For some time I’ve been trying to work out with colleagues how to articulate what I see as a solid model for dealing with consumerisation of IT in the workplace or even allowing people to bring their own devices. It’s quite tough to find some mental model to help people to understand the kind of approaches that work. I’m looking for a way to help you manage more than the standard IT desktop, to make more sense of productivity at work and with a view of IT security risks.
The key is balancing the approach: do more with less, more permissive access to less secure stuff. Most of an organisations “stuff” tends to require less security than IT think. Be a guide not a gate keeper.
Good, Better, Best, seems to be the most applicable that I’ve found.
GOOD is most open, your users being able to access your network, get IP addresses, get to some apps / services / data. They probably have to keep entering credentials and they may be storing those credentials on their device.
BETTER is having some modicum of remediation over the device – the ability to remote wipe it for example.
BEST is having an authenticated connection with general purpose security (you could say domain joined PC)
N+1 is having the ability to ensure end to end security, encrypted device, encrypted communications, rights managed documents, remote wipe, policy based management, policy based enforcement.
Not all devices will fit into all categories, in-fact probably only Domain joined Windows PCs will be able to enter the N+1 category (that’s because all the things mentioned are built in from the ground up). That said most people probably don’t need everything in the N+1 category. Most organisations will also see their users adding GOOD and BETTER devices to their mobile worker armoury along with a BEST or N+1 devices.
A further note on N+1 is that this is where I see private cloud hosted apps and desktops and there is no reason that a GOOD, BETTER or BEST device can’t be used to access an N+1 hosted app or desktop.
*caveat: this is a simple model, there will be many exceptions, the key is mixture.
A technology that’s been around for quite some time is IPSec, it helps to ensure security of communications between two network devices. With IPSec in place two devices need to establish a peer-to-peer trust before communication can take place, it’s kind of like having a secret handshake.
If your enabling an environment where people will be able to bring their own device you probably have some requirement to prevent them accessing some services, such as the HR system, so that they don’t walk off with the CEOs pay slip. IPSec is perfect in this situation to preform something called Server and Domain Isolation. Essentially this means that only specific devices can access the super-secret servers but every device can have broad network access.
Accesses to services and resources is somewhere that an 80/20 rule applies. Most people need access to most of the network for most of their work, some people will need access to the other 20%. Using SDI and IPSec you can require people to access secure information from devices you consider to be more trustworthy. Perhaps they can’t access the HR System from their Windows Phone but they can from their Windows Laptop, that’s BitLocker encrypted etc.
IPSec is implemented in Server 2008R2 and Windows 7 using Group Policy controls for Windows Firewall with Advanced Security. Essentially you place your super-secure resources into a group or OU that REQUIRES access and place clients that you are happy to have access to those resources into a group or OU that set things up so that clients will reply correctly if asked to do the secret handshake. If the client doesn’t know the secret handshake that’s the end of the conversation. Whilst you’re at it you can raise the general security level on your network by telling all clients to REQUEST access. That way the first thing the client will say is “do you know the secret handshake” if the answer is no they can still talk to each other.
For Windows everything is controlled through Group Policy, so not only is it easy to administer it’s easy to get very granular, for example you could say that only clients that match a specific WMI query get the IPSec policy's applied.
If you’re wondering why you wouldn’t just do this with some app level access control or some file level access control then consider this: you don’t know what’s running in the background maliciously on any device that someone casually brings in.
RESOURCES for IPSec and SDI have been gathered together in one place already on this IPSec Page of TechNet but I thoroughly recommend the following:
If you’re thinking about how you can make your environment more suitable for a world where people want to bring their own devices into the office then you could do well to attend an IT Camp where we talk about just that. Of course those events are now full, so I won’t bother to link them but now you can build the lab at home.
We’ve just released the Test Lab Guide that is part of the basis for the stuff we show at a camp, download, evaluate and have fun.
In my last two posts I talked about People + Devices and Data + Apps – essentially 4 of the things you need to manage and probably already are in your environment. A fourth element is the network but I won’t be going into that in particular because it’s purely a means to an end, a way for People to connect the apps on their devices to the data that they need to be productive. What “client infrastructure managers” now need to do though is to combine those essential elements into the users journey and how to manage that journey not just the individual items.
Consider the scenario (one you’ll see at IT Camps): Ben is working on a document on his laptop, he needs to share it with Alice who needs to approve the content. Ben then has to go to the coffee shop but he doesn’t want to carry the weight of his laptop for a quick coffee so he just takes his slate. Whilst he’s out he realises he needs to amend the document, so he connects back to the place he shared it with Alice and makes the changes – whilst she’s actually reviewing it. Then he starts a new document, but he has to run so he just powers off. When he gets back to his laptop in the office the document is “magically” there. When he’s done for the day he packs away his laptop and locks it in his desk drawer but just before he gets out the door Don asks him to share the new document with him, so he jumps onto Don’s PC and does just that – even though he only saved the document on his desktop over on his laptop, which is locked in his desk drawer.
Some of what just happened might sound like magic. It’s not, it’s all possible with existing tools and the right deployments of User State Virtualisation, SharePoint, DirectAccess and some other established tech. All IT did was provide the means to make it happen – put some glue in place that allowed for a mixed device style.
Really it’s always been the job of IT to make technology work in the most approachable, appropriate way.
The next paragraph is the same as the story above but with the bit’s of tech marked out so you can see where we used them.
Ben is working on a document [Word 2010] on his laptop, he needs to share it [SharePoint 2010]with Alice who needs to approve the content. Ben then has to go to the coffee shop but he doesn’t want to carry the weight of his laptop for a quick coffee so he just takes his slate [Windows 7]. Whilst he’s out he realises he needs to amend the document [Word 2010], so he opens the place he shared it [DirectAccess + SharePoint 2010]with Alice and makes the changes – whilst she’s actually reviewing it from the browser [Office Web Apps]. Then he starts a new document, but he has to run so he just powers off. When he gets back to his laptop in the office the document is “magically” there [User State Virtualization]. When he’s done for the day he packs away his laptop and locks it in his desk drawer but just before he gets out the door Don asks him to share the new document with him[User State Virtualization], so he jumps onto Don’s PC [Remote Desktop Services] and does just that – even though he only saved the document on his desktop back his laptop[and on the server], which is locked in his desk drawer.
So it’s all about the journey or rather planning for the journeys that your users might make and whilst you can’t plan them all, you’ll find plenty of commonality.
My last post was about how, in order to embrace consumerisation, you need to start thinking in terms of managing the access that people and devices have, or more accurately the access that People on Devices have. This post is an extension of that previous post in that we’re going to start thinking about the two other of the four ingredients in our consumerisation cocktail that represent the things that people want to access.
Other than admins no person should ever have to think about accessing a server, they shouldn’t need to be thinking – “golly gosh I need to access the latest sales data so I need to go to \\sales\2012\march\week3\some-random-share\sales.xls”. In fact no person ever really wants to have to remember that, they just want to access the sales information. More over they really don’t need to be thinking, “what credentials were they, umm, lets try this, no, how about this, no err, how about…”. People just want access to information.
OK, it’s not that simple, they do need a way to access that information but we can see a marked shift here too in resent times. Today people think in terms of Apps, services have become apps – just pick up the mobile device nearest you and the proof is instantly visible. There are also really only two types of Apps too: Viewing and Doing. The former category, Viewing, are in fact ways to consume information and the latter so they fall into our information category, Doing, are generally ways to create information. It’s hard to cite a single example of anything other than these two.(You could argue that there’s a 3rd type, Games, but that’s about it).
What we need to do when we consider how to allow a more consumerised environment - whilst also protecting our corporate assets - to control who has access to Do what with Information. Nothing new, it’s a problem we’ve had for many years and we have a wealth of well known solutions, but do they stack up in this brave new world?
Today what many organisations are doing is using the same old solutions, that were perfectly good in the past, applied to todays problems and they’re being effective some of the time – but not all. The old way to manage information was to manage who had access to it where it rested, on the server, but the trouble with that approach is that the information is no longer at rest, it’s constantly moving and through many applications, devices and people. How do we cope?
To give you an example, what happens when your CFO emails the financial accounts to his home PC because it’s more convenient. The chances are that the information is only protected at rest, so when it’s attached to an email that protection (the file system ACL) is removed, it then goes over a HTTPS (good) connection to the email provider (who could then read it at will) then it lands on his mobile device…or rather it wood if he’d sent it to the correct email address, instead it lands on JoeBloggs@contoso.com ‘s device not Joe.Bloggs@contos.com ‘s email inbox.
The best idea is to manage the information assuming it’s mobile, assuming that it will leave the confides of the firewall, essentially assuming the worst case will happen.
In a modern environment where employees can use their own devices and you might not have access to control those devices your best approach is to manage the information in a way that never leaves the information. To embed security into the information.
We’ve had a technology built into Microsoft Office documents, built into Microsoft Exchange and built into Windows for quite some time to manage this issue but now is the time to turn it on. Rights Management is built on the requirement that the App that is opening the information (the document, the email) will check to see what the person opening the document can do. The App does this by requesting that information from Active Directory Directory Services, normally this only happens if the device is allowed to request that information. As such you have a mechanism to ensure that the right person can access the information from a device or App that’s secure enough to store the information.
You might well notice that again, the two variables of management you have remain People and Devices.
A second thought might well be that you need some kind of rich client software (Microsoft Outlook 2010, Microsoft Word 2010) in order to ascertain the rights that the user has over the information. Apps of course don’t have to be delivered on a device, they can be delivered as a Web App and AD-RMS works with Office Web Apps. Web Apps of course play an important part in the mix. With Web Apps you have a way to reduce the potential for data walkabouts because with a web app your data doesn’t need to leave your firewall – even though it’s displayed through a web portal outside your firewall.
Apps probably cost money and as such you will probably want to protect access to apps not primarily to prevent access to information but to prevent you from overspending. Controlling access to apps is a fairly simple process but it’s something we’ve done a great job of automating in System Center Config Manager 2012 – which is a future post all of it’s own. The key thing to remember though is that SCCM 2012 implements and user self service request mechanism and administrator approval mechanism for application installs, in addition to admin driven installations. Essentially you get a corporate Store for Apps – and people are comfortable with that these days, just look at your mobile device.
Control access to information at rest and in motion based on People and Devices and try to control access to apps to manage cost not information – after all what would you do if the user brought their own app?