Electronic data sharing software that is easily deployable and platform independent  

There is frequent need to securely transmit digital information both within an organization and between an organization and its suppliers and customers. A traditional method of accomplishing this has been the use of e-mail "attachments." However, several trends are in process which limit the usability, effectiveness, and security of email attachments. We believe that, ultimately, sending critical data via email, and as email attachments, will no longer be feasible. We have developed an alternative technology which addresses these issues

The technology that we will describe was developed to replace email attachment functionality. A need to replace that functionality arose because

  • Organizations often impose administrative limits on the size of email messages. These limits can be severe and almost totally preclude the transmission of rich data - visual, audio, algorithmic, etc.
  • Email has no ubiquitous, reliable authentication method. Senders cannot be assured that the correct recipient will receive their transmissions or even received at all. Receivers cannot easily be assured that senders are authentic. Protocols such as PGP can be layered on top of email but their use is both clumsy and requires complicated in-place infrastructure at both ends of the conversation - infrastructure that may not be available in crisis situations.
  • Email, especially email containing attachments, is increasingly being viewed by organizations as a security liability because of the fact that senders can be easily impersonated and email attachments can carry security risks, such as worms or viruses. In response, many organizations are simply choosing to delete or reject any email which contains an attachment when it crosses either into our out of their enterprise boundary. This cripples the use of email, and email attachments, for inter-organization communication and coordination where such coordination and communication requires the exchange of rich digital information

Our approach is driven by the need to address the above issues with the additional constraint that the solution be as low-cost and easy to deploy as possible. As a result, we chose to use "off the shelf" technologies, particularly those that currently ship by default with computer systems purchased from virtually any vendor.

The technologies you need are as simple as a Web Browser (i.e. Internet Explorer, Netscape, Safari, etc.) and a Web Server (e.g. IIS, Apache, etc.)

A computer with an installed web browser and a functional network connection is the only requirement to exchange mission-critical data securely, reliably, and with authentication.

There are no requirements for a specific vendor operating system, no browser requirements, no requirements for either endpoint other than some web browser running on a computer connected to a computer network.