Portnox 2017 Predictions: Securing VDIs, the Mobile Workforce and Cloud

When it comes to securing a workforce, there’s been a consistent growth in new risk factors including more remote employees, work-from-home options, and BYOD policies. Let’s look at how these trends will translate into 2017, and how securing against potential threats will evolve.

There will be an increased move towards virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), which allow users to access their desktops, documents, programs and more regardless of computer or location, essentially creating a mobile workforce. With VDIs, employees can log onto a different computer mid-project and resume where they left off.  As we can expect VDIs to become more common in 2017, public and private cloud infrastructures will play a larger role and be leveraged to host these environments.

Cloud-based infrastructures and mobile workforces will offer the perfect foundation for enterprises embracing BYOD. With increased flexibility for both the employees and IT departments, IT will be able to address fast provisioning, easy patch deployment, and troubleshooting. Though the benefits are clear, this virtual workforce also brings the challenge of securing from the cloud.

Security issues arise when members of a mobile workforce access their devices on a non-managed network because personal devices don’t have the enterprise-level security and become more vulnerable to data leakage or attack.

In 2017, enterprises need to implement effective security technologies to verify security health of the machines accessing the VDI, along with the contextual information like user, location, and time, prior to allowing access to the enterprise. These security technologies allow enterprise IT managers and CISOs to monitor and prevent security incidents in real time.

Another challenge IT managers face is continuously monitoring mobile workforce workstations. When devices are constantly in motion, it’s difficult to predict when they’ll become part of a managed network. One solution to this is securing from the cloud rather than on-prem, because a cloud solution can actively monitor endpoints continuously, even when they’re in motion.

While 2017 is sure to see more security risks and breaches, it will be crucial for companies to understand security risks associated prior to implementing a VDI cloud-based strategy, and how to manage these risks, in order to get the most out of their solution.

As we move into 2017, IT managers should embrace the move towards a mobile workforce, but only with the understanding of associated security risks and a willingness to implement a cloud-based security solution.

Portnox 2017 Predictions: Securing VDIs, the Mobile Workforce and Cloud