Context: Read through this brief about hiring third-party contractors from Dizzion, a desktop as a service provider, before proceeding to Project Submission Steps: Third-party contractors are a vital component of today's business environment. They allow organizations to scale as needed and quickly bring on expertise without adding a full time headcount. More than 80% of organizations have increased the number of third-party contractors they work within the past year, with an average of over 180 vendors now accessing corporate networks every week. Third-party contractors, however, can present a significant security risk if not managed correctly. A leading report found that only 37% of companies are confident in their ability to track the number of vendors accessing business systems, and only 66% of businesses tailor vendor access to specific procedures and applications. With so little insight, oversight, and control, it's unsurprising that 67% of organizations also report that they have experienced a data breach that can be traced to vendor access.

The ability to easily limit the data, systems, and applications third party contractors can access is crucial to data security and protecting corporate IP. Virtual desktop golden images make handling these situations easy. Create a golden image based on each vendor's use case, and those controls are applied to anyone using a secure desktop provisioned off that image. With the right controls in place, no data can be saved to the local environment or an external drive, meaning once you revoke access to a virtual desktop the contractor no longer has any access to your information.

Project Submission Steps Read the scenario below and perform the required task. Scenario You are the Cybersecurity analyst for a midsize software company (around 800 employees) called Exodus Development, that not only develops applications but also provides phone and Internet support. The company is based in the U.S. and has a primary HQ location and a few satellite offices. The network uses Microsoft Active Directory for authentication. There is an Azure tenant, but the on-premise network has not yet been extended to it. No official reason has been given for this, but rumor has it that it's on hold simply because other tasks keep being prioritized over it. Management has been noticing that customers seem to be leaving Exodus, and a partial cause is issues within the Customer Service department. Specifically, agents experience downtime due to network issues, login problems, time spent applying system updates, and travel time. The Customer Service manager is also having difficulty measuring productivity, and senior management has concerns around security and regulatory compliance. There are other groups such as Marketing, Graphic Design, and Software Engineering who are considered "power users." Marketing and Graphic design all have laptops, and they are mostly used for graphics and video-editing software, plus specialized I/O devices. The software engineers used high-end desktops with specialized hardware and software.

Senior management's main concern is the bottom line: solve the problems within the Customer Service department so they can retain customers (and the precious revenue they bring in) and hopefully lower costs at the same time. The CISO is concerned about outsourced staff that must come into the network to provide software development support. The Software Engineering manager has long been worried about the excessive resources being expended on development and test environments. Right now they must provide multiple PCs to employees to accomplish this, which is both expensive and time consuming, so he would be grateful for any ideas that could address that situation. Assignment Your boss has been tasked with determining whether desktop virtualization makes sense given these requirements, and in typical boss fashion he has delegated this task to you. The good news is that he simply wants a brief overview that answers the following questions. Assuming the company will continue to grow at a healthy rate, answer each question as completely as you can: 1. Which groups or departments should be virtualized, and why? 2. Your boss has asked you to focus on Hyper-V and VMware, so between those two which virtualization product would be the best fit? 3. What primary benefits would the company realize for the following? a. Productivity and Availability b. Endpoint Management c. Security d. Software Development e. Future growth