On 24 August 2016, Browsium hosted a webinar: Why today’s IT operations management tools are insufficient for the modern end user workspace … and what you can do about it. The webinar was a huge success for the live audience and generated a number of great questions from the audience. We have compiled the complete set with answers to share with all attendees, and anyone else who is interested in learning how you can take command of the browsers within your enterprise. If you missed the live event, you can watch the video archive on YouTube today (or use the embedded video player above).
Read on to see the questions (and our responses) from the webinar.
You keep saying existing tools like SCCM or Alteris don’t work for managing add-ons or Java, but we use it to package, deploy and inventory already…what do you mean?
Existing end user management tools were designed a long time ago around a binary (exe/dll) model where applications were installed and run locally. That design is focused around Windows system file structures and information is read/stored in the registry. Web applications aren’t installed, they are a collection of data (text, script and images) delivered by a web server that get compiled by the browser. In a way, web based apps don’t ‘exist’ such that tools like SCCM or Alteris could see them. They can certainly see the add-ons or Java installations, but with no correlation to browser usage of those components, you’re left with a list of things and no idea who needs them, where they are needed or what applications require them.
How does the Browsium Ion eval kit work?
All modules in the Browsium browser management suite are available for free evaluation from our website. Ion and Catalyst evaluation kits provide the full functionality of those modules for 30 days. The Proton evaluation kit has a 50 client limit in addition to the 30 day limit.
What browsers are supported by Browsium’s products
Browsium Proton and Catalyst support Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox on Windows. Ion supports Internet Explorer only as it takes advantage of management APIs in Internet Explorer that are not available in the other browsers.
What about Microsoft Edge in Windows 10
Today, Edge has limited support for extensions and it’s not capable of enabling the advanced functionality provided by Browsium’s products. When Microsoft enhances Edge to provide parity with Chrome and Firefox extensions, we plan to add support for Edge in our products.
We have proxies and server logs for inventorying web applications and usage, what is this giving us?
There are a few major issues with relying on logs, first of which is you need to know where to look. Second, most companies only use proxies for external access so that doesn’t help find the systems you don’t know about. Even If the system is under IT control, you should be able to get access logs but they just report on client access so you know who accessed a system you know about. You haven’t really learned anything, and certainly don’t know anything about dependencies. Beyond that, you remain ‘blind’ to the systems you don’t know about by using the server and proxy log approach. Let alone having to build a reporting solution for all those log files.
You talked about the company saving money by avoiding the patch, test and bug fixing cycle. Our security team has said we need to keep updated at the latest version for Java, so how does that company remain secure running old software?
Our goal is to deliver a balance to the long standing security vs. compatibility compromise. The premise has always been you can have one or the other – keep it working and be exposed, or lock it down and break it. We believe you can have both and through the Browsium suite we’ve delivered that ability. This customer can keep current with the latest patches so they remain secure, but for web applications that need legacy controls or other insecure settings, our Ion feature set provides a process isolated approach to enable the legacy and current to exist side by side while preventing unauthorized access to the potentially vulnerable software.
