activecho Frequently Asked Questions What are the benefits of activecho? activecho allows your organization to provide an on-premise, managed and secure alternative to Dropbox and other file synching and sharing solutions. Benefits include: Ease of Use Requires minimal end-user training. Simple for IT to install and get up and running in 10-15 minutes. Security Active Directory Integration to authenticate and provision users. Encryption for data transfer and data at rest. Whitelists and blacklists to control who users can share files with. Management Full logging, tracking and history of operations. Administrator configurable features. Zero-admin provisioning. Infrastructure Flexibility On-premise file servers or NAS, or cloud-based (Ex. Amazon S3). Cost, availability and security requirements drive decisions. What are the key features of activecho? Integration with Active Directory for end-user security and user permissions. Support of multiple deployment options including on-premise. Rapid configuration of user blacklists and whitelists to ensure file sharing access follows enterprise security and compliance requirements Simple install and rapid deployment on multiple platforms. Intuitive end-user experience that requires minimal training. HTTPS encryption of data in-motion for the secure access and sharing of files residing on multiple devices. Full logging, tracking, and history of file activities for auditing and compliance. Instant notifications and alerts. What are the most commonly used activecho cases? activecho allows users to access their files via their PC, MAC, mobile device or web browser. There are many valuable uses for enterprises and employees including: Team projects Project teams can set up activecho folders to speed collaboration and workflow. Ad hoc collaboration Users can quickly collaborate with other employees and external constituents.
Customer connections Corporations can share materials with customers in a secure and managed manner. Partner interactions Corporations can share materials with partners in a secure and managed manner. Service provider interchanges Service providers, such as lawyers, accountants, auditors and financial institutions, can securely and easily share sensitive material with clients. Why do I need activecho if my employees are already using Dropbox? Is your organization concerned about security, management and compliance? Do your employees have access to sensitive material? There have been many documented security related issues with Dropbox. You have no control or visibility over whom your employees are sharing information with. There is limited to no audit trail. There is no enterprise and IT oversight. How safe is Dropbox to use with mobile devices? activecho addresses all these concerns providing the consumer-grade simplicity of Dropbox with the benefit of enterprise grade security and management required by the enterprise. We are already using Dropbox for Teams? While Dropbox for Teams provides some IT oversight, there are still numerous factors to take into account, such as: Security. There have been many documented security related issues with Dropbox. IT has little or no control over whom your employees are sharing information with. There is limited to no audit trail. How safe is it to use with mobile devices? Would you like to run file sharing on-premise? Do you want full Active Directory integration? Do you want to control your files? activecho addresses all these concerns by providing the consumer-grade simplicity of Dropbox with the enterprise grade security and management required by the enterprise. Will my end users want to use this? activecho is really simple to use and works very similarly to Dropbox. activecho was built to provide the consumer-grade simplicity of Dropbox with the enterprise grade security and management required by the enterprise. I like having my storage taken care of for me. And on-premise is added storage cost for me. And we like the cloud solutions because we don t have to manage it. For many of our customers, they have additional storage already in place which they can take advantage of. And in fact, for solutions like Dropbox or Box, you are paying for storage for each individual user regardless of how much they use. With activecho, you allocate the storage and can monitor how much is used. In a future release, activecho will also have a storage quota that you can place on users or groups of users. In many ways, activecho can be more cost-effective than the other cloudbased solutions. activecho is also very simple to manage and maintain so it will not add significant management overhead.
Why should Enterprise File Sharing be a priority or issue right now? A significant number of employees within the organization are or may be using unapproved, and sometimes unsecure solutions, to either collaborate on files with others or to get files on their mobile devices. So while this may not be a visible priority, it is likely that you may already have an existing problem within your organization. This is especially true in the mobility use case where your employees may be using Dropbox or other similar solutions to get files on to their ipads or iphones. Wouldn t this cause your company concern regarding the security of corporate assets? Do we need to use Synchronization? You don t need to use sync if you don t want to. You can use activecho with a Browser or mobile app to get to your files from anywhere. How safe is it for people to put files on their mobile devices? activecho provides a very safe and secure mobile environment to access files on mobile devices, such as ipad and iphone. We use our mobilecho solution to provide this access which has the following features/functions: Encrypted sandbox. In transit encryption with HTTPS. Integration in Active Directory. Administrator configurable functions. What are the system requirements? The activecho solution consists of two components: server software and client apps for Mac, Windows, ipad and iphone. The client is also accessible via most popular browsers. activecho can be installed on both server and workstation-class versions of the Windows operating system. For optimal results, your Windows machine should be running the latest service pack from Microsoft. Server Requirements: Windows 2003 / 2008 / 2012 Intel/AMD Server Virtualization environments Cloud (Amazon EC2) Client Requirements: Windows: Vista, 7, XP Mac OS X 10.6 and higher ipad iphone Android Browsers: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari What s the installation process for the activecho client software on Windows? On a Windows computer, use a browser to download and run the activecho client software from the activecho server s login page. In the preferences pane, enter the server name (DNS name like https://server.mycompany.com) or https://ip.address, select a folder to monitor and you are ready to go.
What s the installation process for the activecho client software on Mac OS X? On a Mac OS X computer, download and run the activecho client software installer. In the preferences pane, enter the server name (DNS name like https://server.mycompany.com) or https://ip.address, select a folder to monitor and you are ready to go. What s the installation process for the activecho client software on iphone or ipad? On any ios device, install the mobilecho App from the Apple App Store. Add the activecho server name (DNS name like server. mycompany.com) or IP address, log in and you are ready to go. How does activecho address security? activecho addresses many key security requirements including: Integration with Active Directory for ensured security and user permissions. Support of multiple deployment options including on-premise. Rapid configuration of user blacklists and whitelists to ensure file and sharing access follows enterprise security and compliance requirements. HTTPS encryption of data in-motion with for the secure access and sharing of files residing on multiple devices. Full logging, tracking, and history of file activities for auditing and compliance. Instant notifications and alerts. We also have a document that specifically addresses security which is available on our web site. Do you use encryption? Yes, we encrypt data at rest and in-motion. HTTPS encryption of data in-motion with for the secure access and sharing of files residing on multiple devices. Can you run activecho on multiple servers with central management? You can run activecho on multiple servers, but they are independent of each other for use and management. You will also require a separate license and agreement for each activecho server. Can you split the repository among multiple storage devices? No, not at this time. It is on our roadmap. Can you run it in the DMZ? Yes. activecho is specially designed to run in the DMZ. It s fully encrypted repository and firewall friendly protocols make DMZ a very desirable deployment scenario.
Can I share files with people outside my company? Yes. activecho allows users to share files with external users (as long as IT permits sharing with external users). With activecho, the enterprise can remain in control of who can share what, and with whom it can be shared. First, for internal employees, users are provisioned through Active Directory to ensure they are approved for file sharing. External constituents can also be added; related to this is the ability to add recipients to whitelists or blacklists. This gives IT complete control over who is allowed to share and receive corporate files. A whitelist would contain a list of properly credentialed external partners. This could be a finance department securely sharing data with their external auditors. One example of blacklist usage is setting a restriction to not allow users to send files to a Gmail address. If we don t use Active Directory, can we use activecho? Yes. You can create user accounts and invite others (internal and external) using email addresses. If the organization already uses mobilecho, why would we need activecho? mobilecho and activecho are complementary solutions. mobilecho is our Mobile File Management solution. activecho is our Enterprise File Sharing Solution. mobilecho is all about providing mobile users secure access to corporate file servers. activecho is all about enabling file sharing between multiple people and providing access across all of your devices (desktop/laptop, web browser and mobile device). Acronis Product Summary ExtremeZ-IP provides seamless integration of Macs into Windows server environments. We ve been selling this product for 12 years and we have thousands of customers. mobilecho provides secure mobile file access to corporate file servers. Introduced in May 2011, it has hundreds of customers and has been especially popular within financial services, healthcare, pharma and other regulated industries. activecho Enterprise File Sharing. Freedom of Choice IT can run activecho on-premise or private cloud. Security o Active Directory o Encryption o Auditing Mobile significant advantage on mobile because we use mobilecho. For additional information please visit http://www.acronis.com To purchase Acronis products, visit www.acronis.com or search online for an authorized reseller. Acronis office details can be found at http://www.acronis.com/company/worldwide.html Copyright 2002-2013 Acronis International GmbH. All rights reserved. Acronis, activecho, mobilecho and the Acronis logo are trademarks of Acronis International GmbH. ExtremeZ-IP is a registered trademarks of GroupLogic, Inc. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Other mentioned names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners and should be regarded as such. Technical changes and differences from the illustrations are reserved; errors are excepted. 2013-01