We trust that you all have had a great time. In addition to getting fresh insights from industry experts, users were treated to some of the cool features that the Hexnode team are planning to release pretty soon. They even got to become Hexnode experts along the way by taking part in multiple certification workshops. These past 2 days were pretty awesome, but sadly all good things must come to an end. Now, without much further ado, let’s have a recap on what was discussed on HexCon20’s closing keynote address.
Working on the revamp of Hexnode MDM, conceptualizing Hexnode Do and implementing Hexnode Academy and Hexnode Connect right in the midst of the pandemic has not been easy. But all these hard wrought efforts were paid off by being able to share it with the users notes Apu. He then congratulated everyone who passed the certification. You’ll be delighted to note that everyone who passed the certification program today became the very first batch of Hexnode professionals and experts! Apu then moved on to give a brief summary of the all new Hexnode MDM.
“The goal is to completely change the way you manage your devices by making it easier, more efficient and interoperable” said Apu.
The aim of the first phase of the revamp was to simplify the console and add in some necessary enhancements. This will include changes in the policy configuration flow, app management and role-based access. Talking about Hexnode MDM and Hexnode Do, a common account will be provided in which users can access both Hexnode MDM and Hexnode Do, if they have active subscriptions for both. Hexnode Do will initially be available as an add on service to your Hexnode MDM subscription, by connecting Do with Hexnode MDM, users will be able to have complete end to end security.
The all new Hexnode MDM
Next, we got to hear some of the exciting updates to Hexnode MDM, which offered users more options to customize the portal in a way that gives them more freedom to ensure a smooth workflow. Here’s what we know:
Dashboard
- Starting with the dashboard, the activity feed has been enhanced and new widgets have been added to provide more insights to the users of the portal.
- The enhanced activity feed not just lets you know the name of the technician who performed the action but it also comes in with some handy advanced filters for a better view.
- With the help of new widgets like system statistics, battery, storage and RAM usage, admins can now have a better control over the endpoints. One of the great things about this feature is that it’s customizable, so you can have the choice to customize the panels and the widgets in any way you like. Each technician can have their own dashboard that displays all the widgets that they need.
Custom alerts
- With the custom alters widgets, you can easily set up rules for sending alerts for critical actions such as a device disenrollment or user deletion. There are three parts in sending alerts, these include the alert type, priority and template. The alert type describes who you want to send the alert to if an event occurs, this could be the admin or the user. You can also choose to send a push notification to the device.
- Depending on the alert type that you’ve selected, you can choose the recipient. In priority, you can prioritize the alerts as critical, high, medium and low. The third part, which is the template provides you the message which you want to convey.
Brand customization
The brand customization options will now be extended to the Hexnode agent app on the user end devices and also on the enrollment page. Dark mode will be added in too.
Automation
- By using the automation tab, you can now configure predefined actions to trigger events.
- You can use these conditional statements to configure the remediation steps you need to take in the event of any security breach.
- In addition to this, users can make use of the logical AND and OR commands to combine the trigger events and action.
- The scheduling option takes off an enormous amount of workload off the admins back as it provides them with flexibility to easily schedule policies, actions and app deployments.
Protection workflows
- Automation can make your tasks easier, but what if it comes at a price where a single mistake would lead to the compromise of the security of your corporate devices and other critical information. In order to highlight the importance of this feature, Apu gave us an example of a bulk disenrollment gone wrong, where a technician configures an automation rule to disenroll devices that move out of the geofence. What if he gets distracted and chooses the wrong geofence? This automation rule that was set to work on disenrolling thousands of devices, will now disenroll the devices while moving out of the wrong geofence. What a nightmarish situation would it be to rectify that error!
- This is where protection workflows comes in, the protection workflows will interrupt bulk actions and send an alert to the Admin. The Admin can get to choose whether to resume or dismiss that action after proper verification.
Desktop management capabilities
It was revealed that the Hexnode team were planning on focusing more on bringing in new desktop management capabilities. Some of the essential features that they have already started working on includes:
- Live Terminal, Scripting and Patch Management in Windows.
- Advanced local user management, Remote management and OS updates using scripts in Mac.
The team will incorporate some exciting features to the mobileOSs as well as soon as they are out.
Additionally, Hexnode customers will enjoy leveraging everything Apple School Manager offer to manage devices, people, and content, all from one place that matter most to education.
Few of these updates might not be available on the first release of the revamp. Don’t be disheartened though, you can get to see them in the forthcoming releases.
Addressing the big shift to cloud adoption
The global pandemic has completely changed where, what and how we work and has accelerated the shift towards cloud-based infrastructure and software-as-a-service to safeguard IT resilience. But this sudden onset has increased safety and reliability concerns where legacy security practices fall short. So, in order to ensure intrinsic security, the team is coming with Personal Information Managers (PIM) and planning to launch secure applications with which the users can safely access their confidential data and defend against the lateral threats across cloud environments.
Apu concluded by thanking all the speakers and attendees who spared their valuable time to share their insights and made the event a success!
It’s a credit to the Hexnode team for getting this event working online when many other events have been postponed or cancelled. We have a great blog coming out later that describes how our team made this happen.
We’ll also keep blogging many of the HexCon20 sessions so that you can get a recap of anything you’ve missed. Stay tuned!
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