An Economic Consulting Firm Retires Fortra's Globalscape EFT Without Moving Client Case Data to the Cloud

An economic consulting firm provides analysis and expert testimony in antitrust, mass torts, energy, finance, and healthcare matters for law firms, Fortune 500 companies, and government agencies.

That work runs on client data. Engagements begin when a law firm, a company, or an agency sends the firm the case data its economists will analyze, and the datasets are large, running to terabyte scale. The data is also exactly the kind clients guard most closely. It can contain PHI or PII, and a portion of the firm's clients refuse cloud file sharing outright. Whatever system receives those files, the files themselves have to land on the firm's own storage.

An On-Premise Server the Clients' Rules Required

For years, the answer was an on-premise Globalscape EFT server: a single machine in the firm's DMZ, answering SFTP on port 22, where external clients connected with FileZilla to drop and collect engagement data. Behind it sat a file server holding the FTP-access folders.

The server did the job, and it taxed the firm for it. The firm patched and maintained it in-house because client data had nowhere else to arrive.

The obvious fix was off the table. A cloud file-sharing service is precisely what some of the firm's clients refuse. The constraint was not the firm's to negotiate; it belonged to the clients. So any replacement had to keep the files on the firm's own storage.

A Cloud Front End for Files That Never Leave the Building

A replacement had to do something unusual: behave like a managed cloud service to the people connecting from outside, and behave like the firm's own storage to everyone else. Clients needed a maintained, modern endpoint to send files to. The files had to land on the firm's servers and stay there. Because the data can contain PHI or PII, a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement sat on the critical path. And internal staff, who run analyses against datasets that reach a terabyte, had to keep local-network speed to the data.

The firm selected Files.com to be that front end, with the Files.com Agent keeping every file on the firm's own servers. Files.com executed a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement covering the PHI in those datasets.

Replicate the Old Structure, Test It, Flip Once

The migration was built to be invisible. The team recreated the existing FTP folder structure inside Files.com, so the new site matched the old one path for path. The firm's on-premise servers were connected through the Files.com Agent, which runs inside the firm's network and makes only outbound connections: no inbound firewall rule, and no new machine in the DMZ. Folders on those servers were mounted into Files.com, so a file a client uploaded through Files.com passed straight through to the firm's storage.

After testing the path with large files, the team migrated the legacy data and recreated each client account against its folder. The site runs under the firm's own custom domain and branding, and the legacy FTP hostname was pointed at it, so a client's saved connection details kept working.

Internal staff never touch the new front end at all. They pick up received data over the same direct local share as before, at LAN speed, which is what makes case data at that scale workable.

Cutover was a single flip day. External clients and internal staff were notified to switch, and the help desk was trained on the new provisioning procedure before day one. The approach throughout: replicate the existing model first, evolve the processes after.

Globalscape Retired, Data Still at Home

With the cutover complete, the firm retired the Globalscape server. Files.com is now the only way client SFTP transfers reach the firm.

The Globalscape server is gone, and with it the patching and upkeep of a machine the firm ran only because its clients' rules demanded it. Clients whose rules keep case data out of cloud storage kept the same protocol and the same landing point: they connect over SFTP as before, and every file they send still lands on the firm's own storage, with Files.com as the managed front end.

The setup also gives each new engagement more flexibility. The old setup centered on one protocol, and every client requirement had to fit it. With Files.com, the firm can choose SFTP, FTP, or a web interface when an engagement demands it, all against the same folders and the same storage.

Serving the Strictest Clients Without Running a Server

What changed at the firm is who runs the machinery behind its clients' strictest requirement. The requirement itself still holds: some clients will not allow their case data in cloud storage, and every file still lands on the firm's own servers. What no longer holds is the price of honoring it. When a client sends case data today, it arrives through Files.com under the firm's own domain and passes straight onto the firm's storage, and nobody at the firm maintains an internet-facing transfer server to make that happen.

For a firm whose clients say no to the cloud, that turned out to be the whole answer: the transfer layer and the storage were never the same thing, and only one of them needed to be theirs.

The front end moved to Files.com. The files did not move at all.