Kiteworks Reviews

I use it for sharing. We have a major US client, and they use it to share files between internal users. They have different data centers and hosted sites, and when someone wants to share files between these data centers, they use it for that purpose. We also have externally faced sites located in different regions. When they want to connect with external domain users or partners to share any files or emails, they use it.

I like most features, yet I cannot recollect them all exactly. One thing I can say is that I can identify from which region our users are uploading or downloading files. I have a very nice view to check that. 

It integrates with external SSO, like Okta, which means I don't need to ask an external user to create a user account; they can register using SSO authentication. 

It reduces the effort of the site administrator. This feature was not available earlier, however, we implemented it recently, which reduced administrative efforts significantly.

I'm not a network expert, however, there must be some room for improvement. Perhaps there could be a notification to users about their bandwidth or network packet loss. If users receive such notifications, they can understand any disruptions are due to issues with their network or bandwidth rather than the site or Kiteworks. 

Additionally, I work from offshore India, and I told my client manager to communicate with the Kiteworks forum salesman regarding one feature. I noticed the Kiteworks login UI is very basic, lacking customization. Allowing more HTML tags to add hyperlinks or user-friendly information on the home page would be very useful.

I have used this solution for more than two and a half years or three years.

The solution works, however, there are cases where end users face issues with Kiteworks, possibly due to network glitches or packet drops. These issues can interrupt transfers. 

Although it resolves most issues, if there is any case like a destination site or source site losing connection, it causes interruption to the file transfer. It's best to keep updated or apply patches as they release fixes for vulnerabilities or bugs. 

Sometimes, fixes may be delayed, and workarounds might be shared until permanent fixes are released. Keeping up to date with patches and following vendor guidelines ensures fewer issues. 

However, some of our sites maintain older versions due to downtime challenges, leading to bugs. In those cases, we follow Kiteworks updates to fix that. Keeping up to date with the software version ensures good stability.

Technical support has improved significantly compared to one and a half or two years ago. They respond well, and their support portal is actively maintained. However, reaching a technical resource via their call center takes some time.

Neutral

It is quite simple as these are appliances with limited access managed by Kiteworks. They help and guide me, so there aren't any issues with that.

Scalability is impressive. It can be highly available, resilient, and scalable infrastructure. I can confidently give it a nine. It suits any level of organization, whether a small setup with two appliances or a globally located organization with multiple sites. 

Having a front-facing site with back-end nodes deployed in different regions is possible. If the client environment involves non-technical users who need to share files securely, Kiteworks is the best solution. It has a rich user interface that allows nontechnical users to use the tool effectively. Initially, there may be some learning curve, yet it becomes easier over time. 

Overall, I would give the solution an eight out of ten due to its interactive UI, which I find superior to others I've experienced like MFT and Globals. 

Our primary use case of the solution is for file sharing by both person-to-person and for our air monitoring equipment that uses scripts through the use of SFTP by sending the data through the solution. 

The solution has improved our organization by providing a unified, secure way to share sensitive content with third parties which is very important. 

The solution removes the limitations with file attachment size that is found with regular email.

The solution helps protect our customer's privacy.

The solution's backend SFTP, allows our instruments to automatically share files with the system, and pick up and ingest them into whatever system the files are going to.

The solution provides the ability to trace an email path if there is a problem or need.

The solution helps us comply with the data privacy, security standards, and protocols required by the state and our agency.

It makes it very easy for people to share secure, large files because we did have a constraint on emails, and the file size that could be attached. So Accellion obviously allows you to change that, so we can send larger files to people if needed via Accellion, versus regular email. Obviously, the security part of it is very important, because if we're passing legal or personal information, that helps with the security part of it.

The solution has a couple of valuable features including how easy it is to manage with a user-friendly user administration piece. The solution provides the ability to see the file name and type as well as who is sending and receiving the file.

The solution's technical support has room for improvement because it can be slow at times.

I have been using the solution for three and a half years.

The system is extremely stable, but because it is a "COTS", system access is restricted and you must use the solution's support to make even simple changes, which increases the downtime.

The solution is scalable. I scaled our data directory, because of the number of files that were being shared and there were no problems.

In my experience, their technical support can be a little slow. There are a couple of guys that are really good that I've worked with, but usually, you start off with the first line of support and they're a little slow.

I've only had one problem and they were helpful to fix it. Because I don't have access to the server, and normally I could fix it myself, but they won't let me log in. It's a COTS system, which means that we have no access to it. I can just manage it through the management portal that they provide, but as far as if there is...

The issue we had was, one of the volumes of partitions within the system filled up. And I could have done it all, because I'm a Linux admin, so I could have done everything if I had access to it. But they don't give you that access, so I had to have... So the system was down and I had to go get them to fix it.

So I had to work with them because I have access to Amazon, so I can act on this. But internally, I couldn't go in and grow the logical volumes that they had set up.

Neutral

Previously I built my own SFTP server to share files, but it required the users to have more technical skills versus this solution which is extremely user-friendly.

The initial setup is straightforward and only takes about one hour.

The implementation was completed in-house with the help of the solution's support team.

It is not really expensive. I mean, to me it's obviously expensive, but it's worth it.

Before choosing this solution a few other options were evaluated including Dropbox, and based on our requirements the solution was recommended to us by our evaluator.

Well, I looked at other options. But we have a service called Gartner, and we used them to help with the... It's been so long ago, like four years ago, three years ago, when I started looking at all the different options like Dropbox, and all that. But Gartner, based on the requirements that I asked for, settled on Kiteworks as the number one choice. So they recommended using this one, too.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

The solution makes it easier to consolidate secure communication technology into a centralized system by using one system to handle everything, instead of diversifying it across many different systems that cost more because they require more people to manage more systems.

Depending on your organization's requirement there are other options available but they don't have the SFTP backend solution, which is required if you have non-human systems using it.

The solution is easy to maintain and only requires one person.

The solution is cloud-based so anyone within our agency that needs to send a secure file, or a large file, or just can't send via regular email can use it.

Kiteworks is easy to manage and maintain with a user-friendly interface and I recommend it to anyone that requires a file-sharing system that supports SFTP. 

It's deployed in AWS and can be used by anybody. It's tied into our active directory, so as long as a user within our agency is in the security group, they can have access to it. And then they can, at their needs or whatever, share files with whomever, inside or outside the agency.

So it's deployed in the cloud and there is no special area or group that has access. It's anybody who has a need to send a secure file, or is too big, or can't go be sent via just regular email.

Well, it's the best product out there if it meets the needs that you need. I mean, it's a file-sharing system and there's a lot of those. To me, the biggest part of managing systems like that is managing the user interface, and who gets access, and how that access is managed. And if they need the SFTP part of it.

But yeah. No, it's very easy to manage and operate, and once you understand where things are... I mean, a lot of times it does everything for you, you don't have to do too much. I mean, if it catches a file... There's one group, that shares files, and a lot of times they get quarantined because they're binary files and it matches a possible virus type. So the antivirus will catch it and quarantine it, and then I have to go in and release it from quarantine. But that's very simple and easy, too.

So I mean, there are a lot of little things that you have to be aware of. But for the most part, it's very easy to manage and maintain.

Our primary use case for this solution is transferring large files from one place to another. Gmail has a limitation on the size of files you can send, but with Kiteworks, by default, you can send a 30 GB file.

Kiteworks helps to protect privacy. Files are sent in the .ZIP format and are password protected, and require two-factor authentication. Because of these factors, we are able to show compliance with data privacy regulations.

In terms of audits, we can generate a report from the system that includes the logs or whatever activities have been performed by users or admins. All this information is available for verification during an audit.

The solution has also saved us money. People cannot share data, via Outlook, beyond 20 MB. And if someone is sharing via Teams, security is not guaranteed because it's an open platform. Confidential data has a high value. But when files are sent through Kiteworks, it saves a lot of money by protecting the data and keeping us compliant. And there are cost savings because, regardless of the size of the files you send, the cost is the same.

The most valuable feature is the ability to send a large file of 30 GB in size and more. In Outlook and other email applications, you cannot send files that are larger than 20 MB. But with Kiteworks, 30 GB is transferable by default and, with the proper approval, a file of up to 100 GB can be sent. It makes file transfer very easy and smooth.

Also, only the .ZIP format is supported because it is a very secure mode of file transfer, and that is why it is recommended.

It also has built-in antivirus, so if it detects any malware it will quarantine the file and it won't be delivered. This is really important to keep the service up and running in a proper and secure manner. With people working from home, the data needs to be checked to see what kind of data is being sent.

It has a two-factor authentication mechanism. For example, if a person with a particular domain is using Kiteworks and sends a file to a party outside of his domain, that external party has to go through two-factor authentication. The receiver gets a link that takes them to the setup of a temporary account, which will be valid for three days. The recipient will also receive a customized password separately. Only after all these steps will they be able to access the file. That access is only available to a person with the mail ID to which the file was sent.

In addition, admins can see who is sending sensitive content, what that content is, and to whom it is being sent, and can track emails. One week of good training will give a user complete knowledge for using the solution.

The system is very easy to use. You just click on "Compose," attach a file, and send it. It's very easy compared to Outlook or Teams. It's quite simple, even for someone logging in for the first time. It is very smooth and easy to send files.

Last year, there was a bit of lag in the system for half an hour or so. That was a rare scenario, but I would like to see immediate releases of fixes because now it takes at least a week. If that time span can be reduced to one day or two days, that would be very helpful for users so that things are sorted and transactions work smoothly.

Also, the user interface is not great and can be improved.

We have been using Kiteworks for the last one and a half years.

The stability of the solution is quite good.

It is scalable. We have between 5,500 and 6,000 licensed users. If we consider internal and external users, the total is around 8,000, to 9,000.

Their technical support has been quite helpful.

Positive

This is our first such solution.

On a monthly or quarterly basis, new features are launched or, if there is a bug in the system, that is resolved and an update has to be installed. I'm involved in feature update deployments but was not involved in the initial application deployment.

The part I'm involved in is quite straightforward. When they share a release we use a change management process and it takes 15 to 20 minutes, maximum, based on the size of the release.

There is a cleanup patch that is run in the system, but that is completely looked after by the Kiteworks development team.

It has a profile of between 30 GB and 100 GB, but it is based on the approval that is available. It has a certain cost linked to it, which is charged from the user's cost center.

The reason people should go with Kiteworks is that it is one of the most secure modes of transfer. It supports a compression method and has two-factor authentication.

Our primary use case with Kiteworks is to securely send and receive data file information. Additionally, we use KiteWorks to control and track emails.

Our main objective is to transmit information to a vast audience via mass communication. This information pertains to either product or data, and it must be securely transmitted. One of the most notable advantages of using this communication method is the encryption it offers, which is essential for our needs. Moreover, this method guarantees more than 100 percent information security during data transfer among various networks.

In our company, ensuring information compliance is our top priority. We recognize that not everyone is authorized to send critical information to clients. Therefore, the feature that enables us to control access to information is essential. We limit access to top-level executives or individuals with specific qualifications to handle sensitive information. Using this feature, we can track who sends and receives information, thereby maintaining compliance. Ultimately, this feature is incredibly beneficial in helping us maintain compliance and control access to sensitive information.

Kiteworks aids in safeguarding the privacy of customers. It has received authorization from the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, which sets rigorous standards. Protecting customer privacy and addressing their concerns is our foremost objective. Kiteworks certainly assist us in preserving the confidentiality of customers' data, information, and product-related content. We are able to maintain compliance with regard to our business activities thanks to the trial authorization. We can now manage administration logs and transfer information securely. Our organization's top leaders have the power to properly manage data and handle complaints. We can securely transfer data between several networks. In terms of compliance and other associated issues, Kiteworks gave us access to a centralized private content network that enables smooth cooperation and data transfer.

Having a centralized repository in Kiteworks has considerably shortened the time required to audit our content. We can now conduct content audits much more smoothly and efficiently, and identify and correct malpractices and errors promptly. Previously, it used to take us a long time to even recognize the issues, let alone correct them, but now the entire process has become much quicker for us. This aspect of Kiteworks is very useful for us.

Kiteworks offers a private and preferred platform that serves as a centralized system for us to manage and monitor our information exchange effectively.

The email protection gateway of Kiteworks enables me to automate our email protection by applying customized encryption rules based on our policies. There are several secure email communication options available, including encryption. As mentioned earlier, only authorized users can access the message, and the automation feature is incredibly effective for us, particularly when configuring antivirus software or sandboxing. This feature has proven to be extremely beneficial for our operations.

Using Kiteworks certainly alleviated our concerns when sharing information since we are now able to fulfill our customers' requests with ease. All data transfers are entirely secure and stable, which gives us peace of mind.

At present, Kiteworks emerged as a favored approach for exchanging information. We opted to use Kiteworks as our preferred solution for file-sharing instead of relying on other applications, as it provides a centralized platform that consolidates everything for us.

The most valuable aspect of Kiteworks is undoubtedly the private content network. This feature is particularly beneficial for us. Furthermore, it serves as a centralized platform that enables us to track and manage our information exchange. The feature allows us to monitor who sends and shares information and view the administrative logs. This feature has proven to be quite helpful. Another useful feature is the ability to restrict message access to authenticated users only, providing us with greater control over the information we share. Overall, I am unsure whether we prioritize having greater control over the information or over the platform itself.

The centralized platform of Kiteworks allows us to supervise and regulate all of our information exchanges. The ability to share sensitive data with third parties in a consolidated manner is highly significant for us. Moreover, we find it effortless to control our confidential information, as we can conveniently track the shared data and the involved parties, ultimately reducing the likelihood of unethical practices and data misuse.

There is not a lot of training required to use Kiteworks because it is straightforward to use. The user can begin to use the solution shortly after implementation.

Kiteworks could benefit from enhancing the proposal knowledge base section, specifically regarding the type of work involved. Currently, the knowledge base seems insufficiently dedicated to this topic, making it challenging for new users to access the relevant administrative law. Improving the visual aids and providing clearer explanations could alleviate this issue.

I have been using Kiteworks for one and a half years.

The stability of Kiteworks is good.

Kiteworks is utilized by various departments within our organization, although it is not implemented across different locations. It is recommended that multiple departments within our organization should adopt the software. The overall user count is estimated to be between 120 to 140.

As a cloud-based solution, Kiteworks is inherently scalable, particularly as more data is generated, requiring additional storage space. At present, there is no immediate need to scale in terms of users.

The customer service for Kiteworks is excellent.

Their response time is impressive, and their level of expertise is commendable.

I rate the support Kiteworks a ten out of ten.

Positive

I did not use another solution prior to Kiteworks.

We have had a return on investment by implementing Kiteworks, as it has allowed us to avoid the need for purchasing multiple solutions. Using Kiteworks has resulted in cost savings of around $1,000 per month which we would have incurred if we had not opted for this centralized platform. 

By ensuring the security of the data being shared, we observed an indirect return on investment. This significantly reduced incidents of data misuse and mismatch, resulting in cost savings for our organization.

The price of Kiteworks is reasonable.

Information security is crucially important, and many companies opt to use Kiteworks due to their excellent customer service and the reasonable cost of their product. Compared to other software options such as Microsoft, which can be prohibitively expensive for small to medium-sized businesses, Kiteworks is a more affordable choice.

Kiteworks has all the features that all other similar solutions have, it is a top-notch solution.

All my requirements are being met easily by the solution.

Since we utilize Kiteworks on the cloud, basic maintenance is unnecessary for software updates. The software is quite stable, and we have not encountered any significant maintenance issues.

I rate Kiteworks a nine out of ten. 

Ensuring data compliance and secure data transfer are crucial priorities for our organization. We successfully achieved both objectives through the centralized platform of Kitework. Additionally, we gained greater control over our international requirements.

As someone who prioritizes data security, I highly recommend using this product. Properly securing and maintaining customer data is crucial in any IT environment, and Kiteworks enables you to do just that. In today's day and age, data theft is unfortunately common, and protecting sensitive information, including data related to customer relationships, is of utmost importance.

Our business partners are using it to send secure emails and data to internal and external business partners. I am responsible for supporting the platform. So, I am an administrator of the tool.

It provides the ability to demonstrate. We can prove out and show that we are able to securely share information internally and externally. We leverage SharePoint internally. Kiteworks is the tool that allows us to share information securely without having to leverage SharePoint and open that up. So, we are able to use SharePoint exclusively internally, and Kiteworks allows us to share data securely with our external business partners.

It enables us to see who is sending sensitive content, what that content is, and to whom it's being sent. This information is beneficial for me if someone needs to audit that information and if someone contacts me to find out who sent something and when and why.

It's very important for my business partners that Kiteworks provides a unified, secure way to share sensitive content with third parties. I don't use the product very much. I administer and manage the product. I don't use it that much, but I do know that it's extremely important to the people who use it on a more regular basis.

It helps protect our customers' privacy, which is extremely important because we are a financial institution. We're monitored and regulated by various entities. So, it's extremely important to be able to prove that we have a secure method of sharing information with internal and external business partners.

We use Kiteworks to control and track email. Very little training was required to use Kiteworks' email protection features. I didn't have any training. I had zero official training, and I was still able to use the product. I didn't go to a training class. I only read the documentation. It was very simple to use. I didn't necessarily need a whole lot of training or documentation.

It helps us to demonstrate compliance with data privacy regulations. It provides our chief information security officer (CISO) and team with the ability to survey and provide reporting on information that is being sent to and from internal and external business partners.

The most valuable feature is the ability to allow end-users to manage their own information and data with minimal administration. That's the best feature from my perspective. 

Something that I know my business partners appreciate is the notifications. It provides the ability to receive notifications. When certain activity happens within folders that they manage themselves, they can go out and take a look at the reporting associated with those notifications to confirm that. For example, I create a folder, and I invite you to the folder. As soon as you upload something to the folder, I'll receive a notification about that. That information is reportable, and I know that this feature is something that our business partners appreciate about Kiteworks.

There is no offboarding process for end-users in Kiteworks. It's a manual process. There is no automated syncing with LDAP and checking to see if the account is still active. It's a manual process to get people out of here, which isn't the best way.

I have been using this solution for two and a half years.

It's much more stable than it used to be. There have been some instability issues because of the way that we are using Kiteworks. We understand that now. So, because of that and some modifications that we made along the way, it has been very stable.

Its scalability has been great. We've had to add storage to the environment due to the way that we were using it initially. Scaling it out from that perspective was very straightforward. We were considering doing some different things with the service within our cluster and making those modifications and changing them and scaling out to fit our support needs, if necessary. It seems to be very straightforward.

It's being used corporate-wide. It's housed in our data center. Currently, there are about 7,500 users in it, but a lot of them are suspended. There is no offboarding process for end-users in Kiteworks. It's a manual process. Some of those 7,500 users have never signed into Kiteworks. They were brought over as users from the old system. In addition, for some of those people that were no longer there, their data was orphaned, and it was just automatically assigned to an account, which happened to be my account. In other words, when we migrated anything for folks that were not here any longer, it was then reassigned to me.

In terms of our plans to increase its usage, we plan to move to the cloud.

That support team knows me by name. So, I've had extensive experience with them. Their technical support team is very helpful when it comes to responsiveness. In terms of the tickets, oftentimes, they won't necessarily have the answer, but they are good at researching it and responding, even when they don't know the answer to my questions. I give them kudos for that. I would rate them an eight out of ten.

Positive

I've only been here two and a half years. When I got here, it was called Accellion, and they were already using it. So, I don't know what we were using before.

Accellion had a tool called FTA, and then they even rebranded their name to Kiteworks and changed it. We had to upgrade to Kiteworks, which, in a lot of ways, was a new deployment. It was the same tool set but with completely different underworkings. It was as if we installed it new. I was around for the implementation of Kiteworks. It was fairly straightforward, as I recall. It took us about eight hours.

A lot of features that were in Kiteworks were not in the previous iteration of the product. They were enabled in the new version. For instance, there was no retention policy in the old version of the product. When we upgraded to the new version, it already had a retention policy configured in it. It started deleting data based upon that retention policy that was set out of the box and caused a lot of issues that we had to not only account for but also address. So, we had to work through it on the fly.

We didn't have any third-party help. It was me and my manager. So, there were two of us.

In terms of maintenance, it requires maintenance regularly. I am responsible for its maintenance.

We have seen an ROI in the sense that it does what it says it does. We feel that we have a secure means for communicating with external business partners, by using the web version, as well as from an automated SFTP perspective. So, the return on our investment is that it's doing exactly what it says it's supposed to do, for the most part.

They changed it midstream. We were being charged a certain flat rate for SFTP traffic. For whatever reason, at the beginning of the year, our pricing changed, and we are now being charged more for using a feature of the product than we were when we first bought it. That has been our experience with billing. It turned out to be more expensive than when we started with it.

Ensure that you have a retention policy in mind before you decide to roll it out because people will tend to use this as a storage device as opposed to a tool for sharing information. 

I would also recommend understanding and coming up with or developing an offboarding process because that's not automated. So, as people leave the company, you need to come up with a way of ensuring that information and accounts are properly handled.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

From my company's perspective or the hospital's perspective, the primary use is for our medical information specialists to provide data in a secure fashion to our patients and patients' families. We also use it for SFTP functionality where we use it for transferring data to and/or from outside companies in more of an automated fashion, and then there's the ad hoc or occasional person who just needs to use it for sending something securely to somebody.

In terms of deployment, it's a single appliance in a single location within our private data center.

We were using their previous product FTA. Kiteworks is quite a bit simpler. It's a little bit more intuitive. It's more emailesque. So, user adoption was extremely fast. It was very well received. We really don't have issues, and it just works. Administratively, which is my particular role in relation to Kiteworks, it's great. I don't have to do much. It's a smooth operating system.

It provides a unified, secure way to share sensitive content with third parties, which is extremely important to us. Kiteworks is our preferred method for sharing sensitive patient information.

It helped to consolidate secure communication technologies into a centralized system. Previously, using their former product FTA, we were pretty well consolidated into that platform. For the SFTP functionality, we were doing different options. For example, there were a couple of companies with which we were establishing site-to-site VPN tunnels to do data transfers, which we eliminated. So, we've definitely consolidated certain workloads into it and simplified things. 

This consolidation into a centralized system would make content auditing simpler because it's all in one place. I can't say that I've seen it, but I assume it would. This consolidation hasn't saved us money by reducing file-sharing apps because we didn't eliminate anything like that. In terms of time savings, I'm the primary administrator of the system, and I definitely do not spend a lot of time on it, but I don't recall how much time I spent on FTA. Kiteworks just works.

It helps protect our customer's privacy. Given the scenario of patient information with HIPAA compliance and things like that, it's of utmost importance.

We can see when people are sending things. We can definitely see who is sending to whom. From the administrative logs, we can see who is sending to an outside entity, and those logs are retained for quite a while. I've never had a situation where I've needed to do any kind of review on that. I believe we can see file information, such as the name. From an administrative perspective, I'm not sure if I can easily open the file. However, I'm fairly certain that I could administratively take over a file folder and gain access to it if I needed to, but the logs are extremely handy, particularly, when somebody has an issue.

There is one particular thing that is a nuisance. The software update functionality is great in terms of the way it can download and essentially stage the update and everything like that. The one feature, which I have also requested directly to Kiteworks, is to have a scheduled upgrade function. Currently, one of my engineers logs in after hours for the upgrade. We're a hospital, and we're 24/7, but the primary users are seven to five. So, we log in the early evening just to push a button to tell it to do the update. It would be nice if that could be very easily scheduled. We should be able to pick a date and time. We can then pre-download the package and schedule the upgrade reboot. We wouldn't have to be there and babysit it. That's the only thing that I hear about from the guys who typically do the updates every time an update is released. Other than that, it's great.

It has been around for at least two years. When their old products called FTA went end-of-life, we were, more or less, forced to upgrade. We had planned on upgrading anyway. It just pushed the issue. 

It has been fantastic. I haven't had any issues with it in terms of bugs, erroneous downtimes, or anything else. It has been solid.

I haven't looked into it much. It suits our needs. I haven't looked at expanding it at all.

It's a single appliance that we're running in our internally hosted virtual infrastructure. We have approximately 150 end-user licenses that we pay for. The recipients are in the tens of thousands at this point. It's in use continuously. Usually, it's transactional. A patient requests a file or a patient family requests test results or some sort of medical record. Our medical information specialists will collect the data, send it through Kiteworks to them, and they receive it.

I've had to call them a few times. Some of it was during the deployment when I was having some issues. I have had at least a couple of situations where there were some anomalous behaviors. My recollection is that their support is fantastic. They were able to figure out and resolve whatever it may be fairly quickly. I don't remember it being a large back-and-forth, difficult conversation. We got on a phone call, we shared the screen, and they took care of it. So, their support is top-notch. I would rate them a 10 out of 10. I have no complaints.

Positive

The Accellion FTA product was the predecessor. It was their previous product from which we migrated to Kiteworks.

It's on-prem. We run it in our virtual environment, and we manage and maintain the virtual appliance internally. 

I was 100% involved in its deployment. I was pretty much the person who deployed it. My recollection is that it was pretty easy. It has been a couple of years, but it was definitely not challenging. The simplicity of the system made user adoption very easy. I didn't have to do a lot of handholding and training. I could publish a document on how-to and off they went.

I did it myself. I may have contacted support for a couple of things, but all in all, it was just me.

I installed it. I configured it on the network, and I set up the security configuration in terms of password requirements, user account expirations, and file expirations. We were previously using FTA where we had some SFTP integrations built. So, I had to do a migration of those, and I had to rebuild all of those and convert them into the new system. I had to contact each of the vendors that we were doing that with and make sure they were using the new hostname, IP address, etc. I took care of usernames and passwords, certificates, or whatever else was required to get those accounts working. I did create an in-house simplified documentation on how to use it, how to log in, and how to create a message to send with file attachments. I did the whole migration.

I believe it's a little costly, but given the faith that we put into it from a security perspective to maintain the integrity of our patient information that is being transferred through this system, that's a small price to pay. So, on the surface, it might look like a lot of money, but depending on the need for security, which is where we feel it shines, it's okay price-wise.

I don't recall evaluating other solutions. We were happy enough with FTA and the improvements that Kiteworks provided. It seemed like a no-brainer. We went ahead with it and just migrated to it. It made the most sense for our organization.

I find Kiteworks to be very good at what it does, which is basically sending a file or sending files from one person to another person. Unless we've deployed it incorrectly, it's not exactly an ideal solution for collaboration. Something like Box or OneDrive might be more adept at that, where multiple people can open a file that's stored in a repository. The way we use it today is very much that we send a file to somebody, and they receive the file. That's it. If they need to send it back, they can, or we can do a file request. It's more of a transactional system than a collaborative system.

I believe it helps to demonstrate compliance with data privacy regulations. I don't know whether we've ever been audited in that regard. So, I can't say for sure that it has provided that compliance, but based on my understanding of the security features built into the system, it would pass those audits.

As a file-sharing application, it's an absolute 10 out of 10.

Kiteworks is more for secure file transfer protocol for server-to-server communication and to automate large batch file transfer securely.

The benefits that Kiteworks has provided to its customers in terms of data sovereignty.

Kiteworks customers in Malaysia are able to keep their data sovereign by storing it on-premises in Malaysia. This allows them to comply with local regulations that require data to be stored within the country.

The most valuable feature for my customer is that the encryption key is held by the customer. The developer doesn't even have a copy of that. 

So in terms of security, it's very, very secure, and the customer doesn't have access to the customer server.

There is room for improvement in terms of support. My team always faces challenges in accessing fast resolution for the issues.

I have been using this solution since 2014. We currently use the latest version. 

It's very stable. 

It is scalable.

There is room for improvement in support. My team always complains about the support.

Neutral

Unique encryption key belongs to the clientele making it an outstanding solution in the market. 

The initial setup is easy when you have the knowledge. Because we sell to the government and government-linked companies, they prefer on-premise due to data severity. They maintain sensitive and confidential data on a private cloud setup, still within the country.

You do have to do preventive maintenance to ensure that your storage has enough storage and resources. So, it's quite easy to maintain Kiteworks. 

However, there are always issues when there are bugs or upgrades. The challenge with upgrading is getting more storage from the customer. Every time we have a new version, it requires additional storage. This means that the customer would need to procure more storage for their server, which they don't like because it means additional cost to them. So, I think my request would be that the version upgrades don't require any significant storage requirement.

The solution is very expensive because we are buying with Malaysian Ringgit and it's sold in US dollars. Our challenge is always when we sell Kiteworks to the market, the customers tend to compare them with Dropbox or Box where they offer one terabyte. So we do never ever talk about from the angle of storage and sizes, but we'll always talk about the angle of cybersecurity risk. Why they need it and that angle, then we can win. But if we talk about storage and we cannot compete with the storage guys, the storage server guys.

My advice would be for Kiteworks is manage how to manage your supply chain risk and how to manage third-party risk. Kiteworks is the best to address those -- unmanaged users and unmanaged devices because it manages that, but there is you're able to have visibility, you're able to have a detailed and enforced policy to third parties. Only Kiteworks can do that. So the security layer is the key one.

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. 

We had a product that we had to send to a customer so that they could unlock it and install it on their devices. We used Kiteworks to share this file with the customer without broadcasting it to everyone.

We could see whether the customer with whom we shared a file had downloaded it, which was not available with GitHub.

It was important for us that Kiteworks provided a unified, secure way to share sensitive content with third parties because once they downloaded the content, we would send them an invoice. It was also important because it helped us to see which version the customer was using. If they reported an issue, then we could go back and see exactly which version the customer was on. It made our job easier by saving time.

Kiteworks helped us to consolidate secure communication technology into a centralized system so that all support team members could see which files had been downloaded by the customers.

It would be nice if Kiteworks could provide a free version of the platform so that it could be used for a certain number of file transfers. We could be charged a fee if we exceeded the number of allotted file transfers.

I used Kiteworks for about six months at my previous organization.

Kiteworks was definitely stable, and we never had any issues with it.

Kiteworks' technical support team was very responsive, and I would give them a nine out of ten.

We previously used GitHub, and we switched to Kiteworks because, with GitHub, there was no way to view whether the customer had downloaded the file that was sent.

The initial deployment was straightforward and was simpler than setting up an email account. It took about 20 minutes.

We have 30 users within our organization and about 80 customers who use the solution.

Our IT team implemented Kiteworks, and we set it up for our customers as well.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Kiteworks a ten because there were no issues with the product.

We use it for three big use cases. The first use case is large files that are too big for email attachments, which is capped at 25 megabytes by the email protocol. If we want to send really large files and don't want to use Google Drive for that, because we're collaborating with someone who doesn't have Google Drive, then we use Kiteworks.

We also use it to send secure information such as credit card numbers or passwords; Things that we don't want to send over email or Google Drive or Box or the like.

And we use it for customer interactions, such as sending log files back and forth.

It gives us a secure way of communicating with our customers, when necessary.

Kiteworks also helps us demonstrate compliance with data privacy regulations. That's a necessary function for us and it fills that need.

The top two features are the two-factor authentication, which is pretty good. It's easily understood by the users. And their API is rather robust. We have numerous integrations that work off the API.

In terms of sensitive content, we can see the "to" and "from," but we don't see what the content is. We don't want to be able to see the content. We need a level of security and privacy. But being able to see the "to" and "from" is useful for troubleshooting.

It also helps protect our customers' privacy.

This is year five. We switched over in 2018.

It's stable. We haven't had any outages or downtime due to bugs.

It's held, so far, at our size. I don't know if it would scale to a company 10 times our size. We would have to run multiple instances in that case. We have thousands of employees and we have licenses for about two-thirds of the folks.

Their tech support is pretty helpful. They get back to us in a decent amount of time. I would put them at an eight out of 10.

Positive

We used Biscom. We switched to Kiteworks because of a security concern about the former tool. There may have been a breach or a vulnerability that they couldn't resolve in time for us and that caused us to move off of it.

The initial deployment was straightforward. We have it deployed on-premises and in the public cloud on Amazon. We have two instances.

And in terms of maintenance, we have to do upgrades or updates when new software is available.

We did it ourselves with assistance from their support team. We didn't pay for any services.

It's worth the money we pay.

The license management is changing and confusing. If I could make one change to it, it would be better license management through the API. Currently, there's a license cap and you can't go over it. And removing licenses from users requires you to completely delete their account now, which we are hesitant to do.

One of the reasons for using Kiteworks for securing sensitive information, rather than Box or Microsoft OneDrive or another ECM system, is that it gives us complete internal control of the system.

The fact that Kiteworks provides a unified and secure way to share sensitive content with third parties is of medium importance to us. Having a strategy where we have multiple avenues of communication is our preferred way. We have regular email, we do Slack, we have Google Drive, and Box. We are not looking at Kiteworks to be the single, unified communication platform. It's playing a role in a stack.

My advice is to look into the licensing structure.

We use this solution as a secure way of transferring files between external partners including information or data analysis. Kiteworks gives us the opportunity to share secure data, email or files in the best possible way. 

From a usage perspective, there is one feature we have not yet explored and that the agent feature. We are only using web and email for now. 

The best part of this solution is that we can generate multiple reports about how the data is transferred and about user information or IP. The quarantine files and and ability to detect if any malicious software exists is really useful. 

The most useful feature of this solution is to share files with external parties and we can use this functionality to share files internally too. In the event that we share files with an external partner but we stop working with them a few month later, we can review and edit the sharing access. We can create a global report to understand who is accessing our data, when they're accessing it and which IP address they're accessing it from.

We have experienced a few hiccups and bugs when using the admin console and from a user perspective. 

I have been using this solution for three years. 

We have experienced some issues with stability due to bugs. I would rate it 85% for stability. 

This is a scalable solution. 

Most of their development team work from Singapore, and our client coverage is in the PST timezone. Whenever we reach out for support, we need to wait for the next day to receive an update. The rate of response for support could be improved. 

Other solutions we use include Ipswitch, IBM MFT and MOVEit. I prefer Kiteworks only because it is agent based and all modes of the transfers can be facilitated. 

The initial setup was straightforward but we did run into some issues. During upgrades and database synchronization, some database queries were not running properly. Kiteworks would assist us remotely to run queries in the background. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.