{"id":17720,"date":"2020-02-12T14:30:27","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T22:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2020\/02\/12\/news-11455\/"},"modified":"2020-02-12T14:30:27","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T22:30:27","slug":"news-11455","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2020\/02\/12\/news-11455\/","title":{"rendered":"BlackBerry says its new Digital Workplace eliminates need for VPN, VDI"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2020 13:18:00 -0800<\/strong><\/p>\n

BlackBerry has unveiled its Digital Workplace platform<\/a>, a web portal and workspace for secure online and offline access to corporate on-premise or cloud content, \u00a0including Microsoft Office 365 resources.<\/p>\n

Digital Workplace, announced last week, integrates a secure browser-based workspace sold by Awingu, a Belgium company that penned a partnership with BlackBerry in 2018<\/a>. Businesses can access their legacy Windows, Linux, SaaS or internal web apps, desktops and files inside of Awingu\u2019s secure managed browser. Awingu’s unified workspace runs Windows, Linux, web and intranet apps.<\/p>\n

Based on BlackBerry\u2019s Zero Trust Architecture, Digital Workplace eliminates the need for a VPN or VDI infrastructures and is designed to provide continuous threat protection using artificial intelligence and machine learning to enable users to securely work anywhere and from any device, according to BlackBerry.<\/p>\n

Zero trust is an enterprise security architecture or network where there is never a “default trust” option that automatically authorizes end-users or systems; instead it requires a form of verification for any attempt to access business systems.<\/p>\n

The system relies on multifactor authentication, analytics, encryption and file system-level permissions and includes dynamic enforcement of access rules \u2013 not only for a user’s identity but also for their device and the context in which they’re attempting access. The result is that users are given the minimum amount of access to accomplish a specific task.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe break everything down to an actor, an action and a target. So who am I, what device am I trying to do, over what network am I trying to do it, and based on analytics should I have more or less friction for what I\u2019m trying to do?\u201d said Alex Willis, BlackBerry\u2019s vice president of sales engineering. “Friction could be multiple forms of authentication, or block access.\u201d<\/p>\n

Awingu\u2019s browser was available prior to Digital Workplace through BlackBerry UEM<\/a> and as part of its BlackBerry Access<\/a> mobile browser offering. Digital Workforce also incorporates BlackBerry\u2019s own Desktop management platform as well as AI-driven security software from Cylance, a company acquired by BlackBerry<\/a> about a year ago.<\/p>\n

“[It’s] not just Awingu, but all the connectivity through either the email calendar contacts applications within Digital Workplace as well as BlackBerry Access Browser\u201d Willis said. \u201cSo, the access browser is connecting to the BlackBerry infrastructure just like our applications would on your iPhone or Android device. So, we\u2019re facilitating the secure connectivity behind the firewall. The user doesn\u2019t know if it\u2019s going through a VPN. All they know is they start the browser and get to their corporate internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

For auditing purposes, IT admins can also video record every end-user for their entire session or when they access a specific application, Willis added.<\/p>\n

In some ways, BlackBerry\u2019s Digital Workplace is something of a re-packaging\/licensing announcement instead of a set of new products, as the capabilities and partnership with Awingu are all things BlackBerry has had for a while, according according to Chris Silva, a vice president of research at Gartner.<\/p>\n

While other vendors such as VMware and Citrix offer unified workspace solutions, BlackBerry is \u201csomewhat unique\u201d among other unified endpoint management<\/a> (UEM) providers in that most of its customers are using an explicit container. That means end-users are relying on BlackBerry\u2019s UEM app to access email, contacts and calendars, versus the native apps, according to Silva.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re also the only vendor with a container that can be consumed on desktop and mobile,\u201d Silva said via email. \u201cAddressing the Windows app issue was of great importance to keep competing in the UEM market, especially as VMware and Citrix both now offer licenses that include both UEM and their virtualization technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through its Awingu partnership, BlackBerry\u2019s browser-based access capabilities are a unique variant to VDI, according to Nick McQuire, a senior vice president of research at UK-based CCS Insight.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy integrating this, it gives BlackBerry more options to upsell customers on new use cases, especially on the desktop,\u201d McQuire said via email.<\/p>\n

More importantly, McQuire said, the Digital Workspace implements some key BlackBerry components in security, too, such as Cylance and its secure network.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis enables BlackBerry to apply conditional access policies to the workplace application such as through machine learning, determining whether the device has malware before allowing user access or whether the user is displaying risky behavior,\u201d McQuire said. \u201cConditional Access is now becoming a key tenet in a zero trust security model which, although [it] is a massive buzzword now in security, is starting to gain ground with IT pros \u2013 at least conceptually.\u201d<\/p>\n

ConvergeOne<\/a>, a Bloomington, Minn. IT services provider, deployed BlackBerry Digital Workplace last year. ConvergeOne’s employees are issued corporate laptops \u2013 a total of about 3,000 endpoints. For traditional email, calendaring and access to a global address list, the company was allowing Active Sync connections for personal devices to the Microsoft Exchange environment, enforcing corporate policy on the entire device.<\/p>\n

ConvergeOne’s employees are highly mobile and up to 75% of ConvergeOne\u2019s end-users rarely set foot in corporate office. The company had been hindered by the traditional security stack, interfering with workers’ mobility and ability to deliver to ConvergeOne’s clients, according to Collin Buechler, the company\u2019s information security and compliance officer.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of these hinderances included client networks blocking VPN to ConvergeOne, device failures while on the road, and the rigidity of the traditional security stack of security controls,\u201d Buechler said via email. “[BlackBerry] Access only needs an outbound internet connection to work, the solution does all the rest.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith BlackBerry Digital Workforce we can have a team member back up and running on any compatible solution within about 10 minutes if their laptop is stolen or blue screens right before a client presentation,\u201d Buechler added.<\/p>\n

With the inclusion of Digital Rights Management on documents sent to clients or outside of the ConvergedOne, Digital Workspace enables better compliance with requirements in NIST, ISO and FARs in terms of knowing where the data is and who has accessed it, Buechler said.<\/p>\n

\u201cConvergeOne can retroactively disable this access if necessary, or if the document was acquired nefariously, it is encrypted with government-grade encryption and is useless to any nefarious types that may get access to the file,\u201d Buechler said.<\/p>\n

BlackBerry\u2019s marriage of UEM and security is part of a nascent industry trend, and further evidence of BlackBerry\u2019s \u201cseismic shift\u201d in direction towards enterprise software and security over the past five years, according to McQuire.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe UEM space is heading in multiple directions, but we see competition coalescing at the moment at the intersection of UEM, security \u2013 particularly mobile security \u2013 and identity,\u201d McQuire said. \u201cAs a result we are seeing more of these wider workspace offerings as customers are looking to the market to not only secure all of their devices, but also their data, which means tighter security around the user and the applications employees use daily.\u201d<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.computerworld.com\/category\/security\/index.rss<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2020 13:18:00 -0800<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
\n

BlackBerry has unveiled its Digital Workplace platform<\/a>, a web portal and workspace for secure online and offline access to corporate on-premise or cloud content, \u00a0including Microsoft Office 365 resources.<\/p>\n

Digital Workplace, announced last week, integrates a secure browser-based workspace sold by Awingu, a Belgium company that penned a partnership with BlackBerry in 2018<\/a>. Businesses can access their legacy Windows, Linux, SaaS or internal web apps, desktops and files inside of Awingu\u2019s secure managed browser. Awingu’s unified workspace runs Windows, Linux, web and intranet apps.<\/p>\n

To read this article in full, please click here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[11062,10643],"tags":[12850,10554,22200,10463,714],"class_list":["post-17720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computerworld","category-independent","tag-mdm","tag-mobile","tag-mobile-management","tag-mobile-security","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}