Threats to a company’s information security do not always come from new technology. While CIOs and chief security officers might worry about the risks carried in iPhones or brought in through social networking sites, some experts warn that a far older tool is rendering businesses vulnerable to data loss and electronic intrusion.

That tool is file transfer protocol, which companies have used since the advent of the mainframe. In some cases, the mainframe is still the principal home for FTP in large companies, because it remains one of the most practical ways to transfer files between large systems.