VDI Security Best Practices for ISVs

Azure Virtual Desktop (Formerly Windows Virtual Desktop) is a comprehensive desktop and app virtualisation service running in the cloud. It allows you to virtualise business applications to provide remote workers secure access. ISVs host applications and data on servers, and through VDI, can enable their employees to work remotely via remote desktops. VDI is popular for enabling remote work because, with the right configuration, it’s highly secure and relatively inexpensive compared to on-premises options.

It is currently the only virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) that delivers simplified management, multi-session Windows 10, optimizations for Office 365 ProPlus, and support for Remote Desktop Services (RDS) environments.

With Azure Virtual Desktop you can help your team by delivering a virtual experience and remote apps to any device. It can help you increase your remote team’s productivity on any device.

Migrating to a cloud-based VDI solution allows organisations to take advantage of built-in security features that mitigate and eliminate the risks associated with traditional desktop virtualization. Azure Virtual Desktop in combination with the Azure public cloud, for example, offers comprehensive security features, like Azure Sentinel and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, that are built-in before deployment. This helps enable an organization to follow critical VDI security best practices from the start of their virtualization journey.

Security Best Practices

• Conditional access applies access controls based on signals like group membership, type of device, and IP address to enforce policies.
• Multifactor authentication requires that users consistently verify their identities to access sensitive data.
• Audit logs are used to gain insight into user and admin activities.
• Endpoint security like Microsoft Defender for Endpoints offers built-in protection against malware and other advanced threats for all your endpoints.
• Application restriction mitigates security threats by limiting what applications certain users are allowed to access using software like Windows Defender Application Control.

Following these VDI security practices helps ISVs secure user identities, data, and access to their VDI. They’re the reason a comprehensive VDI solution, like Azure Virtual Desktop, doesn’t just mitigate security risks associated with virtualization, but increases overall security.

How do you choose a secure VDI for your organization?

IT decision makers must consider the challenges along with the benefits of enabling remote work when choosing a VDI solution. Adopting a comprehensive, cloud-based virtual desktop solution, like Azure Virtual Desktop, mitigates and eliminates many of these security concerns.

Also referred to as desktop-as-a-service, cloud-based VDI solutions host their virtual desktops on the cloud using a subscription model instead of on-premises, locally operated and maintained servers. Not only does this lower the cost and time of implementing VDI by decreasing the amount of labor needed to maintain it, it also ensures that the cloud-based virtual desktop solution provider shares responsibility with its customers for security.

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