Beth Israel's IT staff didn't want to discourage its active and friendly medical research community. Supporting free and open exchange among researchers is central to the mission of the medical center, which serves as a Harvard teaching hospital. But IT admins were becoming concerned about the extent to which researchers exchanged large, unencrypted files. Not only were they worried about data security, the large files were bogging down their e-mail server and other IT resources. To address the problem, IT managers purchased a centrally-secured appliance which bypasses e-mail and FTP file transfer methods. The appliance maintains permissions, and only allows registered users to route files to one other. Now, researchers use the appliance to exchange manuscripts and research data and collaborate on projects.
To get more background on Beth Israel's security effort:
- read this Line56.com article