Ivanti Blog: Posts by

Ivanti Endpoint Manager Communication Diagram is Finally Here!

Mon, 12 Jul 2021 19:04:04 Z

When I started at Ivanti, I asked around to get a diagram of process flows and communication flow for Endpoint Manager (EPM). I was given two different diagrams that were each about 10 years old and not customer ready. While not much of the communication had changed, some had making these outdated and irrelevant. I decided to take these diagrams, update them, and put them into a simple and modern diagram that would be customer ready for posting online.

My first diagram is the basic architecture of EPM and all the TCP and UDP ports needed. With Zero Trust being top of mind with network security teams I believe this will help you become more secure to allow only the required ports to traverse your network(s). Ivanti is promoting the #SummerOfSecurity and this fits right in with this campaign.

I will be working to build additional diagrams of the various tasks that EPM does. This is so you can understand the process flow as well as communication between executing a discovery or software installation.

If you have comments or something you’d like me to blog about or do a diagram for please reach out to me on Twitter @metafiske or LinkedIn.

ABC’s of UEM – Part 4

Mon, 21 Jun 2021 13:01:00 Z

In my introduction to this blog series, I talked about why Unified Endpoint Manager (UEM) is more relevant than ever before. While reading this blog put your own experiences into perspective with how you and your company were forced to work during COVID-19.

R – Remote Control, Remote Access, Remote Workers, Remote Execution, Remote Control Tunnel, Replication, Rugged Devices, Rollout Projects, Rogue devices, Ransomware, Raspbian (RaspberryPi)

S – Software Discovery, Software distribution, Self-service portal, Self-electing subnet services, Secure enclave, Software-as-a-Service, Server Based Computing (SBC)

Why are all these terms important to you and your business? Ivanti UEM gives you the ability to manage or deploy all these items. Ivanti’s pillars for UEM success are: Discover, Manage, Secure and Service. Throughout this blog series you will find out more about these key pillars and how they will lead to your success.

So, by now if you’ve read my previous three parts (part 1, part 2, and part 3) you are probably thinking this guy is just looking to hit every search engine query. While you might be partially correct , that isn’t the intention. Take a look at all the terms for only ‘R’ and ‘S’ and you’ll recognize that UEM is truly all-encompassing. You will also notice that these terms are mostly based around the devices and the way users access applications and data.

In 2020 the world saw a new employee population that was required to work from home or in a social-distanced setting. In the “old days” you could go visit a desk and watch over the shoulder of a person to see what was going on or even touch their keyboard and mouse to take control with your own hands. Now we see ourselves remaining distanced and likely refraining from touching surfaces that others use. Remote control and remote execution are two methods that Ivanti UEM has built in that allow support staff to assist users in need of assistance. Remote Control is important for devices that are on your corporate network as well as off your network which Ivanti provides a seamless method to connect to devices in either scenario. With the releases of Ivanti Endpoint Manager 2021.1 you can also remote control RDP sessions. Technicians can record the screen for playback at a later time for troubleshooting if needed. Remote execution allows a technician to run an executable or command from their location to an end user to assist them as well.

Other times users may be able to utilize a self-service portal to allow for a server-based computing (SBC) application (i.e. Citrix, RDS, WVD (now AVD), etc.) or software to be distributed from a file server or web service. Ivanti can provide users a simple way to have applications, including the applications and updates required for the SBC based applications, delivered to their device and provide the security around the device to help minimize ransomware or threats from rogue devices on the network or internet.

SBC based workloads often are CPU or memory constrained or even both. While applications on a desktop or laptop have these same restrictions, an SBC deployment these issues can be detrimental to the usability for other users on the shared infrastructure. Even with the migration to cloud hosted workloads this is still an issue. Ivanti UWM, which is part of the UEM umbrella, can help with managing the performance of these types of applications allowing IT to have better control of the performance of the entire user base plus save on the costs of server/data center or cloud computing.

Ivanti UEM can help you secure non-traditional IT devices such as rugged handhelds (ie. Zebra devices), Halolens 2, Apple tvOS and the newly popular RaspberryPi devices that are showing up for all sorts of computing needs.

What’s in it for your management and leadership team? Ivanti Neurons along with UEM provide deep analytics into discovering all the devices and application on your network whether they are managed by an Ivanti Agent, or not. With these analytics we have in-depth reports that we can provide IT as well as executive reports/dashboards. These analytics also can provide proactive alerting to your inbox.

When considering your UEM solution remember that Ivanti will allow you to achieve your Everywhere Workplace.

ABC’s of UEM – Part 3

Thu, 17 Jun 2021 13:01:01 Z

In my introduction to this blog series, I talked about why Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) is more relevant than ever before. While reading this blog put your own experiences into perspective with how you and your company were forced to work during COVID-19.

N – Neurons, Network Optimization, Network view

O – OS Provisioning, Off-network, Offline, on-demand VPN, online

P – Patching, Policy Management, Performance Manager, Package Studio, Preferred Server, PXE, Peer download, Per-app VPN, Personas, Platform as a Service (PaaS), Push Notifications, Public/Private Cloud

Q – Query, Quarantine

Neurons is the newest offering from Ivanti. It is a cloud hosted services that offers machine learning, deep learning and artificial intelligence to help you discover, manage, secure and provide the best service to your users.

If you look at the list above, you’ll notice that the letter “P” has a large number of words related to UEM. Understanding how a user’s persona functions for their workflow is key to understand the best way to manage their policies, patching and performance of their applications. Does a user require the need to be offline or off-network? Do they need a VPN that is specific for only a particular application? Do they need to be online and connected to a PaaS or public or private cloud for an application or virtual desktop? What is their network connection like? Do they share it with a small office, large office or are they a work from home user and share it with the family or neighborhood?

Asking yourself all these questions and more can help you perfect your users’ experiences when connecting to work applications and data. Ivanti UEM allows you to provide the mixture of settings based on the answers to all of these questions. By leveraging the Ivanti UEM provided network view you can get a big picture understanding of user and device layout to proactively design your deployment to locations where having a preferred download server to allow for network optimization for software and update deployments would benefit, or where your users may benefit from leveraging a cloud hosted storage option inside of your Azure or AWS subscription.

Ivanti’s extensive collection of data allows you to leverage SQL queries, Ivanti provided reports or third party query tools to get the exact data you need.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic many of us were required by law to shelter in place in our homes and stay in direct contact with only our immediate family members. Ivanti Application Control allows a similar type of quarantine but for your devices. If a device is deemed to be compromised, Ivanti will automatically quarantine the device, but allow the Ivanti management tools to connect and fix the issues while not allowing any other communication from the device until the issue can be rectified and put back online.

What’s in it for your management and leadership team? Ivanti Neurons along with UEM provide deep analytics into all the devices on your network whether they are managed by an Ivanti Agent, or not. With these analytics we have in-depth reports that we can provide IT as well as executive reports/dashboards. These analytics also can provide proactive alerting to your inbox.

There are many more terms listed that I didn’t cover in this blog. Stay tuned for how they fit in with other terms in this blog series.

When considering your UEM solution remember that Ivanti will allow you to achieve your Everywhere Workplace.

ABC’s of UEM – Part 2

Tue, 15 Jun 2021 13:00:01 Z

In my introduction to this blog series, I talked about why Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) is more relevant than ever before. In this second part of the ABC’s of UEM series I will talk about the next set of letters and how they tie into Ivanti. While reading this blog put your own experiences into perspective with how you and your company were forced to work during COVID-19.

E – Endpoint Manager/Management, Environment Manager/Management, Everywhere Workplace, Executive Report, Edge Devices, End User Computing (EUC)

F – FileVault, File Director

G – Gantt Charts

H – HTML5, Hardware Independent Imaging (HII)

I – Ivanti, Inventory, Images, InstallEase, IoT, Identity and Access Management, iOS, iPadOS

L – Lifecycle Management, Linux, Legacy Software/Systems

M – Modern Device Management (MDM), Monitoring, Multicast, Managed Systems, MobileIron, MacOS, Medical Devices, Machine Learning (ML)

Endpoint management is the key to controlling your companies’ servers, desktops, IoT devices, applications and data. Without a true UEM solution you are likely using individual solutions to manage application deployments and others to scan your environment for capturing inventory of known devices and unknown/rogue devices. Ivanti UEM can do all of these and more. Ivanti leverages several methods for doing discovery network scans. First off, you can do a manual scan of your network to do an inventory of devices you have. This scan will also get information from the devices on the network for what is installed. These details can be captured either from a device with an Ivanti endpoint agent or any device that is part of a trusted active directory domain (agentless discovery) or using NMAP for determining what the device actually is. Ivanti’s discovery process occurs at the subnet level where information is scanned for by a delegated representative and sent to the Core to avoid all devices talking across the network. Any scan after the initial one will only capture incremental changes to avoid sending unnecessary data across the network. Studies have shown that using Ivanti’s UEM solution can help you find 30% more devices on your network than using other stand-alone tools. Remember in my intro to this blog I mentioned there are 90 devices discovered on my network. That is up from 63 the first time I ran the discovery a few weeks ago. It has captured other IoT devices and even my house guests’ phones when they join my network.

End User Computing is a term that related to anything that a user does on a device whether it is accessing an application or data from the device they are on or from a virtual environment leveraging one of the many virtual application and desktop providers on-premises or in the cloud. For virtual workloads, Ivanti solutions have proven to increase your scalability by 40%. If you are running in the cloud this means less cloud computing costs, or in the data center you have fewer servers to purchase, manage and lifecycle.

If your company is still in your Windows 10 rollout, a journey to cloud hosted desktop workloads or just imaging new machines before deployment out to your end users, Ivanti solutions can help with OS deployment leveraging industry standard tools such as Autopilot, PXE and machine imaging for Windows and tablet devices including HII capabilities to make sure the right drivers and only the pertinent drivers are installed. Ivanti can also assist in management and configuration of MacOS (including apps from the app store) and many Linux versions. In part one of this series, I talked about the benefits of Ivanti for application lifecycle management.

What’s in it for your management and leadership team? Ivanti provides deep analytics into all the devices on your network whether they are managed by an Ivanti Agent, or not. With these analytics we have in-depth reports that we can provide IT as well as executive reports/dashboards. These analytics also can provide proactive alerting to your inbox.

There are many more terms listed that I didn’t cover in this blog. Stay tuned for how they fit in with other terms in this blog series.

When considering your UEM solution remember that Ivanti will allow you to achieve your Everywhere Workplace.

ABC’s of UEM – Part 1

Mon, 14 Jun 2021 22:08:09 Z

In my introduction to this blog series, I talked about why Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) is more relevant than ever before. In this first part I will talk about the first few letters and how they tie into Ivanti. While reading this blog, put your own experiences into perspective with how you and your company were forced to work during COVID-19.

A – Analytics, Application Deployment/lifecycle, Application Control, Agent/Agentless, Alerting, Antivirus, Autopilot, AMT (Intel), Azure, AWS, Android, Artificial Intelligence (AI)

B - Bandwidth Control, Branding, BYOD, Blacklisting, Bitlocker

C - Client Management Tools (CMT), Co-management, Core Server, Cloud Services Appliance (CSA), Compliance, Client Certificate, ChromeOS

D – Dashboard, Discover, Distribution Packages, Device Configuration, Data Protection, Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS)

Why are all these terms important to you and your business? Ivanti UEM gives you the ability to manage or deploy all these items. Ivanti allows you to not only leverage years, actually decades, of experience with our advanced CMT capabilities of Endpoint Manager (EPM) but also the ability to leverage a co-managed environment using modern device management capabilities for the endpoint you are managing. Ivanti’s pillars for UEM success are: Discover, Manage, Secure and Service. Throughout this blog series you will find out more about these key pillars and how they will lead to your success.

Application deployment and lifecycle management is a key capability that Ivanti can help you with. Ivanti can leverage nearly any type of modern or legacy (scripting) deployments. Many of you may be thinking your application deployment capabilities are good enough with your current solution but hear me out as to why Ivanti is truly the solution you need to deploy in your environment. Ivanti leverages many advanced capabilities with the Application Deployment process including bandwidth control and peer-to-peer multicasting which allows for a better experience across WAN environments to your remote offices or even off-network home users. Keep reading the blog series for additional information on these technologies as well as self-service capabilities including custom branding for your own application store.

There is more to applications running on a machine than just installing them. Ivanti Application Control allows granular whitelist/blacklist to all managed systems in your environment. Application Control combines dynamic whitelisting and privilege management to prevent unauthorized code execution without making IT manage extensive lists manually and without constraining users. These features allow you to reduce zero-day exploits as well as protect legacy systems you may still have running.

All these features work for your internal and external users without capability gaps. Ivanti’s Cloud Services Appliance allows users to be remotely working without the need for a VPN connection to function. For the instances that require a remote user to be connected to the corporate network, Ivanti offers VPN capabilities.

What’s in it for your management and leadership team? Ivanti provides deep analytics into all the devices on your network whether they are managed by an Ivanti Agent, or not. With these analytics we have in-depth reports that we can provide IT as well as executive dashboards. These analytics also can provide proactive alerting to your inbox.

There are many more terms listed that I didn’t cover in this blog. Stay tuned for how they fit in with other terms in this blog series.

When considering your UEM solution remember that Ivanti will allow you to achieve your Everywhere Workplace.

ABC’s of UEM – Introduction

Mon, 14 Jun 2021 22:07:39 Z

I’d like to introduce myself before I get into what UEM is and why YOU need to implement Ivanti’s Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) to enable your Everywhere Workplace. My name is Dave Fiske, I’ve been in the EUC (End User Computing) space for more than 20 years as an engineer, architect and most recently as a sales engineer. You can also find me on Twitter (@metafiske) and LinkedIn. Technology is a passion of mine as I have 90 devices discovered on my home network right now (according to Ivanti UEM) and not everything is turned on or in here right now . More to come on how this is possible in this blog series. Outside of technology, I love coaching my kids in their youth sports.

Now back to UEM…as computing evolves, and people and businesses establish the “next normal” I predict that UEM will become even more relevant than analysts predicted prior to the pandemic. If you are new to the UEM term this blog series is for you. If you are a UEM veteran, I will have some good nuggets of information for you to take in and improve your knowledge and skills. This blog series will walk through the “ABC’s” of UEM covering both industry terms as well as Ivanti specific terminology and some info you can use to help your leadership team understand the value of Ivanti and how we are more relevant than ever before.

When you deploy the right Unified Endpoint Management solution, you should expect it to do the following:

Simplify and secure enterprise mobile devices alongside your users’ laptops and desktops
Apply policies, personalization, and actions quickly across all devices that help safeguard both your work and personal data
Provide assets or services to users via self-service or targeted distribution
Provide detailed reporting to IT and company leadership
Leverage the intelligence of the system to determine which users and devices get what deployed or made available to them/it

No one else can do this like Ivanti because others don’t unify the management of all systems users leverage—Windows (physical and virtual), macOS, Linux, ChromeOS, iOS, iPadOS, and Android. We even help you manage IoT edge devices like Apple TV, Raspberry Pi and still more with devices like Halolens2.

You can catch my first blog in this series here. Please come back to my blogs as well as all the other great blogs on Ivanti.com.