Although you may have stringent security at your corporate
network border, your network is really only as secure as the end
devices that are accessing it. With today’s workforce becoming more
and more mobile, often requiring access to corporate resources from
a variety of locations—airports, coffee shops, hotels—and from a variety
of devices—both company-provisioned and personal—you must logically extend
your network’s security out to your endpoints to ensure comprehensive
and consistent security enforcement. The GlobalProtect™ Host Information
Profile (HIP) feature enables you to collect information about the
security status of your end hosts—such as whether they have the
latest security patches and antivirus definitions installed, whether
they have disk encryption enabled, whether the device is jailbroken
or rooted (mobile devices only), or whether it is running specific
software you require within your organization, including custom
applications—and base the decision as to whether to allow or deny
access to a specific host based on adherence to the host policies
you define.
