Can VDI Protect You From Security Risks?

The age of digital transformation is already here. We can’t survive without remote working in this age, whether it is an accounting firm or an events management organization. We all need remote working capabilities, which are offered by the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

However, even with the benefits of VDI or cloud-hosted VDI in remote working, BYOD, and work-from-home, the concerns around security are still hard to shake off. 

So, is VDI secure? Can a VDI infrastructure protect your organization from security risks?

It sure can. This article will discuss how a VDI solution by a trusted provider can help you mitigate data risks, backup data, and secure your business process. 

Understanding Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is a technology that creates virtual desktops on a server or cloud setup. These virtual desktops can be accessed from internet-connected devices, such as iPads, PCs, or Android devices. 

There are two types of virtual desktops: non-persistent and persistent.

The non-persistent approach gives uniform desktop units to every user. These desktops can be used as users like, but they return to their original state when you log out. 

The persistent approach gives every user separate images of the desktop. As a result, the user can customize the desktop and save these changes for the future. These are similar to the traditional physical desktop.  

How Can VDI Protect You From Security Risks?

VDI or cloud-hosted virtual desktop (VDI) both help you secure your applications, data, and the entire desktop. Let’s find out how your data is safer in the VDI than in your traditional desktop units at the office. 

Reduced Data Risk

Data security is an ongoing concern. After the pandemic, the security threats have only increased. As a result, the need to strengthen data security has also soared. 

To add to this, remote employees additionally hamper the security of the organization – not intentionally but unknowingly. Everyone is accessing the company’s data on their mobiles and laptops. If any of these endpoint devices crash or get hacked, the company’s data is at risk.

Fortunately, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure can save you from the pain.

The data on your VDI environment is not really on the endpoints. It is on the cloud or a remote server. These servers are protected by firewalls. So, once an employee completes authorization, they get access to the virtual desktop. 

Hence, if the endpoint crashes, gets stolen, or is hacked, your data will still be safe. You can revoke access from this system immediately to avoid losing any data.

Simpler Backup

Backups are simpler with VDI. 

But, first, let’s understand why you even need backups?

• When an OS crashes, you need data backup.
• If there’s a disaster, you need data backup to resume working.
• If a server malfunctions, you need a backup for work continuity. 

For many other reasons, you need backups of your machines to restore as soon as something goes wrong.

When you have office desktops, your IT team needs to take data backup regularly on hard drives and servers. This is time-consuming and hectic. Your team can skip it one day, and then everything will be lost. Even these hard drives are vulnerable to theft and failure. 

With cloud-hosted VDI, data storage is centralized, so backup is much easier. This easily gives you high performance even when your IT team is backing up the data. If you are using a hosted VDI, your service provider will continuously back up this data to different servers, so you can use it when required. 

Multi-Factor Authentication

Secure access to your desktops is the need of the hour for remote working. When even 50 of your employees are signing into your server remotely, you need to access an authentication method. 

The VDI solution has this authentication in the form of multi-factor authentication. Every endpoint that tries to access a virtual desktop needs to clear multi-factor authentication. If they can’t, they won’t be given access. 

This entire procedure is achieved with the help of internal and external firewalls. These firewalls protect your virtual machines from unauthorized access. 

Even when you want to prevent unauthorized access if an employee has shared credentials or misplaced them, you can limit IP address access to stay safe from this type of risk. 

Access Control

To give you complete control over your data, you get the power to define access to your desktops and files.

Not everyone is allowed to access every data and desktop of the organization. This is why many service providers offer to integrate their services into the active directory of your business. You can manage user roles and define permissions and accesses as per user roles. This helps in ensuring that only users with access permissions can open a desktop, app, or file. 

OS Hardening

To completely protect your desktops, OS hardening is essential. This means that your desktops must be installed with the latest security patches. These implementations must be regularly updated to keep your desktop, apps, and data secure at all times. These implementations save from malicious attacks, including phishing, ransomware, etc. 

VDI facilitates easy patch management as it can be done simultaneously to all desktops from a common management portal.

Data Encryption

In the case of VDI, every data file that is dispatched from the cloud to the endpoints of your employees is encrypted. The encryption used is TLS 1.3 and 256-bit data encryption. Even your data at rest is encrypted for security.  

Conclusion  

From the ability to backup data regularly to secure your data from theft, VDI solutions offer high-quality security options. You only have to explore the best VDI solution provider to implement a secure and robust VDI solution. Once implemented, you would be able to control access, encrypt even resting data, and recover your desktops at the time of a disaster almost immediately. 

So, what are you waiting for? Start using VDI to mitigate security risks hampering the processes of your business.