Since the pandemic spurred a transition from the office to the home, endpoint management has become a crucial area for cybersecurity.
Omnissa LLC emerged as an independent company after Broadcom acquired VMware, with a pure play focus on end-user computing under a unified digital platform. It aims to address ongoing security and workflow concerns for work-from-home employees.
Omnissa’s Bharath Rangarajan talks about connecting with end-users in hybrid workplaces.
“The digital entropy as we call it, has changed because it’s not just about these new devices we see, new apps, new security tools, new kinds of operating systems coming on play, new kinds of devices, and now, new AI tools,” said Bharath Rangarajan (pictured), chief product officer of Omnissa. “If you think about all of this, you need a method to this madness to manage all of this stuff. The second aspect is it’s not just about employee expectations. People took their laptops, went home and connected it to their local Wi- Fi and said, ‘You know what? I need a brilliant experience, IT, go make it happen.’”
Rangarajan spoke with theCUBE Research’s Dave Vellante and Rebecca Knight at Fal.Con, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the nitty gritty of endpoint management and how Omnissa is collaborating with cybersecurity vendors. (* Disclosure below.)
Endpoint management is about the people
Omnissa specializes in desktop virtualization, which was built on the VMware vSphere franchise and is now expanding to the multicloud. In addition to securing endpoint devices in a range of venues, including healthcare facilities and retail stores, Rangarajan believes in creating a smooth employee workflow.
“Today, IT and security teams by definition have to work very closely,” he said. “It can’t be like, ‘Oh, I’m sitting in an ivory tower finding out all these vulnerabilities and then it’s your problem to go fix it.’ They have to go come together. A lot of our need to be here and our discussions with CrowdStrike is based on what we can do together for our customers on any endpoint and also consuming data. CrowdStrike has a lot of interesting data that exists. We have our data platform that can bring in. Essentially building workflows that bring together security and management.”
It is important to have incentives for employees to come into the office, Rangarajan emphasized. A future of hybrid workplaces means having a positive digital employee experience while still creating opportunities for in-person collaboration.
“Endpoint management cannot just be about policies input,” he said. “I want to have a great employee onboarding workflow. That end of the day becomes an endpoint management problem… What we want to focus on going forward is what we call continuous conditional access. Essentially, continuously evaluate the posture of our devices and based on that, control access to important resources in the company. Second, we also want to focus on stronger endpoint hygiene. We strongly believe that prevention is better than cure.”
Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of Fal.Con:
(* Disclosure: Cribl Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE.)