eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Dell released an updated Secure Mobile Access (SMA) offering that is designed to provide mobile employees with per-app VPN access to enterprise data and resources while protecting the corporate network from security threats.
The solution also offers context-aware authentication that ensures only authenticated users and trusted devices are allowed access, and policy-enforced network access controls that connect the user to only permitted corporate data and resources.
Administrators can also customize terms of the policy based on communities, and the SMA offering records devices registered to users as well as the time of registration for tracking and audit purposes.
Based on the user ID and device posture, the SMA OS 11.0 can increase or decrease the user’s level of access to resources from a specific device.
The SMA platform allows only registered mobile applications to access the VPN, while blocking personal apps that might propagate mobile malware threats and waste corporate bandwidth, to keep users productive.
The platform is designed to work with any mobile application and secure container and requires no modification, application wrapping or software development kit (SDK) tools, in an effort to speed deployment time and reduce implementation cost and complexity.
The solution is also a key ingredient in other Dell platforms, including the company’s enterprise mobility management (EMM) solution. Secure Mobile Access integrates with the EMM offering, including its Mobile Workspace container technology, to enable efficient delivery of the user’s applications and data in a secure manner.
For organizations using third-party mobility solutions, Secure Mobile Access is container-agnostic so it can be integrated into any environment.
“The Secure Mobile Access solution and the Dell Enterprise Mobility Manager present evidence that Dell recognizes the challenges our customers face, and has responded with the right innovative, scalable solutions required to solve mobility and BYOD [bring your own device] issues,” Patrick Sweeney, executive director of network security at Dell, said in a statement. “We are not tackling a small piece of the problem. With our comprehensive lifecycle approach connecting security across data, infrastructure and applications, we are providing the complete set of solutions required in the market.”
In addition, when deployed with a Dell SonicWall Next-Generation Firewall, Mobile Connect 3.1 establishes a Clean VPN, an extra layer of protection that decrypts and removes hidden threats from mobile traffic tunneled over Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) VPN before they enter the network.
Dell also announced Fulton County, the most populous county in the state of Georgia and the principal county of the Atlanta metropolitan area, has deployed the SonicWall E-Class SRA EX7000. This earlier generation SMA is a clientless SSL VPN solution delivering remote access control to enterprises that support hundreds or thousands of internal and external users, and that need to maintain anytime access to critical applications.