What Desktop as a Service and WorkSpaces Means for the Remote Workforce
Desktop as a Services (DaaS) platforms have quickly become important technology with most employees shifting to work from home. Ascend Technologies works with a number of different DaaS platforms. Internally, we’re leveraging Amazon WorkSpaces to enable our partners to work seamlessly with our team.
Creating Partnership Success
Obviously, when working with partners to deliver services, security is a primary concern. For our setup, we utilize CloudTrail logging to capture and audit user activity, while also setting up network flow logs to monitor all network traffic. We enforced access to the platform from only the AWS WorkSpaces Zero Client, to ensure everyone accessed the image using our agreed upon methods.
We also set up NAT gateways to ensure all internet access via WorkSpaces is protected and sourcing from consistent external IP addresses. This enabled us to whitelist SaaS tools, allowing WorkSpaces users to securely perform their work functions.
Additionally, because we have multiple teams working on different projects, we created custom WorkSpaces images and bundles for each team. This allowed for different applications based on use case, allowing us to meet user performance requirements while effectively managing costs.
WorkSpaces Configuration
Our experience configuring and implementing WorkSpaces was straight forward, and we can quickly respond to new requests, image updates, etc.
As we continue to expand our use of the platform, we plan to use application assignments via Workspaces Application Manager. This will ensure that there are no custom software installations baked into the images. Additionally, we’ll also expand our deployments beyond our existing availability zones and employ virtual private cloud (VPC) peering and Transit Gateways to ensure all the security measures mentioned above are maintained, while moving the deployment closer to our users.
Engaging, Responding, Supporting and Partnering
The flexibility of AWS WorkSpaces, and really of many of the services that AWS offers, enable us to respond quickly to changing business landscapes and create secure and effective solutions in a cost-effective manner. If you’d like to learn more about how your organization can use cloud solutions to address evolving business challenges, please reach out.