Who Uses WhiteStar?

WhiteStar Files, or WSF for short, is a secure file transferring app that makes sending and receiving encrypted files easier than ever.  To see how WSF positively impacts professional workflows, we spoke to patent attorney Leon Turkevich from the law firm Manelli Selter PLLC about his personal experience transferring sensitive documents.  Leon, being a patent attorney, deals with intellectual property that is both highly valuable and sensitive and must be kept completely secure between himself and his clients. 

Leon has been an early adopter of WSF, having switched from his previous file transfer software in order to improve the efficiency of his workflow.  We wanted to know exactly what made him make the decision to switch.  Here’s what he said:

Q: What were the steps involved in encrypting and sending secure docs?

Leon: In the past it wasn’t great, in a nutshell - In all honesty it wasn’t a pleasant experience.  I had more than one entity that didn’t want to send or receive sensitive documents via email – and I certainly appreciated their concerns about unsecure email!

Q: So what did you use previously to do secure file transfers?

Leon: At that time, I purchased and used a program called PC Encrypt that encrypted the documents.  You had to log into it, and it would generate keys, and then you had to share the keys with the recipient at the other end … it was a hassle to use on my end, but it was also a hassle for the recipient to receive it because PC Encrypt would generate an executable file that was sent to the recipient via email, and it would be blocked by a firewall (because many firewalls saw this as malicious code). 

So, then we had to figure out workarounds to get the encrypted documents past the firewalls. It was an annoying experience for me and the recipient.

Q: How did you deal with transferring files to clients who had VPN’s?

            Leon: VPNs were a nightmare: getting a VPN token device to generate a PIN to activate the VPN, getting a (dedicated company) email account directed to their internal email server that I could only access via VPN, etc. 

            The additional problem with VPN was that as soon as I turned on the VPN, my computer connection was tunneled, and I no longer had access to the files stored on the file servers in my office.   It also was impossible to use in a remote work environment when the VPN software was installed on my office computer.

People think about VPN being in a tunnel – but it felt like I was in a cave!  I had to make sure that any correspondence or documents I planned on sending to the VPN destination was first stored on my office computer, so that whenever I would generate draft reports, etc., it had to be locally accessible on my office computer.  

            Then came dealing with VPN updates, unrelated mass mailings on the dedicated email service … it was a nightmare!

Q: Did you use any other programs?  

            Leon: Recently I had been using 7-Zip, which was leaps and bounds better than PC-Encrypt, but it still had its issues.  I had to tell the email recipient: “This is a 7-Zip file”, and put in a password that the recipient would need to decrypt the file.  Sometimes for multiple documents I’d have to create a folder and encrypt that folder… once I generated that encrypted file, if I wanted to add another file, 7-Zip would add the file but would not encrypt it.

Q: What do you think of WSF as an alternative now that you’ve been using it for a few months?

            Leon: I’m glad to hear that WhiteStar Files operates like SOCIETY (WhiteStar’s Secure Messenger) by generating a local 256-bit crypto key on my side and encrypting files using both the local 256-bit crypto key and the 256-bit crypto key generated at the destination server – it’s such a refreshing thought knowing I no longer have to worry about security at all. 

Beyond being concerned with client confidentiality, best practices, and compliance with whatever protocols and requirements are out there, it’s refreshing to know I can do secure transfers easily, I receive instant feedback that the secure transfer is done, and I can focus on the things I’m trained to do and what I’m supposed to do, and not get distracted by things I’m not an expert in.

Q: Has 7-Zip ever been so complicated that you just abandoned it? 

Leon: You need to ask someone who has some more technical savvy in this area.  I haven’t tried training anyone on it, but if anyone asks, I have to say: here’s the website, knock yourself out.

Q: What about WSF?  Do you think WSF is simple enough?  Could you teach someone how to use it quickly?

Leon: Yeah, most definitely!  It’s just drag and drop!

Q: Have you ever gotten a file so large you had to split it?

Leon: In some cases, in the past, I’ve needed to send some files that can get really, really big!  If you try to send these large files by email, they would get bounced back.  So, I then had to break up these large files and email them in parts, which could take me an extra 20-30 minutes, which I’d rather spend on billable time.

Q: This whole process, did it take a long time?

Leon: In the past it did.  Obviously the more you do something, the sooner it becomes a process as part of a workflow, but if you still have to deal with encryption using something like 7-Zip, and the OS on my computer has to recognize there’s an encrypted file stored in my file system (sometimes it doesn’t), I’d sometimes need to open up 7-Zip and look for where the encrypted file went… this didn’t make it as efficient as I would have liked.

Q: Is WSF faster over all?

Leon: Tremendously faster – because what better way is there than to drag and drop with automatic encryption?  It’s almost instantaneous, in every situation I’ve seen! 

If your business needs to send and receive secure documents quickly and easily, contact us and let us give you a demonstration of how WhiteStar Files can dramatically improve your workflow.  We make the process of moving sensitive files simple and easy.