Digital Workspace

VMworld 2018: Automation and Visibility Help IT Secure the Digital Workspace

VMware unveiled a host of features for its Workspace ONE platform designed to streamline IT teams’ management of devices and applications.

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Phil Goldstein is a former web editor of the CDW family of tech magazines and a veteran technology journalist. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and their animals: a dog named Brenna, and two cats, Grady and Princess.

Most users want to be able to do their work and be productive from anywhere, on any device, with application security as an afterthought. “Employees don’t care about security; IT does,” said Renu Upadhyay, senior director of product marketing for end-user computing at VMware.

At the VMworld 2018 conference in Las Vegas on Aug. 27, VMware announced a bevy of new features and planned initiatives designed to give IT administrators and security professionals more tools to proactively protect users’ devices.

The company made several updates to its Workspace ONE platform and also announced several measures related to device security, all of which it is putting under the heading of “modern management.”

“Modern management is appealing to businesses on several fronts as IT leaders break through traditional silos and transition to consolidate mobile and PC groups to adopt a holistic platform of capabilities that fit business needs,” Phil Hochmuth, program director of enterprise mobility at IDC, says in a statement provided by VMware.

“As CIOs and IT leaders implement business transformation, they must address a variety of management challenges head-on, given the influx of multiple device platforms, ever-increasing security risks and mission-critical applications that are key to enabling today’s employees,” Noah Wasmer, senior vice president and general manager for end-user computing at VMware, says in the statement.

“Built on a foundation of modern management and bolstered by our expansive ecosystem of capabilities, Workspace ONE is empowering IT organizations with the ability to provide a highly automated, on-demand workspace platform that delivers valuable insights, greater employee experiences, dramatic cost savings and increased security,” Wasmer continues.

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VMware Gives IT More Intelligence on Windows 10 Threats

VMware is offering new capabilities via Workspace ONE Intelligence, a cloud-based service delivering data-driven insights and automation across the entire digital workspace. The company first announced Workspace ONE Intelligence at VMworld 2017 and then formally unveiled it in March.

The service now enables predictive Windows 10 patching based on OS and app readiness assessments and Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures vulnerability scores.

This ensures that security on Windows 10 devices is proactively maintained and any issues are remediated.

In an interview with BizTech, Upadhyay described Workspace ONE Intelligence, a core piece of the Workspace ONE platform, as an embedded intelligence service that ingests data feeds from devices, applications, users and security events. IT teams can access that intelligence via a dashboard and then act on and automate security responses.

The new service is designed to simplify Windows 10 device updates. “How do we make sure that IT can automate rolling out those patches in a predictable fashion?” Upadhyay asked. The answer: IT teams can get information on how long it took to update the organizations’ devices in the past, and whether that is normal; and if devices are ready for an update or whether there are apps that are not compatible with the update, she said.

VMware to Expand Partnerships with Security Vendors

In March, VMware announced the Workspace ONE Trust Network, which combines insights from trusted security partners and Workspace ONE Intelligence. The goal is to enhance policy enforcement and give IT teams greater visibility into mobile, endpoint and cloud-based security threats, according to VMware.

As the company notes in a blog post, the Trust Network offers access management that empowers IT to deliver application provisioning, a self-service app catalog, multifactor authentication and single sign-on for all apps. It also offers control authentication with conditional access policies, as well as data loss prevention policies.

Notably, the Trust Network uses application programming interfaces to allow an open security ecosystem to communicate with Workspace ONE. VMware initially partnered with Carbon Black, CrowdStrike, Cylance, Lookout, McAfee, Netskope and Symantec to connect their security solutions with Workspace ONE.

That means IT teams “don’t have to go hunt in different places to know what risk scores look like,” Upadhyay said. “They can then mitigate for that” and take remedial action, such as pushing a software update. VMware works with the security solutions a customer has and does not require them to replace any existing solutions, Upadhyay said.

AT VMworld 2018, VMware said it will be introducing new preview integrations with Carbon Black, Netskope and Lookout. Essentially, the companies will be testing to ensure Workspace ONE can ingest data from those vendors, and exchange and correlate that data with the data it is already collecting about a device or app, Upadhyay said.

Looking ahead, VMware will partner with other vendors on the Trust Network, including Check Point, Palo Alto Networks, Trend Micro and Zscaler.

Read more articles and check out videos from BizTech’s coverage of VMworld 2018 here.