According to CNN, President Barack Obama has issued an executive order authorizing the Treasury, Justice, and State Departments to impose sanctions on “individuals or entities that engage in malicious cyber-enabled activities that create a significant threat to the national security, foreign policy, or economic health or financial stability of the United States.” The President’s order has touched upon a controversial subject that has grabbed headlines on several occasions over the past few years. Cybercrime, such as hacking, presents serious problems for private and public computer systems alike, and has affected organizations such as J.P. Morgan, Home Depot, SONY Pictures, and even the United States Central Command. In 2013, for example, nearly half of all businesses with cloud-based data storage lost some (if not all) of their data on the cloud. Of those organizations, only 33% completed successful recovery operations from backup devices and other sources. Unfortunately, the state of cybersecurity in the United States could be much, much better.

It is for this reason why setting up easy file transfer services is essential for any successful business. Automated file transfer software, data delivery methods, and data loss prevention solutions are only a few of the many services cybersecurity companies offer. Now that we live in times of cyber turmoil (so much so that the President saw fit to act), setting up efficient, safe, and easy file transfer services have taken great precedent in businesses and organizations across the country.

One file transfer method, file transfer protocol, is one of the fundamental functions of the Internet and is the traditional method of transferring digital files between computer. File transfer protocol, or FTP, connects various “host” computers together via a server. Files are transferred to and from the hosts through the server. Among the many features of FTP is that different rules are set up for receiving and sending files.

There are other file transfer services available of course (secure file transfer protocol and odette file transfer protocol, just to name a few) but no matter what method a business goes with, easy (and secure) file transfer services are simply unavoidable in today’s tumultuous digital world.