Hosted Desktop security, according to leading research analysts for the technology industry at Gartner, concerns surrounding the security of virtual hosted desktops has come completely full circle in the past year or so.

Now, it’s more likely that enterprises looking to use hosted desktop services are most likely to do so because of end-user security concerns. This is because, now that virtual desktops have become a more popular cloud model, if properly implemented they can improve both security and compliance concerns.

In the past, hosted desktop security and compliance have been one of the major blocks to take-up when it comes to SaaS solutions. However, now hosted desktop has seen a huge increase in use, leading analysts to believe that the use of virtualized environments can increase security.

“Having the organization’s data spread across hundreds or thousands of devices, many of which leave the physical security of office locations, presents a significant risk of data loss,” said Neil MacDonald, vice president and Gartner Fellow.

“HVDs can help improve the security standing of the client computing environment by centralizing sensitive information and applications in the data centre (sic), giving IT system and security stakeholders the opportunity not only to improve support efficiency, but also security.”

Consider vendors and alternatives

However, Gartner recommend that those companies interested in deploying hosted virtual desktops should ensure that when choosing a vendor, they and the solution itself benefits the company.

This will depend on many factors, such as the size of the enterprise and how and where employees are connecting to the hosted desktop. For the most part, as pointed out in our last blog, virtual desktops are beneficial to most businesses.

This is due to savings with regard to capital expenditure, environmental savings, disaster recovery plans, remote workers and more.

Gartner point out that benefits surrounding security are only really viable if hosted desktop architecture is in itself secure. This means that data centres must have security on site, using physical security as well as software.

Not only this, but a good hosted desktop supplier should back up data to more than one location if it is to sell the service with a good disaster recovery plan in place, which is vital to many companies.

However, it’s worth noting at this point that virtual desktop suppliers tend to offer a much more secure solution that would generally be found at business premises. Remote access to applications, from any location, is secured by vendors and malware and firewall protection is put into place.

Add this to a good end-user experience which uses software environments that employees are familiar with, such as Windows and Office applications, and there doesn’t seem to be many reasons not to choose one.

Compliance

Many businesses who are considering deployment to hosted desktop services are concerned about compliance regulations, especially those who accept credit card payments and retain customer data.

However, a lot of the time these concerns are due to data centres which are not situated in the same country as the business, meaning that they are possibly subject to foreign regulations or they aren’t protected by the same laws that govern such matters in their own country.

This is easy to overcome though, simply by choosing a supplier that is based in the UK. We not only use dedicated UK Data centres but also offer excellent local support, compliance audits and disaster recovery, plus deliver a private cloud solution

This means that data is stored in a space of its own, rather than being shared with other customers.

The future looks bright for virtual hosted desktops and for security regarding it. Whilst Gartner’s report may be a little on the pessimistic side, it pays to remember that hosted desktops have come a long way recently.

Not only are they now the most popular of all SaaS solutions, hosted desktops and their suppliers have overthrown early concerns to ensure there is a proven model when it comes to security and compliance.

This means that modern businesses, both large and small, can take advantage of a technology that offers substantial benefits all round.

Should you wish to discuss Hosted Desktop security in further details please contact one of our account managers

by Kamran Maqbool

For more from me please visit http://www.greencloudhosting.co.uk/?p=4169 Hosted Desktop – Top 3 reasons from customer feedback

With Hosted Desktop requirements on the rise we just popped together 3 simple reasons to consider a Hosted Desktop. We know there are many other reasons however these are the top 3 that our customers mention when we follow up user experience after a month of use.

For more from me please visit http://www.greencloudhosting.co.uk/?p=4156 The Benefits of choosing a Hosted Desktop

Hosted Desktops, otherwise known as virtual desktops, are included in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) group of cloud computing offerings. It means that all of the applications that are used in the workplace each day can be deployed in the cloud and used via an internet connection by staff.

This is especially true of virtual desktop solutions as, due to it being quick and easy to deploy, it’s seen better adoption rates than other cloud solutions such as Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). This has meant that there is now enough data on the security of cloud-hosted applications and delivery to support the theory that it’s safe.

In fact, many companies failed to have a strong disaster recovery plan when everything was based on-site, for the most part as a failure to back up effectively to more than one location.

With a hosted desktop supplier, data is not only stored in a secure place, but often in a secondary or even third location so to ensure that customer data is safe. Add to this a vendor’s capability to provide compliance audits for those customers who use credit cards and so on, and a hosted desktop can make life and work a whole lot easier.

How about remote workers?

Virtual desktops could have been invented for the rise in remote workers alone, as it presents an ideal opportunity for companies to further cut costs by having staff work from home.

Indeed, another area of strong growth over the past few years has been Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) schemes, which further reduces the need for capital expenditure, as staff prefer to use their own technology devices for work.

Hosted desktops can be run on any device that is internet ready, including PCs, notebooks, laptops, tablets and even smartphones.

This also means that it’s possible for workers who are on the road to connect to office data in order to update on the fly. This is ideal for salespeople who need to keep an eye on stock, or get an order into the system quickly.

This is far from an exhaustive list of the benefits of running a virtual hosted desktop, but covers the most important ones. The cloud industry itself has seen huge growth in the past couple of years and become more competitive, especially in the take-up of virtual desktops.

This means that it pays to take care when choosing a hosted desktop supplier and ask plenty of questions. Look out for those who have good accreditations and case studies for you to consider.

To speak to a helpful Account Manager about how a Hosted Desktop solution can help your business please call us on 0800 019 3878 or email sales@greencloudhosting.co.uk for more info.

By Kamran Maqbool

For more from me please take a look http://www.greencloudhosting.co.uk/?p=4149 Hosted Desktop benefits for UK Business

Interested in knowing about the Hosted Desktop benefits ?

For more from me please visithttp://www.greencloudhosting.co.uk/?p=4144 Hosted Virtual Desktop UK

As one of the leading Hosted Virtual Desktop UK providers we pride ourselves on using UK only datacentres and the best of breed technology. All our support staff are UK based and ready to assist. Using a Hosted Virtual Desktop UK provider we can offer a stable and reliable platform that includes MS Office, Hosted Exchange and a free application server to add any windows compatible application you may use as part of your business.