Doug On HIPAA

HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), sets the standard for protecting sensitive patient data. Any company that handles protected health information (PHI) must ensure that strict protocols and protective security measures are adhered to. But maintaining the HIPAA standards of security over electronic information can be difficult especially with outdated storage systems.

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Doug on Data: Delivering the Last Mile of Object Storage to End Users

Object Storage is the way forward for all your storage needs, it’s adaptable meaning it grows with your storage needs, it’s economical, being that you only pay for what you need, but it does also have a number of drawbacks. Object Storage is not easily accessible to end users, and often it lacks auditing controls, which can open your business up to a whole range of problems around security and governance of data.

So what do you do? Struggle on with Block storage that is often increasingly difficult to enlarge when your company grows? Or move to Object storage and struggle to keep control over your data?

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Using Midnight Commander to work with Amazon S3, OpenStack, DropBox, OneDrive and almost any other Cloud

Midnight Commander is probably the most popular command line file manager in the world, and certainly for Linux distros. Its design was initially inspired by the classic two pane interface that was found in Norton Commander which was a DOS file manager (for those who remember !).

One of the unsung features of the Midnight Commander (also available on other platforms including phones (I used to use this on my old Nokia N900) and windows and mac) is that it can connect to server over FTP.

This is interesting from a Storage Made Easy viewpoint as although SME providers a full suite of Linux tools, SME also provider protocol interoperability as part of its Cloud Gateway features. What is this I hear you ask ? Well, simply put, it enables files you have stored on public or private storage to be accessible over any of the protocols Storage Made Easy exposes ie FTP, FTPS, WebDav, S3, SFTP.

SME Protocol Gateway

Midnight Commander supports the FTP protocol which makes it easy to get direct access to any storage that is added to a SME Account using the SME FTP cloud protocol adaptor. To do this:

Choose the Left or Right option
Choose FTP link
Enter connection to SME as follows:

username:password@storagemadeeasy.com

or if you are using the SME EU Server:

username:password@eu.storagemadeeasy.com

Midnight Commander FTP

The net result is a very easy way to bring the cloud into the linux desktop integrated with tools you already know and use. This can be used with the SME Personal CLoud plan, Business Team, and on-site enterprise editions of the product.

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New Folder Sharing feature for team users

We have implemented a new folder sharing feature for Business Cloud / on-site Enterprise File Share and Sync Users. It simply provides the ability to share folders and sub-folders of files with external companies or other users who can receive the link, enter the password and gain access to the files without the need for an SME Account.

The video below shows the feature in action.

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New Storage Made Easy Google Chrome Cloud Unifier File Manager Extension

We’ve added a new Storage Made Easy Chrome extension to the Chrome Web Store. The sole function of this extension is to enable auto-login and launch of the SME Web File Manager for quick access.

The SME Web File Manager is a hierarchical file manager which makes it ideal to deal with large data set and also data from different on-premise or public cloud storage, which are unified in the file tree. A Storage Made Easy Account is needed but a free account can be signed up directly from the extension.

The reason for this extension was to make it a lot easier for users to be able to gain access to the Web Cloud File Manager for one of our business customers who had equipped their salesforce with Chromebook Pixel’s.

The Web File Manager enabled them to have a workflow which included editing and commenting of documents directly from the Chromebook on various clouds that they used which includes BaseCamp and Amazon S3.

The extension can also be used for securely sharing files which include setting passwords on files and/or time expiry.

The web file manager, from a single user perspective provides a very nice way to work with data between cloud providers and even collaborate with other people using Business Group WorkSpaces. For business users it provides a complete collaboration environment between user which includes files editing, file commenting, file versioning and file locking.

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SME Windows 8 optimised RT Cloud FIle Explorer Surface App

Our Windows 8 optimised Surface RT App has been out for a while now but we thought we should formally introduce it on the blog!

The App is optimised for touch and Windows 8 tablets, although it can be used by an Windows 8 OS.

It works with any free, Personal Cloud,  or Business Cloud File Server Account, and it is free from the Windows App Store (and to remind those who don’t know the SME Windows Phone App is also available for free from the Windows Phone App Store).

You can see a brief video overview of the App below:

Remember that the full version of our tools is also Windows 8 ready and it includes a native desktop drive, Sync, Microsoft Office Plug In’s and also Microsoft Outlooks secure link sharing. It is available for Personal Cloud and Business Cloud Users.

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Android Cloud File Manager updated

We have updated our Android Cloud File Manager application today in Google Play and on our site. The new version adds supports for:

– iCloud
– Google Drive
– BaseCamp
– Office365

It also features a dedicated settings section where the various App settings are now consolidated. The App also now supports copy and paste between Clouds, an often requested feature.

For a brief overview please check out the video below:


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How to password protect public cloud files for almost any public Cloud Storage

For over 2 years now we have had the Public Files page. When users sets a file public from any of the 35+ information Clouds they have mapped to their account then it is displayed on this public files page.  Users have always been able to make such files password protected by encrypting the files on upload through our platform, but we have had feedback that what users really wanted was the ability to have any files on this page password protected, whether they were uploaded as encrypted files or not.

We’ve now added this change to the service. To take advantage of it all that needs to be done is to assign a password to the public files page from your Cloud DashBoard after login to the web. This can be set under the “extended options” section (at the bottom of the DashBoard).

Password protect public files

Setting files to be public is easy, just right click on the file from the web and choose to make the file public:

Other desktop and mobile clients also enable files to be set as public, as in the Android example below:

Once files are set public they appear on the public files page that each user account has:

These files are also available as an RSS feed that can added to the foot of an email for example, or as a an iPhone App:

Once a file is then accessed when public file sharing is turned on then the user is redirected to a password page  when they try to access any file from the public files page:

This feature works across files from any Cloud and indeed Cloud Files from different clouds can be shared and protected from the same page in this way.

Business Cloud File Server users can take advantage of this or turn off file sharing completely for their users.

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