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AWS Boosts Amazon WorkSpaces Security
Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) has enhanced the security of its Amazon WorkSpaces Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) solution with new client device screening capabilities.
Amazon WorkSpaces lets organizations provision virtualized Microsoft Windows desktops to users, who can access documents, applications and other resources from anywhere, at any time, with any supported device. It competes with Google's G Suite and many other DaaS offerings from virtualization specialists.
Now, AWS is providing more control over those supported devices used to access the service.
"Amazon WorkSpaces now provides you additional options to manage which client devices can access your WorkSpaces," the company said in a blog post this week. "This new feature allows you to limit WorkSpaces access to trusted devices only. You can manage access to your WorkSpaces from macOS and Microsoft Windows PCs using your digital certificates. You can also allow or block access for iOS, Android, Chrome OS, and zero clients, as well as the WorkSpaces Web Access client. With these new capabilities, you can further improve your security posture."
Using the WorkSpaces management console, users can now set up access control policies based on the type of OS being used, version of the OS and patch levels -- or the devices can be screened by device type, so iOS, Android and other platforms can be granted or denied access privileges, for example.
The technical details for doing so are included in the "Restrict WorkSpaces Access to Trusted Devices" documentation.
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.