Are you ready for the “Next Normal” of work/life balance? Over the past couple of months, we’ve all seen our lifestyles change significantly. Despite the inconveniences and uncertainties, I’ve personally experienced a few things that have put a smile on my face. Things that will provide a new perspective on life after COVID-19.
I live on a large cul-de-sac that provides a safe place for children to play. Because our local parks are wrapped in yellow caution tape, I’ve seen an influx of activity on our street. Bike riders, skateboarders, squirt guns, and more! Even with social distancing guidelines, my family and I have made some new friends. When we venture off the cul-de-sac for our evening walks, I see more people out walking than ever before.
Sometimes difficult situations can lead to positive change. Can the same thing be true for our professional lives? I think so!
“A Gartner, Inc. survey of 317 CFOs and Finance leaders on March 30, 2020 revealed that 74 percent will move at least 5 percent of their previously on-site workforce to permanently remote positions post-COVID 19.” * Additionally, according to a report from research firm Valoir, the massive increase of remote workers has only created a 1 percent decrease in worker productivity, despite everyone’s adjustment to a new workstyle. That number will certainly go up, creating a positive impact on work-from-home productivity. Using Citrix Workspace, I’m actually more productive when working from home.
For many of our customers, the “crisis” phase of the pandemic is over. Now, they’re in the process of expanding and improving remote-work programs and technology. The Next Normal Phase will undoubtedly include a larger percentage of remote workers.
At Citrix, we’re all working from home these days, yet we’re still able to crank out a long list of Workspace features each month. Here’s what’s new for the month of May:
Business Continuity Programs – Citrix Workspace
We continue to offer a number of programs, promotions, and resources focused on helping our customers navigate this current pandemic.
The Citrix COVID-19 business updates and resources page is great place to start.
Additionally, we encourage you to reach out to your local Citrix sales rep or Citrix partner rep to better understand what resources and programs are available to support your remote-work initiatives.
New Workspace Offering – Workspace Essentials
Citrix Workspace Essentials helps small and medium businesses protect their data by simplifying and securing the login process to SaaS and web applications. Citrix Workspace Essentials includes single sign-on to SaaS and web applications with multi-factor authentication to further secure the login process, reducing the odds of account compromise by 99.9 percent.
- SSO to SaaS and web apps in a unified workspace that removes the need to log in to multiple applications, resulting in a better use experience.
- Multi-factor authentication with Citrix Workspace reduces unauthorized access to company data.
- Visibility across SaaS and web usage (Tech Preview), with Citrix Analytics, enables troubleshooting of user login issues with faster remediation.
Citrix Workspace Intelligence – HTTP Integrations (ServiceNow)
Citrix Workspace’s intelligent capabilities, powered by the microapp service, supports a long list of out-of-the-box templates for popular SaaS apps. These custom integrations (connectors) with the systems of record (SaaS app) allow for the simple creation and delivery of microapp actions and insights.
Citrix now makes working with microapps even easier by leveraging HTTP-based integrations. HTTP-based integrations with systems of record are generally more flexible and better suited for building customized workflows.
Available now, Citrix Workspace intelligence supports HTTP-based microapp integration with ServiceNow.
Citrix Analytics – New Controls for Automated Zero Trust Security
Zero trust is certainly popular these days. The idea behind zero trust is that enterprises should not trust any entity inside or outside the network perimeter at any time. Instead, it requires a way to continuously access and authorize every user, every device, and every network looking to access a particular protected resource.
With industry-leading solutions for app delivery, endpoint management, networking, and identity, Citrix is in a unique position to provide automated, comprehensive zero trust security. Citrix Analytics is the “secret sauce” that brings everything together, providing mandatory visibility, monitoring, and remediation to user-based workspace security.
Citrix Analytics development efforts were working in overdrive last month. Here’s a list of all the new features and functionality:
- New risk categories dashboard for broad visibility into your security posture
- Risk category custom risk indicator for fine-tuned security
- Pre-defined default policies for users (use case) simplifies deployment
- Easy policy creation for a great IT experiences
- Multiple conditions per policy for addressing more sophisticated use cases
- Notifications on user behavior to reduce false positive security concerns
- Monitoring mode provides policy insight prior to enforcement
- Access Summary Dashboard for simplified visibility and improved productivity
- Redesigned Users page for a better user experience: a consolidated summary of the user events based on user risk scores, data source, and user type
- Enhanced geographical map view of the user’s usual (and unusual) sign-in locations
Citrix Analytics – Usage
- Basic usage analytics for select Citrix Cloud services
- Provides insights into how users interact with various Citrix products
- Helps to understand user adoption and engagement
- Fast on-boarding of data sources and effortless setup
- Easy-to-consume dashboards visualize usage metrics:
- User metrics such as active users and top users
- Product usage metrics such as top domains accessed, top application used, and data download volume
- Delivered by Citrix Analytics under the “Usage” tab
- Supported offerings
- Citrix Workspace Standard, Premium, Premium Plus, Premium Plus Quick Start
- Content Collaboration Standard, Advanced, Premium
- Access Control Service
Get more details on the latest with Citrix Analytics on the What’s New page on our Citrix Docs site.
Admin Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) – Secure Your Citrix Infrastructure
Multi-factor authentication can prevent up to 99 percent of attacks aimed at compromising accounts. Recently, we’ve added MFA support to Citrix Workspace management and administration. Beginning on June 15, all Citrix Cloud administrators will be required to use the new MFA security features for account login. We encourage our customers to set it up today.
How does it work? Citrix Cloud admins will use a time-based one-time password (TOTP) on a secondary device (mobile device) as a second factor for authentication. Admins can use a third-party app such as Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator or the native experience from Citrix, which works the same way. For more information please check out our blog post on why we’re requiring multi-factor authentication for Citrix Cloud admins.
We’re excited to announce Remote Works — A Citrix Virtual Series on Citrix.com. This site is designed to provide research, tools, and best practices to guide, support, and enable the remote workforce. In addition to some great articles, blogs and videos, we’re adding new interviews and podcasts each week through the month of June.
You can also subscribe to our newsletter. You’ll receive email notifications about each new episode.
Stay safe. We’ll be back next month with another What’s New with Citrix Workspace update.
*Gartner Press Release, Gartner CFO Survey Reveals 74 Percent Intend to Shift Some Employees to Remote Work Permanently, April 3, 2020, https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-04-03-gartner-cfo-surey-reveals-74-percent-of-organizations-to-shift-some-employees-to-remote-work-permanently2
