Security and compliance challenges are two of the thorniest challenges organizations are grappling with today – and hosted virtual desktops are fast emerging as a way to help ease the burden. According to market research firm Gartner, properly implemented assuming hosted virtual desktops (HVD) can increase security and help organizations and infrastructure leaders meet compliance requirements.
HVD is a technology that enables client computing to shift from a device-centric to a user-centric workspace, application and data delivery technology while providing an endpoint-agnostic access solution where the user’s workspace can be accessed from many different locations using many different devices.
“Having the organization’s data spread across hundreds or thousands of devices, many of which leave the physical security of office locations, presents a significant risk of data loss,” said Neil MacDonald, vice president and Gartner Fellow. “HVDs can help improve the security standing of the client computing environment by centralizing sensitive information and applications in the data center, giving IT system and security stakeholders the opportunity not only to improve support efficiency, but also security.”
Although HVD architecture holds the promise of a more secure environment, it can only do so if carefully planned, deployed and configured, then managed consistently on an ongoing basis. Additionally, users must ensure that any solution under consideration is both cost-effective and compatible with the organization’s applications. The architecture also must be sized appropriately for capacity and performance and, most importantly, it must deliver a good end-user experience.
“An HVD architecture is complex, and infrastructure and security stakeholders must consider multiple facets, such as device form factors, access methods and data security, to avoid potential issues,” said Nathan Hill, research director at Gartner. “Chief among the concerns of organizations is how they capitalize on the opportunity to use HVDs and ensure that the environment is secure, and which areas of the architecture represent a change in risk profile from traditional client computing architectures.”
CLO Inside Scoop: The rise of HVD architectures is a prime example that IT strategies once again have come full circle to focus on the value proposition of centralizing workloads. Organizations increasingly are under the gun to take advantage of cloud technologies because of the extraordinary cost efficiencies they provide – but they can’t afford paying a price in security or compliance. Fortunately, a lot of progress has been made over the last couple of years in beefing up security controls at the data center and network levels; organizations need to build on that protection by ensuring high-test security for all devices that access the network, as well as all network connections.
(For more information contact: Gartner, www.gartner.com).
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