Michael Dell (News - Alert) successfully took his company private in October 2013 after many months of wrangling. The move by Dell was designed to give him more control of how the company should move forward in a volatile IT environment, as consumers move away from the personal computer and into mobile devices.
In November of that same year, Dell North America President PH Ferrand spoke to InformationWeek about the company's strategy, and one of the points he made about mobile computing was, "Very few players make money [selling smartphones]; we don't feel we have to be in the space. The IT market is a $3 trillion business and we are about 2 percent of that. We don't need to have phones to get to 3 or 4 percent."
The company is not going into the hardware mobile device market, but it is making investments in the application side of this growing market. After the acquisition of SonicWall -- a provider of advanced network security, secure remote access, and data protection -- for $1.2 billion in March 2012, Dell has announced a new version of SonicWall secure mobile access platform.
Since Dell already has a strong footprint in delivering enterprise hardware, providing SonicWall enterprise mobile security solutions can be integrated seamlessly with existing customers. The implementation of BYOD initiatives is being welcomed by enterprises albeit with a lot of trepidation as they try to balance efficiency and security. The new Dell solution will deliver mobile access to corporate resources from managed and unmanaged devices while keeping security integrity.
The new update is composed of SonicWall Mobile Connect 3.0 application and Dell's SonicWall Secure Remote Access (SRA) virtual private network (VPN) appliance 7.5 for a comprehensive mobile security solution for corporate networks.
This new secure platform allows only users and devices that have met corporate security policies to access the organization's network. Administrators will be able to enforce security policies with context-aware authentication by checking devices of their legitimacy to determine if they have been rooted or jail-broken. This includes checking the device ID, certificate status and the OS version that is installed to determine if it is up to date before the user can have access. Additionally, administrators can apply policies to determine what files can be opened in other applications, copied to the clipboard and printed. The Mobile Connect app securely isolates the user's personal data and apps.
The features of this platform include:
- Protect from malware and rogue access;
- One-click Secure Intranet File Browse and On-Device Data Protection;
- Secure Web traffic and block data loss;
- Create an extra layer of security;
- Simplify management;
- Stop Web application attacks and data leakage;
- Help technicians support remote computers;
- Enable access to remote computers;
- Conduct secure virtual meetings; and
- Add capacity instantly when needed most.
"The Dell SonicWall secure mobile access solution provides best-in-class, context-aware authentication for both personal and company-owned devices to protect corporate networks and data from mobile threats," said Patrick Sweeney, executive director for Dell Security Products.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson