IT professionals who are busily planning to enable migration of their users to a “BYOD” endpoint computing environment will be most encouraged by the latest Dell acquisition.

Credant Technologies, founded in 2001, has had a long-standing joint development partnership and OEM agreement with Dell, which uses their technology in the Dell Data Protection|Encryption solution. On Dec. 20, 2012, Dell announced the completion of its acquisition of Credant Technologies, stating that the “addition of Credant strengthens Dell’s comprehensive security solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to protect their IT assets, comply with regulations and reduce security costs.”

According to an earlier Dell press release “Credant secures more than 2 million endpoints with customers in a variety of industries including, Aerospace and Defense, Energy, Financial Services, Universities, Public Sector, Drugs and Healthcare, Retail and Consumer, Telecommunications, IT and Media.”

The primary challenge and concern facing any company that is planning to allow its users to choose their own client access device is the assurance that data and applications, as well as the corporate network, remain thoroughly protected against theft or corruption of high-value data assets. 

The acquisition is the latest of many significant steps Dell has taken over the past three years to expand its security portfolio to offer customers a complete range of world-class security solutions. Today, Dell delivers comprehensive solutions to help customers identify the appropriate technologies and services to manage risk, regardless of the resources available to manage security. Dell’s security services and solutions enable organizations of all sizes to protect their IT assets, comply with regulations and reduce security costs.

The Credant acquisition adds several key functionalities, including:

&\#149; Simplified Security Management. Single console for full end user ecosystem PC, tablets, external media, mobile devices and public clouds.

&\#149; Lower cost of PC lifecycle maintenance for encrypted machines. Works seamlessly with existing IT tools and processes. Data-centric approach to encryption doesn’t interfere with existing IT maintenance tools like patch management, application updating or password recovery.

&\#149; Flexible data protection. Protects wherever data goes from smart phone to the cloud including core PC device data, largest variety of removable media, self-encrypting drives, MS BitLocker clients, mobile devices and end user data in the cloud.

&\#149; Ease in deployment and provisioning. Provision users up to 5.5x faster than competitive solutions – saving more than three hours per PC. Remotely manage end point encryption and authentication policies from single console.

&\#149; High levels of security and protection. The Dell Hardware Encryption Accelerator solution equips end-user systems with military-grade protection. It also reaches the highest level of U.S. Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) certification for endpoint disk encryption commercially available, 140-2 Level 3.

“In today’s work environment data is always in-flight – from work being done on a local PC, being sent via email, stored on a USB drive and saved in the cloud. Each one of those experiences represents a potential security risk. As a result, businesses need a data protection strategy that is comprehensive, flexible and easy to deploy,” said Jeff Clarke, president, End User Computing Solutions at Dell. “The Credant assets will complement and extend current Dell device security features to make Dell Latitude, OptiPlex and Precision PCs some of the world’s most secure. And when combined with the change in compute behaviors and data in-flight, Dell can now offer a differentiated security proposition based on its own Intellectual Property.”