www.managedITmag.co.uk 31 END USER COMPUTING Taking a lead IGEL is repositioning itself as a security company and encouraging enterprises to ‘just IGEL it’. James Goulding finds out more from CEO Klaus Oestermann A little over one year ago, in July 2023, Klaus Oestermann took over as CEO at IGEL, provider of a managed endpoint operating system for secured access to digital workspaces, quickly making his mark on the company with the launch of a new logo and new positioning as ‘the Secure Endpoint OS for Now & Next’. Security has long been a key selling point of IGEL’s, particularly after it got out of thin client hardware and reinvented itself as a software company providing a secure endpoint OS for VDI, desktop as a service (DaaS) and secure browsing (see box). In January, Oestermann took this to the next level with the unveiling of the IGEL Preventative Security Model. This positions IGEL, first and foremost, as a security company and highlights the value of its OS for enterprises as they reassess their endpoint strategies and implement Zero Trust and SASE initiatives to eliminate vulnerabilities. “If you look at the world today, everybody knows the bad guys are coming – they want to penetrate your infrastructure. Today’s security model is really built around the idea that bad actors are going to get in so let’s monitor, detect, mitigate and remediate. That’s today’s model – when something happens, this is how we react to it,” explains Oestermann. “We think there’s a different way of doing things, which we call the Preventative Security Model. We basically prevent a breach from happening in the first place. And key to that is putting a super secure operating system on your endpoint, whether that’s a PC, a laptop, a thin client or a tablet. IGEL OS is a system that you cannot write to, a system that is built to not be penetrated. It’s why we call it ‘the Secure Endpoint OS for Now & Next’. It’s the endpoint you use for infrastructure today and it’s also for what you do tomorrow.” And what’s coming tomorrow, he says, is a continuation of the cloud-first approach which has seen workloads move from Windows endpoints to a VDI, DaaS or SaaS infrastructure often accessed through secure browsers. “We have a lot of customers that are one third fat Windows, one third VDI or DaaS and one third browser-based on the application side. We’re seeing a big shift now to companies saying new applications have to be browser-based. We still see a lot of customers leveraging VDI and DaaS, but we see a clear movement towards the browser. IGEL is designed for today’s world and for tomorrow’s world that might be distributing applications differently. That’s the cornerstone in how we position the company.” Three-ring circus In explaining the IGEL Preventative Security Model, Oestermann uses the analogy of a three-ring circus, with three acts performing simultaneously and a separate ringmaster controlling each one. These three rings represent the three distinct areas of IT that need to work together to secure the enterprise: 1 Application deployment methodologies (e.g. VDI, DaaS, browser); 2 Identity access management (inc. unified endpoint management, secure service edge and SASE network security); and 3 Hardware platforms. “In most organisations, these are three distinct organisations, each with its own ringmaster. IGEL sits comfortably in the middle, like Switzerland, and we say ‘OK, what are you using in these different technology pockets and how do you make all this work together?’.” What enables IGEL to do this is its IGEL-Ready ecosystem of approximately 120 vendor partners (so far) that operate in those three areas and which are integrated with the IGEL OS and, through that, with each other. This, says Oestermann, effectively reduces the attack surface by 95% and saves money because you no longer need multiple endpoint security and management agents. “You are able to implement what’s called a Zero Trust architecture, which is very big in both the US and UK Governments and is something we believe will be implemented in enterprises as well in the next four to five years. This basically enables you to simplify your endpoint security, because, with IGEL, you don’t need all those endpoint agents that you used to have to have to see if there was something wrong. We have that under control.” He points out that because of the integrations between IGEL and, say, Active Directory or Conditional Access in Entra ID and Imprivata, which uses smartcards for faster log-in, customers in healthcare, government and financial services Klaus Oestermann continued...
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