LANDesk has announced the addition of Macintosh to the platforms it
supports with its Trusted Access security management software.
Although
Windows-based PCs reside on most corporate desktops, the Mac has a long-established niche in publishing and multimedia departments, as well as in
companies that specialize in those areas. In other words, the Mac may not be
thought of as a corporate computer, but it is used by many large companies.
“Apple is also very strong in education, and more school districts are
being run like enterprises,” said Scott Parkin, product manager for
Macintosh support, in an interview with internetnews.com.
LANDesk’s Trusted Access Security Suite lets IT managers stop infected or
unprotected systems from connecting to the corporate network, as well as
protect corporate resources from connected systems that become corrupt.
Quarantined systems are then put through the appropriate remediation
steps to bring them into compliance with corporate policies before being
granted access and released onto the network. LANDesk is showing the new
software at Macworld Expo, which begins today in San Francisco.
“We realized from customer feedback that there’s an immense need among
Mac users in the enterprise for a scan-and-block technology,” said Devon
Anderson, product manager for LANDesk’s security suite software. “There are
a lot of Macs in small departments that aren’t managed devices. Now we can
help companies with a more heterogeneous approach to security on the
network. We can offer the same strong network access protection pretty much
required in the Windows world.”
Anderson conceded that Macs are generally more secure than Windows PCs, but
most computers are potentially subject to security and virus-related
problems. There are other feature, such as software audits, that make LANdesk’s software useful.
Salt Lake City, Utah-based LANDesk was purchased and later spun out of
Intel in 2002, after 11 years as part of the chip giant. The company’s
intimate knowledge of the Intel architecture makes it well suited to also
design quickly for future Macs based on Intel processors.
Like several other select developers, Parkin said LANDesk has an
Intel-based prototype system, which it’s been using since August. “I think
Apple choosing Intel chips will lead to substantial success of Apple’s
acceptance in the enterprise,” he said. “We’ve had full support from Apple to get our
software done.”
The addition of LANDesk Trusted Access functionality for Macintosh OS X
is available as part of the LANDesk 8.6.1 service pack being distributed to
existing customers and will be available for purchase this month. LANDesk
said that Version 8.6, released in August, was the first software tool
capable of performing systems management over the Internet, thereby saving
enterprises the expense of a dedicated leased line or VPN
solution.
