Video: 10 Minute IT Jams - An update from Absolute Software

Cybersecurity threats are on the rise. As businesses grapple with frequent and sophisticated attacks, the need for robust defence and resilient systems has never been greater. This is the landscape in which Absolute Software aims to make its mark, delivering innovative security solutions designed for today's world of remote and hybrid working.

Speaking with Tolston George, cybersecurity evangelist at Absolute Software, it is clear that the company's focus is on making sure organisations remain secure and productive, no matter where their employees are. "Absolute Software is the only provider of self-healing intelligence security solutions," he said. These, he explained, help customers "reduce complexities that are causing inefficiencies across their business and creating unnecessary risk exposure."

Absolute Software's mission is straightforward. "Our mission is really to enable a reliable, resilient work-from-anywhere experience by ensuring maximum security and uncompromised productivity," George explained.

The company delivers on this mission through two main product lines: Secure Endpoint and Secure Access. Secure Endpoint, George said, "enables IT and security personnel to monitor and address laptop computers' problems from both an IT as well as a security perspective." Notably, it empowers devices and their critical applications with self-healing capabilities. "When you think about it, this really helps with device lifecycle management, strengthening a company's security posture, and maintaining compliance," he said.

The company expanded its reach further after acquiring NetMotion, a move that added the Secure Access line. Secure Access "provides reliable network connectivity for users to securely access resources, whether in the public cloud, private data centres, or on premises." George was keen to emphasise that their approach "allows users to transition from traditional secure remote access technologies like an enterprise VPN to more modern approaches, such as zero trust network access, and we do this without really affecting productivity or admin controls."

Innovation, it seems, is a constant at Absolute Software. "We have quarterly releases, so I would say we innovate quite often," George said. As an example, he pointed to the recent launch of a ransomware response offering. This solution, part of the Secure Endpoint portfolio, "provides capabilities and services to assess an organisation's ransomware preparedness and allows them to establish cyber hygiene and monitor cyber hygiene across their endpoints." It also ensures that mission critical applications such as antivirus and device management tools "remain healthy and capable of self-healing," George added, and that it "expedites the quarantine and recovery of endpoints if a ransomware attack would occur."

Asked about the company's approach to the Asia-Pacific market, George described a global yet partner-driven strategy. "Our technology is already embedded in over 600 million devices as a result of our partnerships with close to 30 system manufacturers from around the world," he said, citing global names among the largest laptop makers. Beyond these industry giants, Absolute Software works closely with carriers and managed service providers, strengthening its market reach. "We are augmenting those partnerships with our own experts within the regions," George said, allowing for "multiple routes to growth."

A key strand of Absolute Software's proposition is its "self-healing" technology. When asked to explain what that means in practice, George said, "All our product lines and individual product offerings are powered by the Absolute Platform. One of the central platform components is our patented persistence technology, which is embedded in the firmware of more than 600 million devices." This technology "provides a secure, unbreakable, and always-on connection between the platform and the endpoint," he said. What sets it apart is its resilience: "Once activated, this technology is fiercely resilient - it's really the only solution to survive attempts to disable it, even if the device would be re-imaged. You can even rip out the hard drive, put a new hard drive in, or if the firmware is flashed, it doesn't matter. No other technology can do this."

Self-healing does not just mean protecting the core system, but extending this resilience to key applications. "We're able to extend these self-healing capabilities to mission critical applications that are covered in our application resilience catalogue," George said. Customers can monitor the health of these applications and, if necessary, "automatically repair and or reinstall the application if its integrity is deemed impeded." He concluded, "No matter what - software decay, collision, unintentional deletion or malicious actions - the application will always function as intended, and that's a very powerful value proposition."

With ransomware attacks increasing around the globe, many large enterprises have sophisticated security in place. But George warned, "We need to be a little bit more realistic - most businesses really lack what matters for a complete ransomware recovery approach, and that's proactive resilience or the ability to bounce back up when you're struck down." He stressed that, like those living in earthquake or flood zones, businesses need to be ready to recover rapidly from cyber disasters. "Businesses need to have a cybersecurity go-bag that they can just grab as soon as disaster strikes," he said.

Often, the greatest challenge is not just in prevention, but recovery - especially for endpoints, which are the backbone of remote working. "Endpoints really represent an essential tool for remote workers to conduct their assigned business tasks. I couldn't talk with you right now without it, and so it really has a big impact on today's work-from-anywhere environment," he explained.

Given the shift to remote work, zero trust has become "mission critical." George argued that the classic "trust but verify" model, which assumed those inside the organisational perimeter could be trusted, is no longer relevant. "In reality, the perimeter no longer exists, and nowadays you always need to assume that the threat actor is already in your environment," he said. In such a situation, "organisations really need to assure that they're constantly verifying all access requests to connect to the organisation's system before granting access - and that's what zero trust is all about."

He added, "Zero trust is a mindset, it's a framework where not everything by default is granted access, but you basically have to re-establish a trust relationship - you have to verify that the right person is trying to access the right content at the right time."

Asked for a final thought on how organisations should approach the evolving threat landscape, George reiterated the importance of resilience. "Zero trust is definitely one of the components that are required in this new work-from-anywhere environment," he said.