Presenter: Dr. Mehran Basiratmand – CIO Strategic Advisory Team Member, Enabling Technologies Corp
Room: Crater Lake Room, EMU 145, Level 1
Presentation: Slide desk pdf
Time: 11:15a – 11:45a

This presentation provides alternatives to leveraging existing software tools and resources to implement a comprehensive solution to the protection and management of end-node devices.   

The rapid shift to remote work and subsequent hybrid work schedule models during COVID and beyond has forced Information Technology and security experts on most to scramble for viable solutions to better safeguard end-node devices. This is particularly challenging for both laptops and mobile devices as their numbers grew organically during COVID. In many cases, individuals operated or owned multiple devices. To manage their unprecedented proliferation, some departments have deployed various device management tools on their own. These solutions are costly and generally operate in silos. To add an additional layer of complexity, some employees use only the anti-virus feature.   

Most organizations including K-12 and higher-education institutions invest a great deal of resources on securing the perimeter network, servers and applications. One of the reasons is the centralized nature of these services; however, developing policies, practices and positioning technologies to better protect end-node devices are generally considered an afterthought, as these environments are heterogeneous, the funding ecosystem is inconsistent, and support for these devices are either distributed or non-existent.  

During this presentation, technologies which commonly share data and/or are in use to defend end- node devices will be discussed, and a roadmap or methodologies to consolidate or incrementally replace these tools with a single solution will be proposed. As part of this discussion, the merit of using a stackable product line that could provide a better window for protection and defense, e-discovery, or to address regularity concerns, offer encryption, facilitate remote management, or deliver auditing and log collections will also be outlined. Participants will gain insight into a seven-stage approach to building a unified end-node device-management system.