Exponential focus on cybersecurity, cloud during the pandemic: ManageEngine

As the IT management division of Zoho Corp., ManageEngine prioritizes flexible solutions that work for all businesses, regardless of size or budget.

ManageEngine crafts comprehensive IT management software with a focus on making your job easier. From network and device management to security and service desk software, it is bringing IT together for an integrated, overarching approach to optimize your IT.

Mathivanan Venkatachalam, VP at ManageEngine, tells us more. Excerpts from an interview:

DQ: Can you explain some of the key IT management challenges observed among SMEs since the pandemic.

Mathivanan Venkatachalam: As long as both the enterprise data and the endpoints that work on the data were within the confines of the enterprise, the security challenges were manageable due to relatively lesser attack surfaces and attack vectors.

But, when devices accessing data go beyond the confines of the enterprise’s perimeter-level security as it is now, it opens up a whole lot of newer challenges for many SMEs. Some of them include:

While we can list more such challenges, when you look at the larger picture, the biggest challenge for enterprises was “how do we achieve maximum productivity without compromising on security?”.

DQ: Please elaborate on the technology trends accelerated by Covid-19 among SMEs.

Mathivanan Venkatachalam: There are two core technology-related entities that have seen an exponential focus during the pandemic - cybersecurity and cloud services. Despite the focus being more or less forced on enterprises, there is an expectation that these will continue to be embraced long after the pandemic is done.

The pandemic turned out to be an external security audit and not many enterprises were ready for it. Enterprises had to rapidly devise remote security policies for their devices, networks, enterprise apps as well as educate employees on the rampant coronavirus-related attacks. Most enterprises have now taken to proactive security options that identify and nullify any security gaps before it can be utilized by malicious actors.

While enterprises have been talking about moving towards cloud for years now, the pandemic ensured reluctant enterprises also shifted towards cloud services. The pandemic turning out to be the trial period to see how cloud computing can actually help enterprises, as we see more and more organisations, especially SMEs, moving towards SaaS.

DQ: What is endpoint management, and why is it essential for businesses?

Mathivanan Venkatachalam: The core objective in any enterprise security set up is to primarily safeguard just one entity - enterprise data. The confidential corporate data which at no point should be compromised. All the security mechanisms deployed by enterprises are geared towards securing data and endpoint management is one such security mechanism.

An endpoint to define it in lay terms is anything that employees use to access corporate data. It can be your office machine, personal smartphone, POS device, and even browsers when used to access corporate data on the cloud.

With endpoints regularly accessing and storing data, it is imperative organisations manage these endpoints, to gain insights on the endpoints accessing the data and have baseline security policies configured to protect both the data and the endpoints that work on this data.

DQ: How is ManageEngine helping organisations adapt and operate during the new normal?

Mathivanan Venkatachalam: ManageEngine, the IT management division of Zoho Corporation, is in the business of managing technology infrastructure end to end. We offer products for IT service management, IT operations management, unified endpoint management, identity and access management, IT security, and IT analytics.

The suite has around 100 products, 50 of which are free tools. Our strategy is to have simple, focused point products that also integrate contextually to effectively solve a larger problem.

In the present situation, it is a completely different challenge that we see across the spectrum in terms of difficulties that companies are going through. For large enterprises, they are primarily concerned about how to enable a secure remote working environment.

They did not have the tools, they did have the expertise, the cultural readiness so this is why they came to us. With smaller organisations, the challenge was to keep their business operations running.

Understanding the difficulties faced by businesses, we made available fully functional versions of the secure remote access toolkit, comprising Access Manager Plus and Remote Access Plus, to IT teams free of cost till July 1, 2020.

DQ: Name the solutions and offerings by ManageEngine to enable endpoint management?

Mathivanan Venkatachalam: We have got over 10 products catering to each and every enterprise’s unique needs when it comes to endpoint management. There is Desktop Central, our flagship endpoint management product, which is used to manage workstations, servers, smartphones, and other devices across multiple operating systems.

When it comes to management, we cover the entire endpoint lifecycle, right from deploying OS to installing applications to pre-configuring basic settings, Desktop Central lets the enterprise manage an endpoint right from its unpacking to its retirement. We also have it on the cloud to ensure SMEs that cannot maintain servers can still easily manage endpoints.

We also have standalone products catering to the particular facets of endpoint management - dedicated solutions to patch workstations, manage mobile devices, to remotely access and troubleshoot machines, application and USB device control, to name a few.

DQ: How is ManageEngine’s Endpoint Manager helping businesses operate and adapt during the new normal?

Mathivanan Venkatachalam: With teleworking, remote endpoints became obvious targets for malicious attacks and the primary means of attacks were mainly through malicious applications, unpatched applications/OS, accessing data via untrusted networks to name a few. With ManageEngine endpoint management, you can remotely manage endpoints either using our cloud solution or through our mobile apps to

All of this while ensuring network security and data security, protecting enterprise data at rest, in use, and in transit.

Besides security, another vital need for enterprises was to remotely troubleshoot system issues. ManageEngine lets IT admins remotely access devices, identify and troubleshoot issues with minimal administration and user intervention.

DQ: What are some of the products whose demand has gone up since Covid-19?

Mathivanan Venkatachalam: We’ve seen a huge surge in remote management solutions as many enterprises utilizing distributed workforce as well as BYOD (bring your own device). With organizations starting to move towards the cloud, we are also seeing the least-privilege security model becoming more and more common in enterprises.

This model restricts employee privilege thereby minimising the chance of falling prey to cyberattacks due to employees abusing their privileges.

Enterprises are also moving towards a more unified management experience, whereby a single solution is preferred to both manage various device types running on diverse operating systems as well as secure them.