Of all the innovations promised by the future of work, there’s one that’s especially transformative: eliminating the age-old tradeoff between user experience and security. It’s a tension every IT professional knows all too well. People keep asking for more and better ways to get things done, from the types of apps and devices they can use to the places they can work, but saying “yes” would open a Pandora’s box of management complexity and security risks. And if there’s one area IT can ill afford to make compromises these days, it’s security.
At Citrix, we believe that the future of work means being able to have it all: saying “yes” to the freedom, flexibility and seamless productivity employees have been asking for, without giving an inch on security.
In fact, our Citrix Workspace solutions make it possible to improve security in tandem with user experience, so organizations become both more secure and more productive, while both users and IT become more successful and satisfied. It’s a high standard to meet, but after all, we didn’t go into business to solve the easy problems.
With Citrix Workspace, we’re making it possible for IT to say “YES” to just about everything a user could want: access to the applications that help them be productive—Windows, SaaS, web, mobile—as well as the desktops and data their work depends on, delivered to any device they choose to use, anywhere they need to work. A consistent, seamless, and convenient experience across platforms and networks. Single sign-on that follows users across apps and identity systems, so they don’t have to keep re-authenticating. And contextual access and performance capabilities that deliver the best experience in every scenario, from corporate HQ to coffee shop to home office, tailored to the user’s identity, current device, and the work they’re trying to get done. While we’re at it, we’re also enabling experiences beyond what most users have even dreamed to ask for, like Citrix Smart Spaces solutions for work environments that respond proactively to the technology needs and preferences of the people within them.
People-centric innovations like these add up over the course of a day. They get friction and frustration out of the way so people can get more done, more easily, and gain the mental space needed to do their best work. That’s as good for the business as it is for employees.
Of course, IT is people too—and IT professionals have their own wish list for better ways to get things done. Nobody wants to spend all day saying “no” or “I can’t make that happen.” The Citrix vision for a unified digital workspace masks complexity and lets IT onboard, deliver, and manage all of the apps in the organization—on-premises, public or hybrid cloud, any platform—simply and holistically. The new app layering capability in Citrix Cloud lets admins simplify image management so you can update and patch each OS, app or service individually instead of having to rebuild the entire image every time any one of its elements needs to change.
So far, so people-centric—but is it secure? As Citrix VP & CTO Abhishek Chauhan likes to say, “Every time an IT person says yes—to SaaS, mobile, cloud, BYOD—a hair on his or her head turns gray.” It’s a jungle out there, and it’s IT’s job to put a barbed-wire fence around that jungle—but the network you now have to secure as an enterprise goes way beyond the boundaries of your buildings and your branches. The security mandate now extends to clouds, mobile devices, third-party networks, IoT. It’s no wonder more than 68 percent of respondents to a recent Citrix study said that the traditional IT security model is broken.
To make the future of work as secure as it is productive, we’re enabling IT to take a broader, more software-defined view of the network perimeter to ensure security without getting in the way of users. There are two components of this approach. First, we’re up-leveling security policy from individual platforms and silos to a single, uniform policy that can be applied centrally and consistently across every element of the digital workspace. The contextual awareness woven into the fabric of our solutions lets IT provide just the right balance of security and flexibility for any situation. Second, we’re making it possible to enforce these policies wherever and however the user works, over any network. This combination of centralized policy and decentralized enforcement is the essence of the software-defined perimeter, and it’s the key to saying “yes” to the people-centric experiences employees are asking for.
As security threats become more sophisticated and dynamic, we’re empowering IT with deeper intelligence and insight to maintain control and protection. Our new Citrix Analytics Service gathers comprehensive data on user behavior from all the services we operate globally, including the applications and networks people access and use, and uses machine learning to find the anomalies that can signal an impending breach.
Of course, security is nothing new for Citrix—it’s been central to our value proposition throughout our history. Now, we’re building security into the next generation of enterprise technologies to ensure that people-centric innovation never puts the organization at risk. Because the future of work begins with the word “yes.”
