Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) has been a lifeline for many organizations in supporting and securing remote workers in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Organizations that had VDI in place prior to the pandemic were able to scale with greater speed and security; organizations that did not have VDI installations were able to use solutions from Dell Technologies and VMware to accelerate new deployments.
In the early days of the pandemic, there was a three- to fourfold increase in VDI adoption, according to Forbes.1 The value of VDI in supporting remote work continues today, as many organizations move to a hybrid digital workplace. This article discusses the value of VDI in making your hybrid workplace more secure, with an emphasis on solutions that will help you maximize cyber resiliency and recovery.
Using VDI to Empower the Digital Workplace
The pandemic has been a catalyst for VDI expansion. As organizations suddenly shifted to support workers at home, VDI provided unprecedented scale and security. IT departments could exert greater control over data and applications while building agile recovery plans to support more rigorous uptime and business resiliency requirements. They could onboard new users with built-in security protections and securely shift existing users to work-from-home setups without affecting their data or applications.
Workplace changes that happened suddenly and unexpectedly because of the pandemic are becoming foundational to the digital workplace as businesses evolve to a more hybrid work environment. According to research, 97% of employees don’t want to return to the office full time, 61% of employees prefer being fully remote, and 74% of professionals expect remote work to become standard.2
This means more companies should be—and will be—turning to VDI as an essential part of their cybersecurity and cyber-resiliency strategies. According to research accounting for the impact of COVID, the overall VDI market is growing at a compound annual rate of 15.8%.3
Building Trust, Confidence and Resiliency in VDI
As organizations either turn to VDI for the first time or expand their deployments, building trust, confidence and resiliency are among the top-of-mind concerns for business and IT decision-makers. Dell Technologies and VMware are pioneers and leaders in the VDI market and offer the broadest portfolio of products and services to strengthen cyber resiliency in VDI environments and the new digital workplace. Solutions include the following:
- Dell EMC PowerProtect Cyber Recovery incorporates a vault that offers multiple layers of protection to provide resilience against cyberattacks, including those from inside threats. It moves critical data away from the attack surface and physically isolates it within a protected part of the data center. It requires separate security credentials and multifactor authentication for access.
- Dell Technologies Cyber Recovery Services include an as-a-service deployment of the security portfolio, along with expert advice on recovery strategy, organization-wide incident response plans, integration of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and development of test recovery plans and procedures.
- VMware Horizon 7 or VMware Horizon Cloud lets organizations quickly provision secure virtual desktops on premises or in the cloud, and with VMware Workspace ONE, they can leverage a range of business resiliency features, such as zero-touch provisioning and remote support, along with intrinsic zero trust security to reduce risk and maintain compliance.
- VMware Workspace Security VDI delivers a more secure virtual desktop and application solution for the distributed workforce by combining VMware Horizon and VMware Carbon Black Cloud into a single, unified solution. This provides a cloud-based virtual desktop solution that leverages Carbon Black endpoint protection to deliver a zero trust architecture across devices, applications and users.
Taking the Next Step
Businesses have turned to VDI as a way to provide a secure, scalable and simple solution for empowering remote and at-home workers. One of the opportunities in expanding the use of VDI is to also strengthen cyber resilience by using solutions designed to minimize risk, reduce downtime, deliver a seamless user experience and enable some of the most important innovations in cybersecurity, specifically zero trust and intrinsic security. Please visit Dell Technologies to learn more about how you can build trust, resiliency, reliability and recovery in your VDI environments.
1 “Shifting From Remote-Lite to Remote Right, Businesses Must Prepare for a Post-COVID-19 World,” Forbes, May 14, 2020
2 “5 Statistics Employers Need to Know About the Remote Workplace,” Forbes, Feb. 10, 2021
3 “Global Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Market Forecasts to 2027,” Research and Markets, Sept. 17, 2021
