Virtual Desktops Solutions

Securing Employee Access to Virtual Desktops

The trend towards all things virtual is moving at a rapid pace with many organizations now focused on evaluating or deploying virtual desktops. A recent Imprivata virtualization survey found that organizations are driven to move in this direction by the following needs and desired benefits:

• Simplify management of employee desktops
• Provide similar desktop user experience when working remote as when working in-house
• Make remote access easy from machines beyond IT’s reach
• Strengthen data loss prevention security measures
• Gain infrastructure costs savings, e.g. equipments, maintenance, electricity
  

While the advantages of virtual desktops are many, deployment of this infrastructure creates new employee access and security challenges to protecting enterprise information assets.

Virtual Desktop Security Challenges

While organizations are increasingly embracing VDI/hosted virtual desktop as a way to reduce IT costs associated with desktop maintenance, there are security concerns and fundamental challenges facing these companies as they make this move. Most of these concerns center around managing user identities, roles and enforcing access policies. Challenges include:

• Controlling identity-based access to VDI sessions
• Less control over thin-clients
• Identity of thin-clients are only known by their MAC address
• Hosted sessions are often left hot waiting for reconnection
• Multiple user authentication policies through VDI layers are required
• At the thin-client to access the device
• At the connection broker to access a session
• At the virtual session to logon to the desktop or network
• Auditing is often at the granularity of the hosted session, not the client
• How do you tie a user session to a specific location?
• Strong authentication options are currently limited
  

Considerations for Securing Employee Access to Virtual Desktops

As you consider moving to a Virtual Desktop environment, consider these points:

• What are your objectives for user satisfaction/productivity? For security?
• What are your authentication management needs? How will user authentication occur? Is strong authentication a requirement?
• What workflow benefits are you seeking?
• Persistent sessions – fast user roaming?
• Consistent user experience regardless of device type?
• Availability from anywhere?
• Streamlined application access (Single Sign-On)
• What are your auditing requirements?
  

Imprivata OneSign – Securing Employee Access in Virtual Desktop Environments

With Imprivata OneSign, organizations can confidently deploy virtual desktops while balancing the need to support and improve user workflows and adhere to the security requirements you demand. Capabilities include:
Fast and secure desktop login

• Fast desktop switching between users
• Single Sign-On/Sign-Off to all applications
• Roam applications for users moving between workstations
• Initiate ID validation at point of transaction: Drug disbursement, financial transaction
• Track and report user access events: Who accessed what, when, how, and from where?

Learn more about Imprivata OneSign Single Sign-On or Authentication Management products.