CeBIT: IBM Demos Cloud-based Desktop Streaming Service

At the CeBIT trade show in Germany, IBM premiered its Secure Enterprise Desktop program, a cloud service and hardware device that streams all the data and contents on a PC hard desk from any location in a matter of minutes, the company claims.

With the rapid growth of the cloud, increase in mobile access and the rise of BYOD (bring your own device to work) policies, channel partners are faced with new security risks and concerns among their customers. In response, IBM researchers in Zurich, Switzerland have designed the Secure Enterprise Desktop.

Unlike similar applications, the Secure Enterprise Desktop operates offline. Once the original connection is set, the entire desktop functionality can be accessed from the encrypted cloud disk. Subsequent internet contact securely updates any changes to the cloud. Employee down time due to laptop theft, which is on the rise, averages around nine days. Secure Enterprise Desktop avoids data loss entirely and minimizes IT related down time since an employee’s workstation exists in the cloud. Secure Enterprise Desktop also facilitates open desk scenarios, in which employees share PC’s based on work schedules, thus reducing costs to businesses.

In the press release, IBM Zurich researcher Paolo Scotton said:

“The Secure Enterprise Desktop streams a user’s entire PC desktop from a cloud that is both secure and easy to use. With this service, organizations can work smarter by more efficiently managing end-to-end-security on the IT-client side while employees can conveniently and safely access their office desktop on any computer for seamless computing.”

IBM previously developed the Zone Trusted Information Channel (ZTIC) for secure online banking, the technology on which the Secure Enterprise Desktop is based. ZTIC bypasses potentially infected PC’s by establishing a secure channel to a back-end server. Several banks in Switzerland currently use ZTIC, involving thousands of users. Secure Enterprise Desktop is the client-side version of ZTIC. Even if the Secure Enterprise device is lost, there is no risk to the organization since no data is stored on the device; data is repeatedly backed-up in the cloud.

IBM plans to make the Secure Enterprise Desktop available later this year. At present the company is pilot testing the service. IBM scientists are also planning a MacOS version.