchange with customers, vendors, transporters, and insurers must be secure. Yet, the process must be effective, reliable, and economical. Problems with firewalls, certificates, and IP address changes can take too much time away from your business process and can be costly.

In order to avoid these problems, there are some high level challenges you need to address before implementing a process:

1. Selection – the price of the utility must be a price for unlimited users. Several vendors, as part of their profit improvement plan, price in packs, e.g. 10 customers for $#,###.
2. Implementation (with testing and end user training) – the cost of testing with each customer may be too high if negotiation is attempted (choose their requirement and implement).
3. Operation, Repair, and Change – the more mature systems have better dashboards to more easily spot connection failures.
4. Vulnerability (only one person) – several should support it; being assigned alternating weeks.

The most common protocols are:

1. AS2 (Applicability Statement 2) – batch mode HTTP secure
2. FTPS (File Transfer Protocol) – FTP with encryption
3. SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) – FTP with encryption

Most merchants and automotive companies chose AS2 because it has the lowest cost of operation while standardizing error reporting and message receipts. For example, immediately knowing a port was accidentally closed means correction can occur without affecting document exchange with a key customer.

Having been the first reliable file transfer protocol, FTP is still used by many businesses, especially within a company. Similar to FTP, SFTP (and FTPS) also encrypt data sent over the internet for secure transfer, but require additional services to do so. FTP and SFTP alone do not provide enough security over the internet without the use of a VPN. Once connected to a network, both protocols work as well as AS2, which was created based on the other two. Although all protocols provide the same level of security, the cost of operation, repair, and change (the largest cost over time) must be closely examined.

How do you know if you are secure? Call 952-941-5466 today and a skilled DCS EDI Specialist will assess your system to find vulnerabilities. Its better we find them now than risk a costly interruption later.

Read more about FTP and AS3

Please tell about your experience setting secure communication with Trading Partners and remote locations. What tips can you offer others embarking upon this process? Which protocol do you think has the lowest cost of operation?

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