VMware Expands Its Mobile Security Alliance to Secure Digital Workspace

 At VMworld 2017 Europe, VMware, has announced an expansion of its Mobile Security Alliance (MSA) – a broad ecosystem of security vendors, deeply integrated with the VMware Workspace ONE digital workspace platform, that provides a connected, comprehensive approach to securing all aspects of the digital workspace. Workspace ONE provides purpose-built application programming interfaces (APIs) for the security ecosystem to integrate with the platform. With security solutions from MSA partners and Workspace ONE, customers benefit from a modern security platform that protects against targeted threats across devices, users, apps, and data; both in the cloud and on-premises.

VMware established the MSA to bridge the gaps between existing legacy security tools and provide a foundational platform for securing all mobile endpoints across an enterprise. At inception in 2015, the MSA consisted of 10 trusted security partners across four categories including endpoint, application, cloud, and network security. As the number of security attacks increases, so does the breadth of the MSA ecosystem. The addition of Bay Dynamics, CipherCloud, Entrust Datacard Corporation, Gurucul, Intercede, and Kaymera to the alliance brings the total number of partners to 23 across six categories, including two new categories – authentication and analytics.

“Security attack vectors are growing as the number of endpoint platforms, apps, and user types steadily increase,” explained Sumit Dhawan, senior vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware. “Organizations must adopt a new approach that is first and foremost powered by an inherently-secure infrastructure, and secondly includes a deeply-integrated ecosystem to stitch together existing security silos, providing visibility across all users, apps, and devices. The Mobile Security Alliance provides customers with a way to manage and gain visibility across several of their security solutions from a single platform – VMware Workspace ONE.”

Workspace ONE is the core platform for a modern security architecture with application and device security essentials natively built-in. The solution bridges advanced, third-party security technologies together so customers can benefit from:

• Broad ecosystem interoperability: By using Workspace ONE, organizations can use a single solution for deploying device management and other third-party security agents and network profiles. This allows customers to choose their security partners that meet their organization’s unique needs and secure all endpoint platforms across the enterprise. Additionally,leveraging trusted data and shared insights from MSA partners, integrated into Workspace ONE, can help customers take the next step on detection and remediation of security threats.

• Build on top of existing security investments: Customers do not need to ‘rip and replace’ their various security solutions in order to implement Workspace ONE. Workspace ONE can unify a customer’s security ecosystem by pulling solutions from MSA partners together into a comprehensive security strategy.

• Address data security gaps: As customers prepare for new compliance requirements, such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), they will need to address data security gaps. Workspace ONE, with integrations from MSA partners, features security and data protection capabilities that provide policy creation and enforcement of role-based access to data, apply identity verification and management, and enable device or end-user data deletion.

Customers can take immediate advantage of the integration between Workspace ONE and the solutions from the new MSA partners. Workspace ONE, combined with Intercede or Entrust Datacard, can enable government customers to move away from physical smart cards to mobile devices for authentication and secure access to critical data and applications. Gurucul and Bay Dynamics can help customers make better application access decisions based on risk scores delivered through Workspace ONE. Integration with Kaymera can enable customers to take advantage of advanced mobile threat detection capabilities with subsequent policy enforcement and remediation via Workspace ONE. Lastly, CipherCloud and Workspace ONE customers can gain new visibility across their cloud services, enabling sophisticated access control and policy enforcement.