Gartner Research Director Frank Kenney is widely regarded as one of the foremost experts in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) space. He publishes the Magic Quadrant report on MFT, and gets asked regularly by company CIOs and IT directors for advice on the virtues of a MFT solution.

Like him, we've been a long time opponent of businesses using free (aka "consumer") file transfer sites to transfer private data and confidential files because of the many risks and shortcomings of these types of services. We can scream, coerce, incentivize, tap on your shoulder and say "Hey there, listen to me..." market this point of view until we're blue in the face, but sometimes it just takes a different voice to get the message across. In his most recent and very amusing blog post, Frank Kenney takes advantage of his star power to get R&B singer Cassie to explain why freebie file transfer for consumers is a bad bad idea for businesses. Check out Frank's blog post here.

While Cassie didn't talk specifically about file transfer, the key takeaway is that certain files are private and thus require a level of security that non-business file transfer sites lack. For businesses that handle client-confidential data, you simply cannot put your firm or your clients at risk. There are actually many state, federal and international regulations that require encryption and privacy breach notification -- we have put together a complimentary guide containing these laws and best practices, which you can download here.

The concept of security and data privacy is almost like having insurance...you don't realize how valuable it is until the @#!% hits the fan, and by then you're stuck with cleaning up the mess that may end up costing you more. Just ask health insurer Aetna Inc. about being recently named in a security breach lawsuit...or you can ask Cassie.