AUSTIN, Texas—Dell EMC is pulling together parts from both companies to create a new broad portfolio of endpoint security and management offerings that officials say will be increasingly important as employees become more mobile and more mobile devices are brought into the corporate environment.
The new Dell Endpoint Data Security and Management Portfolio, introduced Oct. 19 here at the Dell EMC World 2016 show, also comes as organizations are looking to pare down the number of security vendors they deal with.
The lineup of offerings draws upon Dell and Mozy by Dell as well as from former EMC businesses RSA and VMware’s AirWatch. Executives from both Dell and EMC worked together from the time Dell announced its bid to buy EMC for more than $60 billion in October 2015 to plan out how to align their respective product portfolios. As a result, the combined company has been able to unveil enhanced products and lineups just six weeks after the deal closed.
The new security portfolio “conveys the potential of the combination of the two companies and what we will be able to do over time,” Jeff Clarke, vice chairman of operations and president of Dell Technologies’ Client Solutions Group, told journalists during a roundtable discussion during the show.
Businesses not only are seeing employees working outside of the office more often, but also the number of computing devices used for work—from notebooks to smartphones to tablets—growing. At the same time, the number of connected devices, systems and sensors is increasing rapidly; CEO Michael Dell saying during his keynote address that by 2031, there could be as many as 200 billion worldwide.
Such numbers increase the attack surface for cyber-criminals and call for a broader approach to security, and attacks are becoming more sophisticated, Dell said. With the acquisition of EMC, Dell now has the tools to offer a more complete lineup of security capabilities that not only work to keep intruders out of the corporate network, but also to more quickly detect and remediate threats when they get in.
In the area of data protection, Dell unveiled Dell Data Protection l Endpoint Security Suite Enterprise that offers authentication, filed-based data encryption and advanced threat prevention. In addition, the portfolio includes MozyEnterprise and MozyPro for protecting cloud data in laptops, desktops and small servers in distributed enterprise and small and midsize business (SMB) environments, making it easier to recover from incidents that result in data loss. Through Mozy, customers also can sync files across devices including multiple laptops, PCs and smartphones.
For identity assurance, RSA SecurID Access provides authentication that includes context-based access control and single sign-on for improved access to web and software-as-a-service applications (SaaS). RSA NetWitness Endpoint offers threat detection and response through the use of behavioral analytics and machine learning capabilities.
Dell also is offering VMware’s AirWatch Unified Endpoint Management for over-the-air device management, which includes everything from configuration management and operating system patch management to client health and security management.
Brett Hansen, executive director of data security solutions at Dell, said combining the technologies is the first step in creating a more complete security solution, with fuller integration of the products coming in the second half of 2017.
Clarke and other Dell officials noted another challenge for customers is reducing the number of point security products and vendors they’re using in their environments. There are about 1,600 security technology vendors in the world, and some larger enterprises are using applications from dozens of vendors, they said. Customers want to whittle those numbers, and while Dell officials understand that businesses won’t use only one vendor, they believe they have the broad lineup of products that customers will want as part of their larger security infrastructure.
