What do a US state, a UK university, and a Fortune 50 bank have in common from an IT perspective? Like nearly every other organization on the planet, they have leveraged online meeting solutions to help their employees stay connected during the pandemic. And although one uses Cisco Webex, one Microsoft Teams, and one Zoom, they all provide the same advice to their users: “Don’t access these applications from within your virtual desktop.”
Wait – what? These organizations and many others like them use virtual desktop technology to try and keep their employees safe and productive, especially while working remotely. And yet, they are putting the following explicit guidance in their public-facing FAQs and employee documentation (yes – these are actual examples):
And our personal favorite:
Ok – you get the point. So why shouldn’t users access their meeting solutions through their virtual desktop? Performance, of course. Anyone who has tried running any type of real-time audio or video through a hosted desktop knows that it’s barely usable. So IT departments knowingly tell their users to bypass these solutions to avoid issues (and helpdesk calls).
That may work for organizations that aren’t regulated or security-minded, but for Wealth Managers and Broker-Dealers, it’s a big problem since employees and advisors are often sharing confidential client data over these video conferences. Yet, these meetings are happening completely out of the controlled desktop environment the firms have deployed to enforce compliance.
So is there a solution to this IT paradox? We believe there is and have specifically designed Workplace to deliver on the promise of centralized control and compliance with distributed execution. In today’s world where SaaS and mobile applications and services continue to expand, the challenge of trying to access all apps and data from virtual desktops is becoming even more acute. Sure, there are still certain legacy applications that are better off being hosted – we have supported them for over a decade and will continue to do so. But the majority of modern systems were designed to be accessed directly on end-user devices and compliance solutions must adapt to meet this new paradigm.
We invite you to learn more about how Workplace keeps your users safe, compliant and productive while working with privileged apps and data directly on their desktop and mobile devices. Like our hundreds of happy customers and their nearly 10,000 empowered users, we think seeing a demo of Workplace will be a major “A-ha moment” for you. So will be the day you stop telling your advisors to bypass firm security to get their work done.
