One of the biggest challenges of working with HIPAA data is that there are no specific standards to meet but rather, a set of general guidelines to adhere to. In order to meet all of these guidelines for services like file transfers, it’s helpful to understand why HIPAA was created, the kind of health data that falls under these stricter requirements, and how to be compliant with HIPAA when transferring files.

Health data vs HIPAA data

A common misconception is that all data related to healthcare is HIPAA data. However, HIPAA only refers to a specific subset of data known as Protected Health Information (PHI). PHI includes 18 identifiers that can be traced to a specific individual, and according to HHS.gov these are:

1. Names
2. All geographic subdivisions smaller than a state, including street address, city, county, precinct, ZIP code, and their equivalent geocodes, except for the initial three digits of the ZIP code if, according to the current publicly available data from the Bureau of the Census:
   a. The geographic unit formed by combining all ZIP codes with the same three initial digits contains more than 20,000 people; and
   b. The initial three digits of a ZIP code for all such geographic units containing 20,000 or fewer people is changed to 000
3. All elements of dates (except year) for dates that are directly related to an individual, including birth date, admission date, discharge date, death date, and all ages over 89 and all elements of dates (including year) indicative of such age, except that such ages and elements may be aggregated into a single category of age 90 or older
4. Telephone numbers
5. Vehicle identifiers and serial numbers, including license plate numbers
6. Fax numbers
7. Device identifiers and serial numbers
8. Email addresses
9. Web Universal Resource Locators (URLs)
10. Social security numbers
11. Internet Protocol (IP) addresses
12. Medical record numbers
13. Biometric identifiers, including finger and voice prints
14. Health plan beneficiary numbers
15. Full-face photographs and any comparable images
16. Account numbers
17. Any other unique identifying number, characteristic, or code, except as permitted by paragraph © of this section [Paragraph © is presented below in the section “Re-identification”]; and
18. Certificate/license numbers

Health Data

From the list of 18 identifiers, it might appear like practically all health information will contain at least one of these. However, the important part is that the health information can be traced back to a specific individual.

Without these identifiers, health information can be shared without falling under HIPAA rules. So while information about “John Smith, Male, 56 with Bowel Cancer” must be compliant with HIPAA, information about “a 56-year old male with Bowel Cancer” does not — as long as nothing in the data can identify John Smith.

If it’s uncertain whether or not the data must adhere to HIPAA, the safest option is to act like it does to avoid any fees or penalties, as all parties involved with HIPAA data are responsible for protecting it.

All parties are responsible for protecting HIPAA data

Because health information is so sensitive and private, HIPAA requires that all parties involved are responsible for protecting the data. This includes health organizations like hospitals, clinics, and insurance as well as companies like Dropbox or cloud service providers like Couchdrop for transferring HIPAA files to the Dropbox account.

How to be HIPAA compliant for file transfers

Currently, there is no specific HIPAA standard to meet for file transfers. Instead, there are a number of areas that must meet satisfactory results for HIPAA. Often, this requires having an auditor specializing in HIPAA data check to ensure security, processes, and protocols are at an acceptable level. All involved parties will also need to sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) outlining their responsibilities.

Preparing to be HIPAA compliant

Before handling HIPAA data, there are a few important steps to make. Since there is no official HIPAA compliance standard, involved parties must have reasonable safeguards, policies, and procedures in place with regard to HIPAA data. This article on HIPAA minimum requirements gives an overview of requirements that companies that provide file transfers for HIPAA or other services must meet to be eligible to work with PHI.

Business Associate Agreements

A business associate agreement is a contract between all involved parties that specifies each party’s responsibilities for safeguarding HIPAA data. This is required to legally work with HIPAA data for any organization involved.

For example, suppose a healthcare company worked with an IT company to transfer files, and that IT company uses an MFT platform like Couchdrop to transfer files into SharePoint. The healthcare company, the IT company, Couchdrop, and Microsoft all need to have a BAA that outlines their responsibilities, including steps they will take if a data breach happens.

Reporting Breaches

If there is a data breach with HIPAA data, involved parties are required to notify affected individuals within 60 days of the breach. If the files are transferred through a system–even if the system never stores the data like is the case with Couchdrop–the business associate is still required to notify affected individuals.

If the breach affects over 500 individuals, all organizations must also provide a media notice and a notice to the Secretary by filling out a breach report on the HHS website. For more details on data breaches with HIPAA, see the Breach Notification Rule.

Couchdrop and HIPAA compliance for file transfers

At Couchdrop, our infrastructure and security meet HIPAA standards, and we have a dedicated HIPAA-compliant architecture for customers working with PHI. The dedicated HIPAA architecture adds additional safeguards to our already robust infrastructure such as isolating data to the United States at all times.

Couchdrop includes a BAA for all HIPAA customers outlining file transfer protocols and procedures as well as Couchdrop’s responsibilities for data privacy and security. For more information on how Couchdrop works with HIPAA data, you can download our HIPAA white paper by clicking the button below.

Try Couchdrop with a free 14-day trial

To find out more about Couchdrop’s features like file transfer automations, see our website. You can also try Couchdrop free for 14 days without a credit card or feature restrictions to evaluate if the platform will suit your needs. Sign up for your free trial today to get started.

HIPAA data compliance for file transfers was originally published in Couchdrop on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Are you looking for ways to move files between storage platforms and confused by all the options? There are several different transfer protocols to move files, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. In this article, we’ll cover the differences between four of the most popular transfer protocols: FTP, SFTP, SCP, and Rsync and the pros and cons of each.

FTP

Standing for File Transfer Protocol, FTP was developed in the 70s as a way to transfer files over a network, with the last major update in the late 90s.

Usually, FTP is done through a client–an application that initiates the connection–and a server — the software that facilitates the transfer to the remote destination. Once the FTP client and server are connected, data can then be transferred between the two systems. With FTP, you can transfer files, as well as remotely connect to the destination to modify, rename, and delete files and directories.

The biggest drawback of FTP is that data is not encrypted in transit. This means that if the file is intercepted midstream, the data will be in a usable format. Personal information is at risk when using FTP, including usernames and even passwords, which are sent in cleartext instead of the typical hashed (****) form.

So while FTP became an efficient way to move large files over a network, the security risks have become more and more pronounced as methods to intercept data have become more sophisticated.

SFTP

While FTP is powerful, the vulnerabilities are too much of a risk for sensitive data like financial, personal, and health information. As a result, a more secure form of FTP known as SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) was developed with similar features but additional protections. SFTP has a very similar name to FTP but is actually an entirely separate protocol.

SFTP makes use of the SSH (Secure SHell) protocol, which requires authentication. Typically, this authentication is done through a username and password combination and/or making use of keys. With SSH, a client makes contact with a server, which then sends back an encryption key. Then, a secure channel is opened between the two so data can be transmitted.

Because of the encryption key, even if the data is intercepted, it will be unreadable. While there is no single required encryption method, SSH typically uses AES or Blowfish encryption and always requires some sort of authentication method before data is transmitted.

SFTP vs FTP

While at a glance Secure File Transfer Protocol seems like it is simply File Transfer Protocol with added security, the two protocols are actually functionally different.

SFTP requires authentication methods to function, and everything is done through a single port (a communication endpoint for sending or receiving data), which typically makes it faster, and easier to protect. FTP has multiple open ports that can make it both slower and easier to intercept the data.

The main advantage of FTP is that it’s easier to connect to–the same reason why it’s not advised for moving sensitive data. However, some legacy systems don’t support SSH and thus can’t connect using SFTP, leaving FTP as the best option to transfer files.

FTPS

Due to the similar naming conventions, there can be some confusion between SFTP and FTPS. SFTP stands for Secure File Transfer Protocol, while FTPS stands for File Transfer Protocol Secure. The difference is that FTPS adds security to the standard FTP protocol, whereas SFTP is an entirely different protocol albeit with a similar-sounding name.

FTPS allows security through the TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol and the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and is sometimes known as “FTP over SSL”. Like FTP, FTPS requires multiple ports to be open simultaneously, which can make it run into issues with firewalls.

SFTP vs FTPS

As mentioned above, SFTP is inherently encrypted and designed to be both secure and versatile. Whereas FTPS has security added on top of an existing transfer protocol.

With FTPS, a new port is required for each request, which can open up additional vulnerable points, whereas with SFTP a single port is used, making it much easier to lock down. SFTP offers end-to-end encryption of all information and since it only requires one open port, it’s considered the more secure of the two options.

SFTP is also the more versatile of the two. It’s easier to use with firewalls, and SFTP has more commands and controls, such as options for defining file permissions. Since FTP is being replaced by the SFTP protocol and FTPS is FTP over SSL, over time FTPS will be supported less and less.

SCP

SCP stands for Secure Copy Protocol. It’s a simple and secure file transfer protocol for transferring files. Like SFTP, transfers are done using Secure Shell. There are some differences between SCP and SFTP, but for the end user, these tend to come down to functionality.

The SCP protocol is used exclusively for transferring files, and as a result, tends to be quite fast. However, when looking to do more than a basic file transfer, SCP falls short.

SCP vs SFTP

Unlike SFTP, SCP has fewer commands and is used primarily to copy files between a local host and a remote host or between two remote hosts. SCP is unable to create or list directories or delete files like SFTP. Because of this focus on copying files, in some instances, SCP has faster transfer speeds which can give it an advantage when speed is critical. SCP can also be faster on high-latency networks due to the way it handles file transfers.

The main disadvantages are that SCP is limited in functionality and isn’t supported as widely as SFTP. SCP is also less flexible. For example, if a file with the same name in the same directory is transferred, SCP will override it by default. SFTP gives options to change the behavior such as overriding the existing file. Another advantage of SFTP is that it supports resuming file transfers that are interrupted instead of having to restart the entire transfer.

OpenSSH, the open-source implementation of the SSH protocol used in some secure file transfer protocols like SCP and SFTP, writes that “The scp protocol is outdated, inflexible and not readily fixed.” and recommends using something more flexible like SFTP.

Rsync

Rsync (Remote sync) is a Linux-based tool used to sync files between a local and remote server. It was designed to synchronize files to ensure that both a local device and the remote server have the same up-to-date files. Rsync is typically run through a command line and cannot sync files between two remote locations. While designed for Linux, there are several programs as well as online services that allow Rsync to work in other operating systems.

One useful feature of Rsync is that it supports delta transfers, only copying over a file if it has changed since the last transfer. This helps cut back on the amount of data sent and makes Rsync suitable as a backup tool.

Rsync vs SFTP

Both SFTP and Rsync transfer files, but their primary purpose is different. Rsync is meant to ensure that a local device and remote server are “synced” with the latest version of a file, while SFTP is designed for secure file transfers.

Because of this, it’s common for users to make use of both Rsync and SFTP depending on the specific use case. For example, SFTP can handle bulk file transfers, modify directories, and encrypt or decrypt specific files, and Rsync can use scheduled delta transfers to ensure the most up-to-date version is in both the local and remote location.

Couchdrop used to support Rsync but recently transitioned into further optimizing SFTP transfers as SFTP allows for more functionality.

Which of these does Couchdrop support?

Couchdrop supports SFTP, FTP, and SCP and recommends using SFTP when possible. Using SFTP allows for the strongest security and fast file transfers.

As mentioned above, FTP is a slower and less secure transfer protocol used primarily before SFTP was developed. So why use FTP at all and why does Couchdrop support it?

Because of compatibility. While SFTP is the de facto way to transfer files, it wasn’t always, so some legacy systems may not support it. If your organization has one of these systems that only supports FTP, we want to make sure that you can still transfer files as needed.

However, due to the less secure nature of FTP, we recommend minimizing using an FTP connection and to use SFTP whenever possible. Part of Couchdrop’s granular user account controls can help with this. The secure protocols (SFTP and SCP) are set as a specific service to enable/disable, while FTP and FTPs are separate ones. This means you can enable FTP for specific users that need it, while others can be forced to use a more secure protocol like SFTP.

Try Couchdrop for secure file transfers

If you’re looking for a way to securely transfer files over a network, try Couchdrop. While SFTP is a powerful and versatile method to transfer files, setting up an SFTP server is often a long and complex process, especially when requiring multiple users with different permission levels.

Couchdrop simplifies SFTP and automatically sets up an SFTP server using the credentials you create at signup. The server is fully cloud-hosted and requires no management and connects directly to your existing cloud storage.

You can start secure file transfers from Dropbox to SharePoint, Google Workspace to Box, or a file server to cloud storage in minutes. User management is handled in the intuitive interface through a web browser. Couchdrop also lets you automate secure file transfers so your files always end up where they need to be at the right time.

Try Couchdrop free for 14 days with no sales call or credit card required. Register for an account now to start your trial and have your SFTP server set up in minutes.

What is SFTP and how are FTP, SFTP, SCP, and Rsync different? was originally published in Couchdrop on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Healthcare files are some of the most challenging to move, particularly when dealing with protected HIPAA data. At Couchdrop, we’re serious about privacy and data security. Our secure SFTP and managed file transfer system is fast, secure, and easy to use to take the complications out of your healthcare file transfers.

Bring your own storage

Many healthcare companies that get in contact with us ask us about how we store their data. While Couchdrop hosted storage is an option–with 1TB included in the Standard plan if needed–the main draw is that we never need to store it at all.

One of the primary benefits of using Couchdrop for healthcare transfers is that you connect your own storage source and destination platforms. Then you simply use Couchdrop’s transfers as a facilitator to transfer files between the two systems. Couchdrop will pull files from one storage platform and send it to another, but you always have full control and management of your data.

Dedicated HIPAA-compliant architecture

Protecting HIPAA data is vital to any organization involved, including Couchdrop as a cloud SFTP and managed file transfer platform. As a cloud service provider, we are responsible for safeguarding PHI in transit and have robust encryption and security policies to minimize the potential for a data breach.

With a dedicated HIPAA-compliant architecture used exclusively for HIPAA customers, healthcare data is kept safe through top-level encryption that meets HIPAA and HITECH standards. Couchdrop also signs a Business Associate Agreement with any company needing to send HIPAA data using our services.

Because of the additional security, safeguards, and ensuring that data never leaves the US, using Couchdrop’s HIPAA-compliant architecture does come with an additional cost. To find out more about how Couchdrop works with HIPAA data, see our white paper HIPAA Compliance for Cloud Service Providers, or email us for details on pricing and other information.

How are healthcare organizations using Couchdrop to transfer healthcare files?

There are many situations where healthcare organizations need to transfer health information between different systems. Some questions that come up frequently are if Couchdrop can safely handle unusual file types used in the industry, if important healthcare files can be sent regularly on a set schedule, and if Couchdrop can handle advanced security protocols used in the healthcare industry.

Transferring Unusual file types

Have file types that aren’t in .doc .jpg or .mp4? In healthcare, we know that there are many unusual and unique file types like .dcm, .4DV, and .sct. And it’s essential these files can be moved to where they need to be.

Some platforms have trouble transferring large or uncommon file types like DICOM imagery, but it’s no problem with Couchdrop. Whether your healthcare organization sends small HL7 files occasionally or needs to push through X-ray or MRI data several times a day, Couchdrop can get your files where they need to be.

Sending files on a set schedule

In healthcare, some files need to be sent on a regular basis, and it’s important that they arrive at their destination at a set time. Files like daily chart notes or electronic lab results might need to go across different systems to reach the right people at the right time.

Couchdrop can sort these situations automatically using workflows and has multiple ways to move files in a timely manner using automations. One option is to monitor a directory so that an action happens when a file is uploaded or downloaded from a specific folder. Another option is triggering an action like a file transfer at a set time, like every day at the close of business. This will ensure files that need to be transferred on a regular schedule do so using Couchdrop’s set-and-forget functionality.

Working with advanced security protocols

Because healthcare data needs to meet the highest standards of protection, there have been some instances when healthcare partners have elevated security protocols like long, uncrackable passwords.

Couchdrop can support any password length for user accounts and also includes a PGP Encryption and PGP Decryption option as part of workflows. Users can have Couchdrop create keys and have Couchdrop decrypt them in a later step, or bring their own keys and provide the private key and passphrase as part of the workflow setup.

Try Couchdrop free for 14-days

Not sure if Couchdrop will work for your requirements? You can try Couchdrop free for 14 days without the need to enter a credit card. You can test connecting different source and destination platforms, including the Windows/OSX agent which will install in many legacy and proprietary medical systems so you can transfer files to and from them.

If you’re considering using Couchdrop for sending protected health information, get in touch with our team or set up a call and we’ll let you know more and what’s required from all parties to safely transfer HIPAA data.

Using Couchdrop for Healthcare File Transfers was originally published in Couchdrop on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Couchdrop is a cloud-native SFTP and MFT platform that facilitates fast and secure file transfers between different storage systems. With Couchdrop, you have full control of your data and bring your own storage. No data is ever stored by Couchdrop at any stage, which makes it ideal for transferring sensitive data like health records and financial information.

When it comes to secure file transfer, Couchdrop’s security and versatility make it an ideal choice for any organization that needs to regularly move files between systems. However, some organizations need more direct connections to platforms like Salesforce and need to sync databases as well as move files.

This is where a product like Skyvia comes into play, and combined with Couchdrop you can easily get your data where it needs to be.

What is Skyvia?

Skyvia is a cloud data platform used for backups, data integration, and access & management. It can help organizations move or replicate data, such as extracting data from multiple platforms and consolidating it in one place or syncing relevant data across several systems automatically.

On the Professional and Enterprise plans, it allows for unlimited scheduled integrations with advanced integration scenarios and mapping features and can pull through millions of records per month.

Skyvia connections

Skyvia supports several different protocols including SQL, ODBC, OData, and ADO.NET. With this versatility, Skyvia has over 100 supported connections including Excel, HubSpot, and Salesforce.

However, Skyvia doesn’t support direct connections that would be beneficial for organizations such as a direct Salesforce to SharePoint integration. Instead, it first needs to transfer that data through a protocol like SFTP first–which is where Couchdrop comes in.

Simpler data connections with Skyvia and Couchdrop

Couchdrop takes the complexity out of SFTP with a simple setup that doesn’t require working in a terminal or writing out a config file. Setup is done automatically upon making an account, and settings are all managed through the simple web interface.

As a cloud-native SFTP platform, Couchdrop was designed to work with the cloud. Connecting storage like on-premise servers or cloud storage is simple and can be done in minutes.

Combining simple SFTP with Skyvia’s wide range of integrations allows fast and simple file transfers across an enormous range of applications.

Skyvia and Couchdrop use cases

Since Skyvia has over a hundred built-in connectors and Couchdrop can connect to over 30 cloud storage providers as well as on-prem OSX or Windows servers, combining the two will handle numerous situations where you need to move files.

Some ways to combine the strengths of Couchdrop and Skyvia include:

• Automate CSV data loading using Skyvia’s Salesforce integration for moving data in or out of Salesforce and using Couchdrop SFTP to move those files between different file storage.
• Send files from a CRM like HubSpot using Skyvia, and create an SFTP server using Couchdrop’s quick and easy cloud setup for further distribution.
• Using Couchdrop to connect to a SharePoint site via SFTP, and having Skyvia connect to the same Couchdrop SFTP server and connecting to one of the dozens of apps supported by Skyvia connectors.

Migrating everything with Movebot and Skyvia

Movebot is a file migration tool developed by the Couchdrop team that can help move your on-premise servers to the cloud or help you move between cloud data storage platforms. When combined with Skyvia, your organization can migrate needed data quickly and easily.

With Skyvia’s huge range of integrations, you can connect to many systems where your business might be storing databases and migrate those into any of the other supported integrations. Using Movebot on top of that, you can also move files from an on-premise server or cloud storage platform like Google Workspace, Dropbox, or SharePoint and quickly and easily migrate those files.

Switching your organization to software that is a better fit doesn’t have to be a challenge thanks to Movebot and Skyvia.

Try Skyvia and Couchdrop for free

Both Couchdrop and Skyvia offer free trials so you can try the products firsthand and make sure that they’ll suit your requirements. Skyvia has a free plan that allows 2 scheduled integrations, 1GB backup storage, and 1 endpoint and connector. You can see the difference between plans and sign up for the Free plan on the Skyvia pricing page.

With Couchdrop, you can get a 14-day free trial without any feature limitations. No credit card is required, so you won’t be subscribed unintentionally at the end of the trial. Simply complete the quick registration and your SFTP server will be set up automatically. Get started now by registering for your free trial.

Use Couchdrop and Skyvia for maximum data versatility was originally published in Couchdrop on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Moving your SFTP / FTP server to the cloud can be daunting and knowing where to start can provide the first hurdle of them all! Not to mention, you’ve already got all of the data in your current platform, your users have got their usernames and passwords, they probably connect via a known domain and you’ve more than likely got a workflow happening from your platform.

Wouldn’t it be simpler if all of this could be done through the cloud? Is it even possible to have SFTP in the cloud? Yes it is, and it’s simple to migrate your SFTP / FTP server to the cloud using Couchdrop.

Running SFTP locally

Running that traditional dedicated file transfer server locally or on a virtual machine somewhere? Sick of having to reboot it, or SSH in to add a user and try to work through the firewall permissions? How’s that performance going for your customers in a different region?

Every company now should have cloud storage, whether it's SharePoint, Google Drive, Box, Amazon S3, Azure Blob, or something in between. As this storage often has ‘unlimited’ storage and it’s often accessible by a sync app, this storage becomes a low-cost and low-access storage solution.

This article will look at the simplest way to migrate your SFTP / FTP server to the cloud by following the below two steps:

1. Migrate your data to your cloud storage
2. Connect your cloud storage and turn it into an SFTP / FTP server

Migrating files with Movebot

If you have a lot of files you want to move to a new cloud storage platform and are looking for a tool to migrate your data, we recommend using Movebot. It will connect to your SFTP server and quickly transfer your data to any storage provider, whether it is cloud based or on-premise. It’s as simple as logging into your SFTP server using client credentials and logging into your storage using OAuth or bucket API keys.

Movebot is low cost and is a self service migration tool. It doesn’t require any complex sales journies or sign-up processes. Simply sign up, configure and run. The biggest limiting factor will be your SFTP server upload bandwidth.

Connect your cloud storage and turn it into an SFTP / FTP server

Now your data is where you want it, let’s turn it into an SFTP / FTP server using Couchdrop. Couchdrop does one thing, and one thing well and that’s turning your cloud storage into a SFTP / FTP server. It’s fully cloud-managed and acts as a great SFTP hosted solution. Couchdrop’s product is simple and does exactly what it needs to. There are no bloated features.

Its feature set entails the likes of…

• Ability to create additional users and restrict them to specific folders
• Granular user permissions and security via 2FA and IP access
• Bring your own storage, connect your storage to be used as the SFTP / FTP backend
• Ability to create a white labeled file upload/virtual file system for your customers to access
• A fully featured API with webhooks for automation and workflows. Anything you can do in the interface can be done through the API

Try both products free for 14 days

Ready to see if Couchdrop and Movebot are right for you? You can try them out for yourself and see firsthand with a free 14-day free trial, with no credit card required. It’s sign-up and go, simple and straightforward. Try out Movebot or register for a Couchdrop trial to get started.

Related Posts

• Microsoft SFTP / FTP
• Hosted SFTP / FTP
• The Cloud and Cloud SFTP
• SFTP as a Service
• Box FTP / SFTP
• Azure SFTP Gateway
• GCP SFTP Gateway
• Filecamp SFTP / FTP

Migrating your SFTP / FTP server to the cloud was originally published in Couchdrop on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dropbox
Dropbox offers 3TB of Cloud storage on their standard ‘teams’ plan and the next tiers up offer unlimited storage. After working with Dropbox support, it has been found that when uploading via a web browser, there is a 20GB limit. However, when uploading from the Dropbox application, there is no limit. If sharing files by link or file requests, then you can generate 200GB per a day. Otherwise, there is no daily limit to the number of downloads your link can generate. Dropbox does not claim to rate limit or do anything further in the backend.

Box
Box offers up to unlimited storage, however, they are very vocal about their maximum file upload limits. Box limits users to a maximum file upload of 5GB per file. However, if you spend $2,000 annually they will increase you to a 15GB max per file. Other than this, there are no further limitations with Box.

Google Drive
Google Drive offers anything from 15GB to an Unlimited and cost based on storage used pricing model for actual data at rest. As for the transfer side of things, Google Drive allows users to transfer maximum file size of 5TB, with this though, there is a daily limit of 750GB. This means if you are transferring a 1.5TB file, it will take two days of your maximum quota to upload/sync to Google Drive. Additionally, Google has confirmed that they do bandwidth throttle on certain services. This could be due to a huge number of users simultaneously uploading using a fast connection, or if there is a large need for resources (I/O and CPU) and other scenarios that put extreme stress on normal LAN and server infrastructure.

Google has also confirmed that all data created in G Suite accounts are also stored on at least 2 Google servers across the world, due to this other bandwidth limits may also apply. Their final reason for rate limiting is due to security reasons and ensuring that data flow is spread evenly for all users to ensure the best experience for all.

Another gotcha from Google is that you can only have a maximum of 400,000 files per a Shared Drive. Once you reach this limit, the only way to get files in is by making room by deleting files. If you run a pre-scan with Movebot you will get this insight and plan on splitting up your data before moving a file.

Backblaze B2/Amazon S3
These services have no excess limitations, this is because they use a pay as you go, model. You pay for what you use and can set limits or ‘caps’ where required. They claim not to limit bandwidth and say you can go as fast as your connection will allow.

Although some claim not to rate limit, it would be in their best interest to rate limit to protect themselves against over-subscription and to protect resources from I/O, Bandwidth and CPU. Google summed it up the best, however from experience if you do not wish for a pay as you go, model, Dropbox offers the best and simplest solution to work with and it is understandable why this is our customers most used storage solution (84% of our customers use Dropbox).

The limitations of cloud storage providers they don’t really tell you was originally published in Couchdrop on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Cloud Migrations can be complex, take time and require a lot of manual intervention to ensure that files get to where they are supposed to go. This doesn’t matter if it is an AWS S3 to Azure Blob migration, or Google Drive to OneDrive, Dropbox to Google Drive and so on.

Couchdrop already integrates well with all of your current storage providers — making this a no-brainer. Couchdrop now offers Couchdrop Move which lets you sit back, relax and leave the heavy lifting to us.

To put it simply, you log in, select Couchdrop Move, specify the source and destination cloud storage providers and press Start. You can then leave, move onto other important tasks and come back, later on, to see that the migration has been successful without you needing to sit there and lose time waiting.

First make sure you have an account with Couchdrop, once you do navigate to Couchdrop Move

This new tool is in BETA and will be improved rapidly over the next month, therefore the team at Couchdrop would love to hear how you find the tool and how we can improve it to better cater to your needs.

Subscribe to our mailing list for latest updates on Couchdrop and its features!

Cloud migrations made easy was originally published in Couchdrop on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Traditional SFTP has been the chosen file transfer method for many years. SFTP became the improved, secure means of transferring files when its predecessor, FTP, could not securely transfer data.

Since the adoption of SFTP, the world has moved forward to Cloud Storage which offers PaaS, IaaS, Saas and other “services” that are designed to remove the total cost of ownership from businesses. Cloud Storage has many benefits, from security to redundancy and lower costs.

A major struggle for organizations is migrating from SFTP to Cloud Storage with ease; this includes the need for failure recovery, the trust that the solution is secure, and also the proactive nature of making such a move when there is plenty of reactive work within the IT space.

Couchdrop has incorporated an easy to use service to migrate SFTP servers to the cloud or back them up for that peace of mind. This process can be scheduled regularly or be done as a once-off. To save you time and money there is also the option for ‘delta’ jobs so that only the files that have been updated or changed since the last job are moved into the cloud saving you bandwidth and shortening the time of transfer.

• Register for a Couchdrop account at my.couchdrop.io/register
• Navigate to https://my.couchdrop.io/manage/move and Create Migration
• Select Storage Type to be SFTP

• Select Configure and Connect and fill out the required information. You can also select a specific path within your SFTP directory to ensure you only migrate from one directory path should you wish. See more on configuring SFTP with Couchdrop here.

• Press Save
• Now configure your destination cloud storage endpoint, for this purpose we are going to use GoogleDrive
• You have the option to enable

— Email Notifications — Receive an alert on success or failure of the backup

— Delta Enabled — This allows for a partial transfer if you already have moved files across, Couchdrop will only move the updated files across saving you bandwidth and time

— Scheduled — This option allows you to schedule this migration, backup or replication on a regular basis

• Once you have finished Save Settings
• You will be taken back to the Move Dashboard where you will see your migration, you can now Start, Modify or Delete this migration

• On selecting Start you will see the status change to Starting, to Calculating, to transferring through to finished

If you would like to learn more about Couchdrop and how we can help, check out the two links below:

couchdrop.io
community.couchdrop.io

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Migrating from traditional SFTP to Cloud Storage was originally published in Couchdrop on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.