Who needs 84 security vendors? With new suite, Dell looks to consolidate your protection
Dell has unveiled its new endpoint security and management portfolio, combining Dell Data Security Solutions, Mozy by Dell, RSA, and VMware AirWatch in a bid to tackle a market currently riddled with multiple security vendors.
The new offering from the tech giant is expected to arm organisations with all of the tools required to protect data and detect threats in an increasingly mobile workforce. The suite consists of four main pillars: Data protection, identity assurance, threat detection and response, and unified endpoint management.
According to Dell, the new offering comes in response to a call from customers wanting to consolidate security vendors by partnering with one that can offer multiple layers of protection.
Speaking at Dell EMC World in Austin, Texas, Zulfikar Ramzan, chief technology officer at RSA Security -- the security division within Dell Technologies -- said he has found customers want to combine their security products and vendor relationships for three main reasons:
- To negotiate better pricing with more products from the one supplier.
- Have a better opportunity to influence the vendor's product road map.
- To be able to deal with one vendor for support.
"I was talking to one of our customers just two weeks ago and they are using 84 different security vendors and it's not an uncommon number to hear," he said.
"We are noticing a trend in the industry where people are trying to move away from that multi-vendor relationship because security is fundamentally in many ways about management, you cannot have an environment that is secure that is not well managed -- they have to go hand-in-hand."
Ramzan said currently there are approximately 1,600 security companies out in the market, which he said creates a massive amount of customer confusion. Rather than choosing to partner with a vendor because they are the cheapest option, he said customers are instead looking for a trusted partner.
Similarly, Colin Minihan, director, security & best practices at VMWare AirWatch, said consistency and providing a seamless experience for customers is a core focus for his organisation.
"About 20 percent of our customers love to be able to choose specifically what they want, be that a security firm that can catch a lot of zero days on Android, combined with somebody that's a little bit more focused on iOS, but the vast majority of our customers are looking for some consolidation there," he said.
"What becomes imperative," Minihan continued, "is the proximity with which the R&D teams work together. It's not just about presenting APIs and doing some kind of press releases where we share logos on websites, but it's about connecting architects and engineers, and making sure work streams are as seamless as possible so that if you do have multiple solutions, you can navigate from one to the other and it feels like one solution."
Under the data protection banner, Dell will provide authentication, file-based data encryption, and advanced threat prevention. Mozy, scooped up by EMC in 2007, will see Dell extend this to offer cloud data protection for laptops, desktops, and small servers across a distributed enterprise or small to medium-sized businesses.
Dell will leverage RSA SecurID for identity assurance, which will focus on user authentication and also use RSA NetWitness for behavioural analytics and machine learning for rapid threat detection.
Unified endpoint management, courtesy of VMware AirWatch -- the mobile device management arm of the cloud and virtualization firm -- will see Dell offer "over-the-air management" via the cloud. This includes: Configuration management, software distribution management, operating system patch management, client health, and security management.
Additionally, cloud data protection with Dell EMC MozyEnterprise and Dell EMC MozyPro is already available through Dell, with solutions from RSA and AirWatch due to hit the market through Dell in December.
Also on Wednesday, Dell unveiled a host of new product offerings at its first customer show since completing the acquisition of EMC.
These products include: New VxRail Appliances and VxRack System 1000 hyper-converged infrastructure systems; updates to the Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage object storage platform; Isilon All-Flash Network Attached Storage, a combined strategy for SC Series storage customers; and a software defined version of Dell EMC Data Domain protection.
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Disclosure: Asha Barbaschow travelled to Dell EMC World as a guest of Dell.