Doug L
Sr. Director of Product Management & Marketing at Virtual Computer, Inc.
What are the biggest headaches that IT professionals face with managing laptop PCs?
My company is building a new PC management product that leverages virtualization technology in place of agents in Windows to make laptops more manageable, reliable, and secure. I am trying to prioritize our feature development across areas such PC provisioning, patching, encryption, antivirus/endpoint security, data backup, etc. What are the biggest pain points? What am I missing?
Good Answers (6)
Rakesh K
AIS (OMW,OMU), CIW v5 Pro, ITILv3
Best Answers in: Web Development (3), Computers and Software (2), Using LinkedIn (2), Starting Up (1), Enterprise Software (1), Databases (1), Software Development (1)
Now-a-days Data Encryption & Bio Scan is common in all corporate level laptop. The software also is provided by the vendors. So once configured correctly you need not worry about these aspects.
The biggest headaches are patch management & software deployment.
There are instances where when some of the patches or software will fail.
Plan for,
1. If the OS fails then how do you upgrade (Keep a CD ready to ship)
2. You need to have a program that auto-fix the common problems (patch manager software, antivirus, dialup, LAN connectivity, Databack, etc.). This CD should be with all the laptop users.
Theft and / or identity management.
You need the ability to wipe the hard drive remotely from any laptop at any time, and possibly full data encryption.
I would suggest something like McAfee Endpoint Encryption: which provides encryption and strong access control to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data and render it useless in the event of loss or theft.
I'll concur with theft, but I think that's just a given.
My headache is Update Management. I have approved updates for these systems, but without making my update server public, or the laptops being connected to the network, they won't get anything. I'll end up with unpatched systems floating around some hotel's dirty network. Antivirus DATs can come from the Internet, so as long as theres a managed policy loaded (McAfee ePO) then that keeps running. Encryption is the same deal - there are a number of products that take care of this centrally, and once it's encrypted, it's done. Backup can be a hassle too, but training and good system config can alleviate a lot of those headaches.
Patch Management is definitly a headache but one thing you might want to consider is putting a remote management aspect that can be launched by the user for tech support to login with to fix or change settings etc.
1. Theft and Recovery
1a. Data Integrity
2. Virus, Update and Patch Management
3. Wireless Data Leaking (Unencrypted Wireless Access at Starbucks and the like)
4. Data Backup
There are in no particular order, and will change from company to company. User training goes a long way and can help with most or all of these issues.
Zoran P
Sr. System Administrator at Sectra
Best Answers in: E-Commerce (1), Enterprise Software (1), Information Security (1)
Biggest headache is to get your users to comply to whatever policy you decide to use.
I find that the biggest problem is to make my users understand that any security measures that IT-department enforces aren't "obstacles" that they have to find work-around for.
Such things might be disabling antivirus software or similar. I find this to be the biggest problem rather than any of technical problems.
