Athennian Streamlines Sensitive Client File Exchange and Migration with Files.com

Overview

Global enterprises and professional services firms trust Athennian for its airtight security and uncompromising compliance. As the company keeps growing revenue rapidly, its operations team faces growing challenges managing sensitive client data, meeting strict data residency and privacy regulations, and handling secure document exchanges.

Challenges

Athennian faced several operational challenges from outdated file management workflows:

• Inefficient legacy systems. The company relied on a patchwork of Amazon S3 buckets, SFTP, and Windows FSx shares. File uploads were slow, certificate management was cumbersome, and the process was overly dependent on a single IT administrator. Projects often stalled when that person was unavailable.
• Unpredictable onboarding. New customers regularly needed to send sensitive documents right after signing contracts. Athennian needed a branded, self-service portal that non-technical stakeholders could use from day one with no onboarding time.
• Security and compliance concerns. As a company handling sensitive legal data, Canadian data-residency requirements were non-negotiable. Data had to stay in Canadian-hosted infrastructure, and access needed tight controls with full audit trails to meet legal and privacy regulations.
• Migration and infrastructure upgrades. The DevOps team wanted to retire its S3 and legacy SFTP stack but still had to migrate terabytes of legacy files to a more collaborative environment without disrupting existing integrations or forcing users onto VPNs.

Solution

Athennian turned to Files.com as a cloud-native File Orchestration Platform.

• Branded portal for file exchange. Files.com provided a friction-free, browser-based drop-zone at files.athennian.com, letting customers upload sensitive files directly into Canadian storage and meeting data residency regulations.
• Granular role-based access. With Files.com’s flexible role-based permissions, the DevOps team restricted access to critical actions like creating share links, while allowing “power users” such as the Implementation team to manage client folders and trigger Slack notifications without admin intervention.
• Efficient migration process. Files.com’s remote-server sync moved files from AWS FSx/S3 into the Files.com platform in a single one-time migration. Existing connections stayed live but read-only during the transition.
• Full file transfer capabilities. With built-in Inbox, Share Links, and Desktop App, Files.com covered every file-transfer scenario and eliminated the latency and reliability issues common with traditional SFTP.
• Automated security and compliance features. Files.com’s out-of-the-box support for HTTPS certificates, SOC 2 alignment, and detailed logging eliminated ongoing certificate renewals and long security review cycles.

Results

• Faster client onboarding. New clients upload documents with a simple drag-and-drop, with no SFTP keys to manage. Onboarding friction dropped sharply and customer setup is significantly faster.
• Stronger internal productivity. Athennian’s migration team no longer tracks file transfers manually. Files.com’s real-time notifications alert team members the moment files arrive, so work starts immediately.
• DevOps efficiency gains. By offloading certificate management, key handling, and SFTP troubleshooting to Files.com, the DevOps team got back the time previously spent maintaining legacy infrastructure.
• Stronger compliance and client trust. Athennian now confidently meets its Canadian data residency requirements, with files encrypted in transit and at rest. Every file movement is audit-logged.
• Cost and infrastructure optimization. Athennian sunset its S3-based SFTP infrastructure, cutting both storage and ongoing maintenance costs.

Conclusion

By replacing its outdated S3 and SFTP infrastructure with Files.com’s cloud-native platform, Athennian transformed its file exchange and migration processes. Files.com lets Athennian scale its services quickly and efficiently with a modern, secure, user-friendly platform that supports the company’s rapid growth.

More customer stories →