By Charles King, Pund-IT® March 15, 2023
The concept of resiliency has a long history in enterprise IT as a measure of how data center components withstand and recover from system failures, power outages and other problems and disasters. However, fundamental changes in how organizations do business have resulted in companies depending increasingly on highly distributed IT environments with inherent weaknesses and risks.
In those circumstances, IT assets, including client endpoints, can be potential doorways into the larger business. That, in turn, creates opportunities for new threats, such as being targeted by cyber criminals. The security solutions and services announced this week by Dell Technologies are designed to help businesses resiliently survive and succeed in an increasingly insecure world.
The modern threat landscape
Do businesses really need new security solutions and services? Absolutely. First, it is becoming increasingly apparent that changes companies made in 2019 to address the Covid-19 pandemic, like working from home (WFH), are continuing to impact and even become permanent for many organizations. Supporting remote WFH employees carries some of the same challenges supporting remote business facilities presents. But it can also massively increase the attack surface for bad actors looking for opportunities and systemic weaknesses.
Additionally, cyber threats are also evolving beyond the scope and capabilities of many traditional security solutions. Cyber criminals have become increasingly sophisticated and prepared and are often funded by large scale organizations. Those include criminal syndicates and nation states pursuing financial gain or valuable intellectual property.
Without robust, innovative security solutions and services, organizations will find it difficult or impossible to withstand, recover from and adapt to these and other threats to their businesses.
Dell’s new security offerings
What exactly is Dell doing to address these and other problems?
- Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Pro Plus – An expansion of Dell’s MDR solutions and services, MDR Pro Plus includes 24/7 threat detection, investigation and prevention, breach and attack simulations, penetration testing, cybersecurity training modules and Incident Recovery Care services provided by certified Dell experts.
- CrowdStrike Falcon platform – Building on its recently announced alliance with CrowdStrike, Dell is adding the company’s solutions for endpoints and cloud workloads to its SafeGuard and Response portfolio.
- Hardware protections for Dell commercial PCs – A cloud-based version of Dell’s Secured Component Verification (SCV) offering will be available for customers purchasing Latitude, Precision and other Dell commercial PCs. SVC on Cloud is designed to reduce the risk of product tampering by generating digital certificates that can be reviewed and confirmed by customers’ IT teams.
- Dell Product Success Accelerator (PSX) for Cyber Recovery – Dell PSX streamlines the implementation and operation of secure, isolated cyber recovery vaults containing critical data required for business continuity. Customers can choose between three levels of assistance, Ready, Optimize and Operate, depending on their business needs.
Final analysis
What are the takeaways from Dell’s offerings? First, they substantially broaden and deepen the company’s existing portfolio of security solutions and services. The expanded capabilities of the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Pro Plus offerings provide Dell customers a full range of solutions for assessing, preparing for, preventing, responding to and recovering from security threats and events.
The addition of the CrowdStrike Falcon cloud-native platform will further extend Dell’s security defense offerings to endpoints and cloud workloads. Somewhat similarly, extending the Secured Component Verification offering to its commercial PC portfolio should address concerns about potential device tampering among Dell’s enterprise customer base. Finally, the introduction of the new Product Success Accelerator for Cyber Recovery appears to be a solid, flexible solution for companies proactively preparing for future cyberattacks.
In a briefing with analysts prior to the announcement, Matt Baker, SVP of Dell Technologies’ Corporate Strategy, detailed the new offerings and how they reflect the company’s security strategy. He noted that along with helping customers tackle tough challenges and address the complexity of staying secure across networks, devices and systems, Dell is “Helping customers double-down on resilience in a challenging environment.”
That clear focus on resilience, and aiding customers so they can withstand potential attacks, recover from cybercrimes and other intrusions and adapt to an ever-changing, ever more dangerous threat landscape demonstrates that Dell Technologies is a well-prepared and vitally focused enterprise vendor.
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