Absolute Software announced the launch of Absolute Application Persistence-as-a-Service (APaaS), empowering Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and system manufacturers to leverage Absolute's firmware-embedded, self-healing device connection to strengthen the health and resiliency of their mission-critical applications. By embedding Absolute's Application Persistence capabilities into their software package, ISVs can continuously maintain the integrity of their endpoint applications to help ensure they remain healthy, installed, and working effectively across their entire customer base.

The findings in Absolute's third annual Endpoint Risk Report underscore that the shift to remote and hybrid work has exacerbated the complexity of endpoint environments. Absolute's analysis shows the average enterprise device has 96 unique applications installed, including nearly 12 security controls. This ‘application sprawl' has left endpoint agents under constant threat of decaying or colliding with other applications, being disabled by malicious or negligent users, or failing to survive system updates or device re-imaging.

"In today's work-from-anywhere environments, organizations are more reliant than ever on software - to both protect them from an onslaught of security threats, and ensure employees stay connected and productive," said Edward Choi, SVP of Global Alliances at Absolute Software. "In order to best serve their customers and deliver maximum value, ISVs need their endpoint applications to be self-aware and capable of healing themselves if they are tampered with, accidentally removed, or otherwise stop working. This requires a different approach to application hardening and resilience - one that is built on an undeletable, firmware-embedded connection to devices and applications."

With APaaS, Absolute is delivering a unique solution that enables ISVs to strengthen application resiliency with lower development costs and no ongoing code maintenance - and ultimately, deliver a higher return on software investments and strengthen security posture for their end customers. APaaS partners also have access to rich application health telemetry data (e.g., data on repairs and re-installs, app versions used in the wild, app integrity, and top failure reasons) that offers valuable insights into application health and performance, allowing for continuous optimization and improvement.

Absolute also announced that leading software providers Plurilock Security and Smart Eye Technology are among the initial partners leveraging APaaS to ensure their critical security applications remain healthy and undeletable across their entire customer base. Plurilock DEFEND is a continuous authentication platform that offers identity assurance and compromise detection, alerting IT security personnel to potential threats in real time. Smart Eye Technology provides proprietary biometric technology that utilizes continuous facial, voice, and fingerprint recognition to deliver revolutionary screen and file-sharing security.

"Before the well-documented shift to employees working remotely, most organizations had a reasonable amount of confidence that if a device was in the office, that meant it could be trusted," said Ian L. Paterson, CEO of Plurilock. "In today's work-from-anywhere environments, we can no longer make that assumption; the right software needs to be running on these endpoints to keep them secure. Our customers rely on our application continuously throughout each day to ensure only authorized users are accessing their systems and sensitive data. Plurilock is excited to partner with Absolute to add self-healing capabilities to our endpoint agent as a new offering for our customers."

"Our customers have entrusted us to protect their confidential information from the very real threats of visual hacking, fraud, forgery, counterfeiting, and more," said Dexter Caffey, CEO and Founder of Smart Eye Technology. "Through APaaS, we are able to extend Absolute's undeletable line of defense and self-healing capabilities to our application to ensure it stays up and running. This gives us the confidence, and the validation, that we are delivering on our promise of keeping customers' highly sensitive data secure."

Additionally, building on its product integration announcement last month, Absolute has embedded its Application Persistence capabilities into NetMotion by Absolute's Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) products - making the industry's first self-healing Zero Trust platform available to all customers using the NetMotion by Absolute product portfolio.