Here is an interesting question. “Shouldn’t my company make it easier for me by getting rid of all of those passwords without compromising enterprise security?” The answer is an obvious YES! However, the solution has been part of the ICT security industry’s quest for the Holy Grail. And, while it might not be that the cup has been found, Dell seems to be on the path toward finding it with the announcement of four new additions to its rapidly expanding Connected Security portfolio.

The latest capabilities tackle today’s biggest IT imperatives including BYOD, cloud, network security, and compliance - augment the company’s holistic and connected approach to security which spans from endpoint to datacenter to cloud. The goal is to help IT at companies large and particularly small and medium businesses (SMBs) solve complex security and compliance problems while giving users simpler and easy access to mission critical applications and content.

Four enhancements to Connected Security

The four new capabilities and their benefits speak to the need IT has as they realize the requirement created by BYOD, virtualization and the cloud, to move away from managing security in silos, and embrace a strategy focused on connecting security to the infrastructure, information and applications that are critical to the organization. Reality is that data needs to be protected “E”verywhere it resides or in transit. Connected Security is delivered through solutions that provide predictive, context-aware security to detect and protect against unseen threats, as well as managed security service offerings with SecureWorks and Dell Data Protection and Encryption.

The four are:

• One Identity Cloud Access Manager — offers web-based access control to help organizations safely and effectively use both on-premise and cloud-based applications.
• Addresses the need to control access to cloud apps and other apps from multiple end points that expose organizations to major security vulnerabilities
• Provides an increased layer of security with access management for both on-premise applications and web-based applications like Salesforce, Google Apps and 0ffice 365
• Enables Connected Security by delivering browser-based access through a unified and secure single sign-on, with just-in-time cloud provisioning, federation, authorization, and audit capabilities for all use situations.
• The SonicWALL Network Security Appliance (NSA) 2600 — features Dell’s patented single-pass Reassembly-Free Deep Packet Inspection engine, and leverages the power of more than one million connected sensors around the world, so organizations can block the newest threats as they emerge.
• Includes critical security capabilities such as intrusion prevention with sophisticated anti-evasion technology; network-based anti-malware with cloud assist; SSL decryption and inspection; content/URL filtering; application visibility and control and application bandwidth management
• Delivers SSL VPN secure mobile access from a wide variety of platforms including Windows, Linux, MacOS, iOS, Windows 8.1 RT, and Android, enabling organizations to provide multi-layered security and access control rules as part of a multilayered BYOD strategy
• Ensures customers always receive protection without compromising performance. 
• Offers standard features vital to SMBs such as site-to-site VPN, WAN failover and load balancing, and an integrated wireless controller for secure wireless networking
• ChangeAuditor 6.0 — tracks, reports and alerts on vital configuration, user and administrative changes in real-time, without the overhead of native auditing.
• Enables the viewing, correlation and filtering of change events, and provides the relation to other events over the course of time and in chronological order across the Windows environment
• Eliminates unknown security concerns and ensures continuous auditing of critical assets by providing detailed and normalized information on a change, and any related events
• Detects threats and patterns in real time, enabling rapid response from any device
• InTrust  10.7 — helps organizations address regulatory compliance and internal security through the secure real-time collection, compression and search of event logs.
• Monitors user access to critical systems and applications, and enables forensic analysis of user and system activity based on historical event data
• Collects events on user and administrator activity from diverse and widely dispersed systems and applications, and presents them in an easy-to-use and complete form suitable for reporting and analysis
• Enriches the Dell SecureWorks offering with intelligent data feeds that capture crucial aspects of user activity on Windows systems, detecting internal threats in less time and with less overhead
• Supports Connected Security that’s unified with the business by eliminating silos of information, connecting security information across data, user, network, applications, and services

Matt Medeiros, vice president and general manager, Security Products, Dell Software is commenting on the new capabilities noted that: “Today’s mega-trends - cloud, BYOD/mobility, and big data  each introduce a magnitude of new threats and vulnerabilities. The new challenges these threats create for the IT environment - insufficient visibility, siloed security, compliance requirements and new reporting -= all must be managed with limited resources. The only true line of defense is a comprehensive set of predictive, context-aware security solutions that break down silos and protect data where it resides. Dell Connected Security provides a dynamic solution portfolio that gives organizations the power to solve today’s biggest security and compliance challenges, while helping them better prepare for tomorrow.”

TechZone360 had the opportunity of discussing these capabilities with Jonathan Sander, Director, Product Strategy, Dell Software, he observed that, “The added capabilities, leveraging Dell’s modular yet integrated approach give SMBs who have limited IT resources the business intelligence, contextual awareness and control they need to better protect themselves in a way that is cost and operationally efficient and enables faster responsiveness.”

He added that, “Single-sign on and federation end user nightmares relating to remembering different passwords for all of the things they need to access. It provides easy access, based on Active Directory credentials, to the apps and content they require to be productive and which the company has okayed.” 

Sander also explained that there is significant growth with ID management by SMBs, who are seeking to find cost-effective solutions to licensing and cost containment issues relating to the need to provide just in time provisioning to improve workflows and operational efficiencies while remaining in compliance. “This is about helping a certain kind of customer who is interested in streaming secured access to their customers who need to do so,” he noted.

It should be noted that pricing for all four capabilities and more information about them are available through the Dell channel.

It is clear that all enterprises need to be able to have visibility and contextual awareness of their increasingly complex environments. This is because demands are increasing for IT to securely accommodate end users who are mobile and use their personal devices to access critical internal content as well as apps and content in the cloud and from third-party providers. The objective, despite the increase in vectors of vulnerability posed by BYOD, virtualization, the cloud, and mobility is to give end users what they want (access to tools and content they need to do their jobs) simply and easily. The challenge is to do so enabling IT to have the capabilities they need to mitigate risks without compromising productivity. 

In this regard, as noted at the top, Dell has done a nice job of expanding its Connected Security portfolio to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing and riskier world for enterprises of all sizes.