A Catholic Archdiocese Retires On-Premises SFTP and Adds Secure Inbound File Intake with Files.com

A Catholic archdiocese serves hundreds of thousands of Catholics through a network of parishes and schools, alongside a portfolio of other operations.

Behind all of that sits a conventional back office: Human Resources, Legal, Finance, and IT, administering thousands of employees from a small central office. Many of the schools operate under parish governance as legally separate entities, which makes the central office less a headquarters than a hub. Contracts, personnel and benefits records, and the data feeds of its ERP systems all pass through it constantly, moving between the archdiocese, its schools and parishes, and dozens of outside parties. That file exchange ran on two tools, and each covered half a job. For a small central office supporting thousands of employees, solving the two requirements separately would have meant two new platforms, two integrations, and two administration burdens.

Two Tools, Each Covering Half a Job

Machine transfers ran on an on-premises SFTP server, one more piece of infrastructure the archdiocese had decided to move off its own premises. Human exchange ran on encrypted email. HR and Legal wanted a governed way to receive a contract or a personnel file in a browser, under the archdiocese's own name, inside permissions the central office sets.

HR and Legal exchange contracts with outside parties as a matter of routine, and the archdiocese wanted every contract, benefits file, and personnel document arriving from outside to land on one controlled path, whatever client the counterparty had on their end.

The problem was also about to get bigger. New SAP and Infor implementations were under way, and both required SFTP integrations. The machine-transfer workload was about to grow in importance at exactly the moment the archdiocese wanted its SFTP server gone.

Two Requirements, One Small Office

The two requirements pulled toward two different products. The server replacement was machine-to-machine infrastructure: ERP data feeds, external vendors connecting over SFTP, GPG encryption on transfers. The inbound requirement was a human problem: HR and Legal staff who needed to receive a contract in a browser, not operate an SFTP client. Buying one tool for each would have preserved the split the archdiocese was trying to eliminate.

So the requirements were really one requirement stated twice. The archdiocese needed a hosted service, off its premises, running under its own name so vendors and ERP jobs had a stable endpoint to move to. It needed encryption applied to transfers without scripts to maintain. And it needed the same service to present a web portal that ordinary business staff could use without any client at all.

The archdiocese selected Files.com to be that platform.

One Platform Under the Archdiocese's Own Domain

That consolidation mattered during implementation as well: a senior systems architect on the central IT team ran the entire configuration single-handedly.

The hosted SFTP endpoint was stood up under the archdiocese's own branded domain, so the external vendors and the SAP and Infor integration jobs could move to an address the archdiocese controls. Files.com's built-in GPG support applied encryption on the platform itself rather than through scripts on a server.

The same platform's web interface became the portal. Staff in HR, Legal, and Finance receive sensitive documents through it in a browser, inside folder permissions the central office sets, so a contract coming in from outside counsel lands in a governed place the central office controls.

One platform now carries both kinds of traffic: an integration hub for the machines, and a secure front door for the people.

One Hosted Service for Both Kinds of Traffic

With Files.com in production, the archdiocese replaced a server it had to run and a separate email tool with a single hosted service.

• The on-premises SFTP server is retired. Its workload runs on Files.com under the archdiocese's own domain, with no file transfer server left in the building to maintain.
• SAP and Infor exchange data through the same hub that serves its external vendors, with GPG encryption applied to the transfers.
• Dozens of staff across HR, Legal, and Finance receive contracts, benefits data, and personnel files through the portal, inside permissions the central office sets.
• The next vendor and the next department are a credential and a folder on the platform that already exists, not a second product for a small central office to evaluate, buy, and run.

Two Projects That Were Really One

Today the central office's file exchange runs in one place. An ERP feed from a vendor and a signed contract from outside counsel arrive through the same Files.com platform, under the same domain, in the same governed environment. When Legal needs a document back from a counterparty, the path already exists, and it is the same path everything else uses.

Retiring an on-premises SFTP server and giving business departments a secure way to receive sensitive files looked like two projects. On Files.com, they were one.