www.managedITmag.co.uk 33 END USER COMPUTING a good place and we’ve IGEL’d that PC for you.” UD Pocket boots the affected endpoint to provide secure access to cloud-based workspaces including Office 365, Windows Virtual Desktop, Citrix, Omnissa, Amazon, Google etc.. Importantly, this is self-contained and remains distinct from the affected device’s installed operating system and files. Rising sales Oestermann reports rising sales in the five industry sectors IGEL targets. These are healthcare, financial services, government and manufacturing, which all have strict data/IP protection and compliance requirements, and a fifth, hybrid group made up of big thin client users, including retail and transportation. He expects some of the applications/drivers outlined above to give IGEL a boost next year as well. “A lot of new customers are coming in where a third of their clients are thin clients, many of them Dell thin clients, one third are PCs that cannot run Windows 11 and then for the last third customers are saying ‘Should we leave those on fat Windows or should we ransomware protect them with IGEL and get the TCO benefit that we see with IGEL?’. We’ve seen a lot of organisations go all in now on IGEL, particularly in the healthcare space.” An emerging area for IGEL, highlighted by images of stranded holiday-makers surrounding blank screens in airport departure halls during the Crowdstrike-Microsoft outage, is OT and IoT. “All those blue screens happened because a big part of that digital signage is running on Windows. We are now seeing a lot of PoCs (proofs of concept) for replacing Windows and running digital signage over an IGEL infrastructure because of its manageability and survivability in those types of situation. OT and IoT is a new frontier for us. How do you secure digital signage, medical devices and national infrastructure against bad actors? There’s a lot of vulnerability on the OT side and in the future IGEL will help on that front as well.” Priorities for 2025 In the meantime, Oestermann’s priorities for the next 12 months are to increase adoption in its five key verticals and to convince partners to lead with IGEL’s Preventative Security Model, rather than just positioning IGEL as part of, say, the Citrix ecosystem. “We are a 100% channel company and we have a lot of partners who have a Citrix or an Omnissa or a Microsoft practice and have IGEL as an add-on to those projects. What we’re working on is for those partners to understand the significance of what the Preventative Security Model can do for their clients and to lead with IGEL as a practice.” In parallel with this change, Oestermann believes end users are starting to look at IGEL in a new way, with the C-suite in particular beginning to recognise IGEL’s ability to deliver security benefits, financial benefits and sustainability benefits. “A lot of initiatives are now driven from the C suite. That can be a CFO looking at it from a TCO, financial standpoint or a sustainability standpoint, because they’ve got to report on sustainability and IGEL is your best friend to reduce e-waste and sweat your assets for longer and reduce the power consumption of your assets as well. Then, CIOs and CISOs often come at this from a security angle – ransomware protection, integration with data protection, compliance. CIOs are very focused on TCO as well. But it could also be a company that is in acquisition mode asking ‘How can we acquire companies and quickly have them adopt our technology platform?’. IGEL is the best way to do that.” The IGEL advantage The five key qualities/capabilities that enable the IGEL platform to support growing demand for a Zero Trust approach to data security: 1 It is a read-only Linux-based OS – so users can’t unwittingly or maliciously install malware on endpoints; 2 There is no local storage of data – because users can’t download customer, patient or financial data or exfiltrate it through USB devices, the risk from lost/stolen devices or data theft by internal users is massively reduced; 3 It is a trusted application platform – a secure boot process ensures code hasn’t been tampered with, and if there is a cyber-attack rebooting returns a device to a known good state enabling organisations to restore services in minutes, not weeks or months; 4 It supports authentication, SSO integration and SASE – IGEL partners with leading authentication vendors including Microsoft, Imprivata, Okta, Ping Identity, VMware and Citrix, and with SASE and Secure Service Edge partners to optimize Zero Trust implementations; and 5 It has a modular design and small footprint. At 2GB, IGEL OS 12 has a much smaller attack surface than a traditional endpoint OS. It only contains what the user needs to accomplish their tasks, with additional functionality, such as partner integrations, downloadable from the IGEL App Portal. Scan the QR code to visit the IGEL App Portal
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