Late last year, market researcher IDC reported that by 2015 more U.S. Internet users will access the Internet through mobile devices than through PCs or other wireline devices. Judging by the eager embrace of smartphone and tablets since then, I’d guess their prediction may be conservative.
And unquestionably, this kind of mobility in business is a game-changer both in terms of how we do business and how we do information security.
Cloud computing gets immense attention these days as a profound agent of change affecting how IT serves the business. In particular, Cloud computing has begun the untethering of employees from their desks and their offices. Because the mobility of today’s, and tomorrow’s workforce cannot happen without the Cloud.
Yet worries about Cloud security abound, and for good reason: Cloud computing that involves processing sensitive or regulated data in shared environments needs extra scrutiny in terms of security (as well as codifying requirements, defining a cloud services contract, managing the transition from in-house to cloud, and overseeing the resulting mixed IT environment).
Making a decision to change how desktops are managed can be a little scary. After all, what if it doesn’t work as advertised.
At Quest, we’ve developed three ways to address this, all free to your customers:
Free DaaS Proof-of-Concept
For your customers who are ready to explore DaaS, we have a free DaaS Proof-Of-Concept , which will help your customers understand very concretely how DaaS will work for them and what they’ll get from it. You’ll find that your customers can be wowed when they do the Proof-Of-Concept with, say, an iPad.
Our DaaS Proof-Of-Concept is a two-step process, starting with an hour-long Webex meeting to discuss your customer’s specific needs and gather information. The Proof of Concept itself goes on for 10 days and uses your customer’s own end-point devices — like that iPad, or PCs or Macs — to connect from their location. During the Proof-Of-Concept, we test various protocols and put your customer’s applications and use-cases through their paces. This is a great way for your customer to get actual, real-world experience with Desktop-as-a-Service, including how it works with shared drives, Outlook/Exchange, and applications.
Free VDI Data Collection/Assessment
Where once IT departments were the sole source when it came to technology implementation, today technology is finding its way into corporate America through nearly every department.
Marketing folks may have been among the first to leave the IT department fold when they ditched cumbersome CRM systems for easy-to-use Salesforce.com, but they were just the tip of what has grown into a pretty big iceberg.
Virtually every day sees a new app available to help workers be more productive — and those workers aren’t hesitating to download those apps and get on with business.
Odds are your IT environment is somehow engaged in virtualization — either directly in your data center or indirectly via the service providers you’ve engaged.
But how much have you — or your IT people — thought about virtualization security? This matters more than you may think. One Gartner analyst has estimated that 60% of virtualized servers will be less secure than the physical servers they’ve replaced.
Two kinds of security threats have emerged of late that need special attention, even if you’re running a small enterprise: Targeted zero-day attacks and advanced persistent threats .
Targeted zero-day attacks
Microsoft’s recent Internet Explorer security flaw (see my last blog post) is a fine example of a zero-day attack. The attackers got their edge from speed, since reactive countermeasures that depend on threat signatures — such as patching and tools like antivirus software and intrusion prevention — couldn’t be updated fast enough to halt the flaw.
