The Problem:

You have large files you want to share with a colleague -- these could be data files, or a grant. After several back-and-forth iterations of file passing using your email, you find you've exhausted your Outlook email quota. You look for a place to archive your old email in a PST file. Maybe you have room on your local computer? Or on your H: drive? Maybe not. Your local office computer isn't available when you're traveling. Also, if you have VPN troubles while traveling, you can't reach the PST archive files you've saved on your Partners share. You don't want to manage an FTP site and you don't want to be responsible for password management.

The Solution:

Our solution is the BDS Secure File Transfer server. A generous donor has given us the BDS software which runs inside the DFCI Data Center on one of our servers. The simple explanation of how this works is this:

1A. Login with your Partners userid and password (if you have them) as shown in the following login screen.

1B. If you don't have a Partners ID, you register on the BDS server

2. After you've registered, login to the server:

3. When you want to send a file to a user, you go to a web page that asks you to enter the recipient's email address.

4. Then, you browse for the file you want to send.

5. When you click "submit" the file is automatically uploaded to our server where it will stay for a specified period of time.

6. The recipient receives an email message which has a link to the file on the server. (The recipient registers one time with the server and can reply with another, revised or different document or data file.)

Note: All of these transactions are encrypted; no one other than the recipient will have access to the file; you can send an archived file on the server to more recipients at a later time. You are not limited to a single file -- you can create "packages" of files which you can send as a group.

Sending Restrictions:

When you register on the server, you will do so by email address. The address you register with creates some limitations on which recipients you can choose. Here are the limitations:

If your address is

xxx@research.dfci.harvard.edu, OR xxx@dfci.harvard.edu, OR xxx@jimmy.harvard.edu, OR xxx@partners.org,

you can send a package to anyone, anywhere.

Outside collaborators can register on our server, BUT, people outside the set of email addresses above can only send to recipients at DFCI.HARVARD.EDU, or JIMMY.HARVARD.EDU, or PARTNERS.ORG, or BIDMC.HARVARD.EDU, or TCH.HARVARD.EDU, or MGH.HARVARD.EDU, or BWH.HARVARD.EDU, or HMS.HARVARD.EDU, or MED.HARVARD.EDU.

If you register with an address outside this address list (say you are a gmail user) and need to send to a collaborator outside this address list, we can arrange it by special request. (We need to verify that these users are really ours.)

For further, detailed information, download the BDS User Guide which is attached below.