Archive
#BYOD + #Messaging + #Collaboration + #Data securely = How??
Yes, how do you solve this?
I’m running into this topic lately with a lot of people and customers….
It’s around the whole BYOD and unmanaged devices and how useful they are in an enterprise world and all the capabilities and way of working that you’re used to in a secure and still cost effective way (and let’s not forget in a USER FRIENDLY way)!
One question that I’ve not yet found an answer to is:
How do we have all offline capabilities needed for an “Office” worker on a BYOD in our enterprise landscape? How do we ensure that you can use our Messaging, Collaboration and Data/Info services on this totally unmanaged device in a SECURE way?
This is a tough challenge! I guess that most of your users are used to using the Office suite locally on their managed device where they can use Outlook offline, work with data/files in Excel and Word etc offline. But what happens if you tell them to use an unmanaged device or their own personal device of their choice?
All of a sudden there is no real good way of providing them with offline messaging and collaboration (Outlook Anywhere and Lync for instance) capabilities in a secure manner. This BYOD/unmanaged device is not a part of your AD, you have no control and cannot enforce anything! So Outlook that is installed on it may use your Outlook Anywhere service but then its data sits on that unmanaged device unencrypted and unsecured!
Think of the picture above (yes I know it’s a mess but I just want to illustrate the issue), you have BYOD devices that are running Windows 7, XP, 8 etc and also Mac OS X. What if you open up your Outlook anywhere service to those devices, then all your emails etc. will be unsecured on them!
Citrix and others are focusing on providing this email capability in a secure manner on all mobile OS’s like iOS and Android etc through it’s Citrix Worx apps for mail and also the newly announced Hosted MobileMail. But these are more or less just targeted against mobile devices (smartphones and tablets), but what about the standard laptop users!?!?! They need something as well!
And Windows RMS and other solutions just wont fit very well here… Citrix XenVault was something that could have worked to enable offline support for corporate Messaging services but it’s not there… I’d like to run corporate apps locally on the device offline in a secure and controllable container!!
The same issue you have with Data!!!
ShareFile doesn’t support encryption on Windows or OS X!!!
But it does on mobile devices.. I guess you have to trust your users and BYOD devices that they are encrypted using BitLocker or FileVault etc…. but can you?
So please enlighten me here what the missing puzzle piece is!! Because I have a hard time taking away a managed device form a user and tell them that they on their BYOD device HAVE TO BE ONLINE TO WORK! It’s a step back from a usability and productiveness point of view… but it may be a cost saver though… but is a BYOD/unmanaged device and a VDI or Hosted Shared Desktop always a good option to provide business apps to that laptop? NO! I guess everyone have understood that making business apps and functions web-based or mobile app based is good and a lot of focus is there, but we cannot forget the traditional productive device that the laptop is!
If you know the magic solution to these challenges please let me know! 🙂
Cheers!
//Richard
#Microsoft and Others Fail Antivirus Test – #ForeFront, #FEP, #AV
Microsoft is still behind the competition…
How many of you out there are using ForeFront Endpoint Protection (FEP) to secure your clients/servers?
Below is a good article from Neil J. Rubenking about the latest (Nov/DEc 2012) report from AV-Test:
Based in Magdeburg, Germany, independent lab AV-Test evaluates and rates antivirus products on a variety of different criteria. Every couple of months the researchers summarize their testing and report on which products achieved certification. In the latest such report, several vendors failed to make the grade.
One of the many individual tests involved in AV-Test certification measures how well products stand up to zero-day attacks—viruses or other threats so new that no antivirus signature exists. AV-Test CEO Andreas Marx noted that the 25 consumer products in the current test averaged 92 percent detection of zero-day attacks. “This means,” said Marx “that one out of ten malware attacks succeeded.” He also pointed out that while the products averaged 91 percent cleanup of existing infections, many didn’t remove all traces. “Only 60% could be put back in a condition similar to the pre-infection state,” Marx observed.
Certification Failed
Products can earn six points each for repair of existing malware infestations, protection against new attacks, and overall usability. Here usability means the product doesn’t slow system performance and doesn’t falsely report valid programs or activities as malicious. In order to receive certification, a product must earn a total of 11 points.
Just as in the previous test, Microsoft didn’t make the cut, though with ten points it came close. PC Tools also failed with ten points.
The big loser this time around was AhnLab. In the previous test AhnLab squeaked by with 11 points. The latest test saw that score drop to 8.5 points, well below the certification cutof…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Large collection of Free #Microsoft #eBooks via @anders_keis
This is a great contribution! Thx a lot Anders Keis Hansen for providing the info to me!
A lot of ebooks provided by Microsoft Press including: SharePoint, Visual Studio, Windows Phone, Windows 8, Office 365, Office 2010, SQL Server 2012, Azure, and more.
Many of these ebooks are offered in three formats – PDF, Mobi (Kindle) and epub. Hope you find them useful & Happy Learning!
These books were originally posted by Eric Ligman, you can read the original posts from here:Â
1- Large collection of Free Microsoft eBooks for you, including: SharePoint, Visual Studio, Windows Phone, Windows 8, Office 365, Office 2010, SQL Server 2012, Azure, and more.
2- Another large collection of Free Microsoft eBooks and Resource Kits for you, including: SharePoint 2013, Office 2013, Office 365, Duet 2.0, Azure, Cloud, Windows Phone, Lync, Dynamics CRM, and more.
Continue reading and downloading here!
//Richard
#Citrix #Receiver 3.4 and 11.7 = is the #SmartAccess story more real now? – #CloudGateway, #AGEE, #NetScaler, #StoreFront
Citrix has now released version 3.4 of the Receiver for Mac and Windows, but what is the main added value with this release?
First of I’d like to ask you to review my previous post where I questioned the Citrix SmartAccess story that I believe is not there end-to-end and that really is a lacking feature for scenarios where you’d for instance want to support more BYOD models etc. You need to determine the person accessing the service and also what what type of device it is, trusted or not etc. And I in the previous post I argued that Citrix doesn’t deliver according to their SmartAccess story;
#Citrix #SmartAccess = A complete story or not? – #NetScaler #AGEE #EPA
And for you that haven’t read about the new Receiver 11.7 or OS X and 3.4 for Windows check these posts:
Receiver for Windows 3.4Â released
Receiver for Mac 11.7Â Released
The table below is from the previous SmartAccess post and my theoretical review right now is that the SmartAccess story for Windows and Mac OS X clients have improved. As you can see in the two rows for Receiver 3.3 and 11.6 where you would access through a Receiver through an AGEE you would NOT be able to perform host checks using the EPA scans.
This was just not possible though the native Receiver didn’t have that capability to trigger the EPA scans. And the EPA plugin itself was not available in the native Receiver on the OS X, it was bundled into the Access Gateway plugin.
| Client | Access method | EPA/Host-check possible on AGEE | Comment |
| Windows with Citrix Receiver for Windows 3.3 | Receiver 3.3 | NO | You’ll never be able to do host-checks on this device if Receiver access is used due to that the Receiver does not have EPA scan capabilities. |
| Windows with Citrix Receiver for Windows 3.4 | Receiver 3.4 | YES | Now when the Receiver is communicating with the Access Gateway plugin and shares login credentials then you can leverage the AGEE plugin to perform EPA scans and then allow different session policies and profiles depending on the EPA scan result, and at the same time of course also pass that through to StoreFront/WI and into XenApp/XenDesktop.It does however then require that you get the AGEE plugin installed on the devices, which may be another dilemma… |
| OS X with Citrix Receiver for Mac 11.6 | Receiver 11.6 | NO | You’ll never be able to do host-checks on this device if Receiver access is used due to that the Receiver does not have EPA scan capabilities. |
| OS X with Citrix Receiver for Mac 11.7 | Receiver 11.7 | YES | Now when the Receiver is communicating with the Access Gateway plugin and shares login credentials then you can leverage the AGEE plugin to perform EPA scans and then allow different session policies and profiles depending on the EPA scan result, and at the same time of course also pass that through to StoreFront/WI and into XenApp/XenDesktop.It does however then require that you get the AGEE plugin installed on the devices, which may be another dilemma… |
90% of enterprises will bypass broad-scale deployment of Windows 8
This picture/slide is so spot on! I couldn’t agree more! Great work Gartner!
I don’t think that Windows 8 will be adopted on a broader scale… it’s the new “Vista”. Win7 will and is being rolled out and will stay there for a long time as the new “XP”!
Thanks Charlie Isaacs for the picture!
//Richard
AppSense Webinar – Windows and the always connected workstyle
This should be very interesting!
“Join us for this webinar and hear about:
- Enabling flexible workstyles and deployment tools for Windows 7
- Embracing user virtualization to future proof your business for subsequent OS upgrades
- Migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7 and then to Windows 8 – see for yourself with a live demo
- Identifying ways to reducing time, cost and complexity while increasing user satisfaction”
Read more and register here!
//Richard
Try it! – Profile Management Configuration Check Tool (UPMConfigCheck)
Ok, how often don’t you hear or see that technology just have been implemented with the “Next -> Next -> Finish” methodology? Now Citrix has introduced a tool to check whether you’ve configured your environment the most optimal way or not! Great!
“UPMConfigCheck is a PowerShell script that examines a live Profile management system and determines whether it is optimally configured.
UPMConfigCheck requires PowerShell 2. UPMConfigCheck is designed to run on XenApp servers and on XenDesktop virtual desktops with Profile management installed. Supported operating systems are the same as for Profile management.
These include:
• Windows XP
• Windows Vista
• Windows 7
• Windows Server 2003
• Windows Server 2008 / Windows Server 2008 R2
32-bit and 64-bit operating system versions, where available, are supported.”
Download it here and here you find a good blog post about it!
//Richard
The IT Melting Pot! 