As we wrote about in this blog, the security landscape is expanding exponentially. Only just over half of Australian businesses believe they are well-equipped to address cyberattacks and other security incidents in the current climate.1 In many cases, remote workers will want to connect to your corporate network from a myriad of devices – some of which have questionable security, or lack critical updates. This poses a raft of security challenges which can overwhelm and overburden IT and security teams.
At the same time, simply providing employees with new, updated devices won’t necessarily solve the ever-increasing security challenge. Even if the device starts out with robust security, there’s no determining what security risks the employee will then take (e.g. opening an email with malware) or which applications they will download and use on this new device. For instance, a recent study revealed that when working from home, 26% of employees said they would be more prone to share passwords with other people as a way of accomplishing certain tasks more rapidly.2
Citrix on Azure can mitigate some of these risks – enabling you to provide robust security, at scale. With Citrix on Azure, it doesn’t matter what device an employee is actually using, as their desktop and all of their applications are located virtually inside Azure. None of their data, or that of your organisation, is actually stored on the device itself. Instead, all of their files, and the data associated with their communication and collaboration, happens inside Azure.
The new world of working has brought all kinds of unforeseen challenges for IT teams, who are trying to deliver reliable and secure network connectivity to a very diverse workforce.
With many new modern workplace solutions, there’s a significant effort associated with onboarding new users and managing their devices, as well as facilitating ongoing security patches and updates. This is particularly the case if you are relying on on-premises software and don’t have remote deployment options.
This is one of the key benefits of Citrix on Azure: cloud-based, simplified and streamlined management. Via Citrix Virtual Desktop Essentials, updates to employees’ desktops can be managed and deployed in a matter of minutes, on Azure, and 100% remotely. This means that rather than spending time configuring and deploying each user’s desktop, updates can be provided to entire departments and teams, rapidly and as needed. This means there is no lag in providing updates which can lead to costly security gaps.
As COVID-19 illustrated, today’s businesses need to be prepared for all kinds of unforeseen circumstances. Whether your business is about to go through a period of growth, or has to reduce its size, it’s important to have workplace software that can scale accordingly. Even if your organisation already has Citrix on-premises infrastructure in place, scaling up or down can be time-consuming for your IT team.
With Citrix on Azure, however, you can very quickly and easily scale up your desktop deployment and management to thousands of users if required. Also, this cloud-based solution can work seamlessly with your on-premises Citrix solution. So, you can have both operating concurrently, and then migrate across to Citrix on Azure if and when the time is right.
Cost is obviously an extremely important consideration when it comes to workplace software, especially for larger enterprises where even the most minor differences in licensing costs can equate to very significant sums on the bottom line.
Unlike many on-premises software solutions, Citrix on Azure is delivered on a service-based arrangement, which gives you the ability to expand and contract computing resources on-demand. This elasticity simplifies management and reduces costs as you only pay for what they use?
If you’re interested in finding out more about Citrix on Azure and how it can work for your business, please get in touch.
1 Forrester, [online] Your five immediate priorities to secure a remote workforce
2 TechRepublic, [online] How remote working poses security risks for your organisation
