Recently, Hysolate announced the introduction of the first Isolated Workspace-as-a-Service (IWaaS) solution which enables greater worker productivity in today's remote-first business environment. To dig in deeper and better understand what the company has brought to market, VMblog spoke with Marc Gaffan, Hysolate's CEO.
VMblog: Can we please start by
having you give us an understanding of what Hysolate is all about?
Marc Gaffan: Hysolate is all about helping companies'
Security and IT teams enable workers to be their most productive while also
ensuring corporate data and assets are protected. We do this through isolated
workspaces. Hysolate bridges the gap between enterprise endpoint security and
user productivity. We now offer the first solution that lets you easily create
isolated workspaces on corporate and non-corporate endpoints, in minutes, and
manage them from the cloud.
We've created a new product category that we
call Isolated Workspace-as-a-Service, or IWaaS. Companies use IWaaS to protect
their corporate endpoints with an isolated workspace for high-risk activities
and to secure corporate access from unmanaged endpoints with a strong,
VM-based, isolated workspace.
Our recent launch of Hysolate IWaaS was backed
by Bessemer Venture Partners, Innovation Endeavors, Team8 and Planven Capital.
VMblog: What are the main use
cases for this new product category?
Gaffan: There are many, but we generally frame the
conversation around the big three:
- IWaaS for Corporate-Managed
Devices
- IWaaS for BYODs
- IWaaS for Privileged Access
IWaaS embraces the notion that IT should be
able to support worker productivity without compromising corporate security,
regardless of whether the end user is working on a corporate-managed device or
a non-corporate endpoint. End users should be free to access the company data
needed to do their jobs while also being able to utilize the other resources --
third-party applications, websites and other tools -- that make workflows more
efficient. And the user experience must be superb. This must be true for anyone,
even those who utilize privileged access workspaces. IWaaS can accommodate all
needs by enabling organizations to instantly create, deploy and manage
multiple, local, isolated virtual environments on a single user endpoint.
VMblog: What were the contributing
factors that led to the development of IWaaS as a new product category?
Gaffan: Over and over we were
hearing about the same dynamic at play within our prospective customers'
operations:
- Employees are becoming
increasingly frustrated due to IT security restrictions which are severely
limiting their productivity.
- Security teams need to cope with
significant security risks to enable corporate access from BYODs, while
traditional VPN-only, DaaS and remote desktop solutions aren't making the cut
anymore.
- IT is tasked with finding
cost-effective technology solutions that spur worker productivity through a
superior user experience without incurring steep back-end infrastructure costs.
There has always been a tension within
companies that has pitted user productivity against endpoint security.
Approaches to IT have generally been "either/or." The more stringent the
security policies, the less freedom end users have to access the tools,
applications and websites they need to do their jobs effectively. Conversely,
the more relaxed the security policies are made to account for user experience,
the more vulnerable the endpoints are to security threats.
We have data that bears this out: We recently
conducted a survey of CISOs from Fortune 2000 companies.
At nearly two of every three companies, employees are restricted from browsing
the internet freely. More than three out of four restrict their employees from
installing third party apps on their corporate devices. And more than eight in
ten companies don't grant users admin rights despite the fact that they need these privileges to perform their
jobs. Further, half of CISOs surveyed said they believe that the lack of
flexibility resulting from security measures is diminishing employee
performance.
This has become especially relevant in the new
remote-first era brought about by COVID-19. With everyone flipping to a
work-from-home reality overnight, the need to better equip end users to work
remotely and securely on corporate-owned or personal endpoints was amplified
exponentially. We knew it was possible to create a solution that established
user experience and corporate security as complementary strengths rather than
competing priorities.
VMblog: So is it really possible
to build a single platform that both IT and Security will perceive as
having been developed specifically for them?
Gaffan: Well, security is in our DNA, of course, but we
really saw an opportunity with IWaaS to look at securing corporate assets
through the lens of the IT organization and its end-users. Protecting critical
data is essential, but what good is that if you lock down your endpoints to
such an extent that your employees and contractors can't access the
applications or websites they need to do their jobs on their corporate-managed
devices or personal laptops? Or remote workers who are connecting through VPN
and VDI or DaaS have such a poor user experience due to lag that they're
sitting around idle or ready to give up altogether?
IWaaS brings IT, Security and the workforce to
the table to give each an equal share of voice. We help IT and security teams
make their workforce happy with both a secure and productive work experience.
VMblog: What advantages does
IWaaS offer that VDI and DaaS don't?
Gaffan: To start with, it offers a superior user
experience. Beyond that, it serves both IT and Security, who can work with one
platform instead of multiple ones. It's super easy to use from an end-user
perspective. And, to top it all off, it's cheaper than VDI or DaaS.
There are numerous benefits of IWaaS that make
the solution a highly desirable alternative for companies that have grown
accustomed to (or weary from!) the
resource-intensive and costly VDI and DaaS solutions on the market. Strong
VM-based isolation is deployable on a mass scale in minutes through a
lightweight installer, and endpoints can be fully managed from a multi-tenant,
cloud-based management platform. IWaaS does not require installing an
additional OS image, and it actually has no data center costs.
But what truly sets IWaaS apart from VDI or
DaaS is the seamless user experience. IWaaS offers a simple and intuitive
extension of the user's workstation, and, because the VM is running locally,
leveraging dedicated hardware resources on the user's device, the user
experience is dramatically better than VDI or DaaS solutions. End users won't
experience the familiar frustration of laggy keystrokes or cursor movements
that are a hallmark of legacy VDI and DaaS solutions.
VMblog: In which industries do you anticipate IWaaS will gain traction
quickly?
Gaffan: We see a lot of interest from companies that
are concerned with the threat of ransomware coming from a BYOD device and
infecting their network. We also have gaming and financial companies asking for
a separate zone to do the company tasks without seeing any performance impact.
And in other verticals, like industrial and education, the workflows make
isolated workspaces a natural and necessary approach to enabling end users with
high-performant access while ensuring sensitive data is protected.
All companies have to protect their data and
their customers' data. Hysolate IWaaS will be relevant in any industry where
access to corporate assets needs to be tightly controlled and where workers and
contractors will need the flexibility to operate both inside and outside of the
corporate environment to get their work done efficiently.
VMblog: How does the IWaaS solution align with what you see for the future
of work in the next one, five or ten years?
Gaffan: In conjunction with Team8, we recently
conducted a survey of CISOs from Fortune 200 companies to look at trends and
predictions for how COVID-19 is changing the way we work. A whopping 86 percent
of respondents said that they believe work from home is here to stay. If they're
right, the real question then becomes, "To what extent will companies adopt WFH
policies?" If they're going to embrace some combination of in-office work and
WFH, enterprises need the flexibility to adapt and the agility to do it
quickly. They'll need to ensure their employees can be productive and efficient
in any number of environments, and they'll need to know that the company's
critical data is protected regardless of the setting and the endpoint from
which a worker chooses to access that data.
More than half of CISOs surveyed -- 57 percent
-- report having relaxed their security policies in order to boost worker
productivity in this new WFH reality. Isolated workspaces are the best way to
secure the data, and Hysolate IWaaS is the best way to ensure both worker
productivity and endpoint security remain in balance.
We're committed to making sure that
corporate-managed endpoints, non corporate-managed and personal devices, alike,
are equally capable of providing workers with the on-ramp they need to tap into
not only secure corporate data and sanctioned applications, but also the
websites, third-party applications and other tools they need to do their jobs
in a remote-first world.
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