Moving Target Defense Blog

Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) felt like a lifeline at the start of the Coronavirus pandemic. As offices rushed to close down and companies scrambled to operate remotely, those with VDI found the process to be surprisingly seamless. People didn’t have to bring the office home with them or make do with incomplete data and insufficient tools. Instead, they simply had to login to a portal to access a virtual copy of their own office desktop. The setting may have changed, but thanks to VDI, the workflows carried on as always.

If you rely on a cloud-based Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), you’re hardly alone. Projections suggest the market for this technology will grow from about $3.6 billion in 2017 to more than $10 billion in 2023, but the ceiling could actually be much higher as the Coronavirus pandemic drives demand for exactly what virtualized desktops have to offer.

Its been a big week for Morphisec.

Yesterday Morphisec announced it has been awarded a contract by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for the build-out and enhancement of cyber protection capabilities for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) systems. This is the first U.S. Federal initiative the company has pursued, and it’s a validation of how innovative and powerful its approach is with Moving Target Defense.

Register for our webinar Dynamic Endpoint Protection for Virtual Environments on March 21, 2018.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) offers many advantages but it is not attack proof and highly advanced cyberattacks present an ever growing threat. IT and Security teams need to rethink the fabric, the costs and the risks inherent within virtual environments. Endpoint protection for VDIs has always been problematic as they are extremely sensitive to the performance impact of security products. The wrong security tools will consume resources, slow system boot up and impede productivity.

As an eventful 2016 draws to a close, what should we expect in cybersecurity for 2017? In this blog series, Morphisec’s security experts predict trends and technologies in 2017.

Today’s post is from Michael Gorelik, Morphisec VP R&D. He takes a look at the future in endpoint technology developments, both from a security and attack point of view.

A Brief History

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is not a new concept – in fact virtualized desktops can be traced back to the 1960s, when IBM divided up mainframes into virtual machines to allow for multiple, simultaneous users. The modern take on VDI emerged around 2007 with the Virtual Desktop Manager by VMware. Citrix entered the game in late 2008. Over the next years, VDI and grew steadily but slowly. Until recently. The emergence of cloud-hosted virtual desktop solutions has accelerated VDI adoption by enterprises and smaller organizations alike.