The MOVEit™ portfolio of products provides solutions for the secure handling of sensitive information, including financial files, medical records, legal documents, and personal data. While some of its solutions, such as MOVEit Automation (a workflow engine), are exclusively geared toward internal networks, others are Internet-facing.

MOVEit Transfer enables you to:

  • Provide at-rest and in-transit file encryption.
  • Track and manage file, folder, and feature access for your users, groups, and organizations.
  • Define workflows, features, deployment patterns, and appearance based on your information policies and site requirements.
  • Get reports, logs, and live operations views of ongoing transfers.
  • Maintain a comprehensive and tamper-evident audit trail.

This guide covers how MOVEit Transfer collects, stores, manages, and distributes information between organizations and external entities. MOVEit Transfer is a Managed File Transfer (MFT) server. Several deployment options are available for MOVEit Transfer, including on-premises single node, clustered (Web Farm), and cloud (using MOVEit on Azure, Azure SQL, and Azure Blob service. Progress also offers a cloud service, which is called MOVEit Cloud. The MOVEit Transfer Release Notes outlines the different ways you can deploy MOVEit Transfer. The Service Integration section of this guide, covers these methods in more detail.

Note: This guide does not distinguish between the deployment options. It refers to the overall tiers as MOVEit.

MOVEit securely collects, stores, manages, and distributes information within organizations, between businesses, and more...

Server and System Level MOVEit

MOVEit encompasses two major functional products, which can be installed alone or together:

  • MOVEit File Transfer — Secure at-rest and in-transit file transfer and collaboration among systems and workgroups through shared MOVEit folders. MOVEit Transfer supports both automated transfers and manual transfers.
    • Secure Folder Sharing. Folder, tree, and targeted subfolder sharing with groups, users, and communities (with read/write/community invites and access lists applied by MOVEit Transfer users and content creators).
    • Live View. Status board that shows transfer statistics, traffic direction, and volume for the current org.
  • MOVEit Ad Hoc Transfer – Extend MOVEit Transfer to enable secure person-to-person message request and exchange, through personal MOVEit mailboxes.
  • MOVEit Secure Folder Sharing – Extend a MOVEit Transfer deployment to become a secure Content Collaboration Platform that provides at-rest and in-transit encryption.
  • MOVEit Automation – Secure batch push and synch of content servers (including MOVEit Transfer servers).
  • MOVEit Gateway – Proxy server and another layer of security/abstraction for MOVEit Transfer. Mask/customize endpoints for distinct MOVEit Transfer organizations or topologies.
  • Progress Software Failover – Server redundancy to ensure your SLA and up-time requirements. Progress Software Failover enables replication for failover and disaster recovery situations.

User Access (Client, Browser, API)

Whenever you need to perform transfers manually, you can easily access MOVEit in a web browser, on mobile devices, and even within your desktop email client:

  • MOVEit Web Interface – A full-size web browser is all you need to quickly, easily, and securely exchange files with MOVEit Transfer over encrypted connections using the HTTP over SSL (HTTPS) protocol.
  • MOVEit Client – Multi-platform, lightweight, native desktop secure file and package transfer client.
  • MOVEit REST API – Programmatic access to MOVEit servers and feature sets.
  • Microsoft Outlook® Add-In – Attach files to a message in Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft 365 client with the MOVEit add-in, and the files will be encrypted and sent by MOVEit. The message body itself can be sent encrypted or by email.
  • MOVEit Mobile Client – MOVEit Transfer provides MOVEit Mobile 2.0 connectivity natively. For your users, connecting with a mobile device app is like connecting with any other client; no special deployment pattern or application server add ons are required
  • MOVEit Sync - A Windows application that lets you create a Sync folder on your desktop and sync files with your MOVEit folder.
  • FTP/SFTP/FTPS Clients - MOVEit supports most of the available FTP clients, including the Progress | Ipswitch WS_FTP.

Secure File Transfer Basics

MOVEit Transfer provides a secure way to perform automated (scheduled) system-to-system file transfers. It also supports manual (user-performed) transfers in and among workgroups. Users are set up with accounts and home folders where they can upload and download files. Administrators can set up user groups and shared folders to support of various business work flows, especially those involving external entities. Work flows include organization-to-person, distribution groups, collection bins, and even direct person-to-person file exchange.

Person-to-Person ("Ad Hoc") Transfer

The Ad Hoc Transfer product provides a secure way for users to directly exchange file packages with each other. Each package typically consists of a note (a basic message) and one or more attached files. Users are set up with accounts and mailboxes where they can send and receive packages.

Note: The person-to-person transfer capability supports ad hoc use for unscheduled, manually performed transfers. It includes the mailbox and address book infrastructure needed for direct exchange; and it supports the inclusion of unregistered users through the use of their email addresses.
Note: Unregistered users can be set up to become either temporary users, whose accounts expire, or guest users (also known as package password users), who are given access to a particular package only, not to mailboxes.

With Ad Hoc Transfer, users can avoid the limitations of a mail server. Large files, and multiple file attachments, can be sent quickly and securely. Senders can use a browser, a mobile app, or the Microsoft Outlook plug-in to attach files and send them to an email address.

Composing a MOVEit package with files is similar to composing an email with attachments, but for MOVEit packages, file attachments sent as part of a package are uploaded to the MOVEit server. A new package notification email is sent to the recipients.

Note: The administrator can set the note in MOVEit (equivalent to the message body of an email) to be sent securely, through MOVEit only. Alternatively, the note can be included in the emailed notification.

Recipients can click on the web link in the email notification, sign on to MOVEit, view the package, and download the files. If enabled, a recipient can also reply to a package and send additional attachments, which will also be uploaded to the MOVEit server.

The organization administrator can set options that:

  • Determine who can send and receive packages.
  • Enable unregistered users to be recipients.
  • Allow unregistered users to self-register and send packages.
  • Set user and package-level quotas.
  • Set package expiration and download limits.