The last year was one of transformation for professionals everywhere, as many organizations adopted new work models due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At Citrix, our vision remains the same: We empower customers to move to a hybrid work model by providing a complete digital workspace platform that delivers secure access to everything people need, wherever work gets done.

Through our customer and market research, we’ve found that the primary investment priorities for IT and business decision makers are around accelerating IT modernization to move more efficiently to the cloud; adopting remote and hybrid models to enable secure, distributed work; and boosting worker productivity to enhance employee engagement. With this in mind, we continue to innovate with Citrix Workspace to optimize and streamline the needs of consumers across these various markets.

Let’s look at what’s new with Citrix Workspace, along with some key achievements from last year.

Get Up to Speed with Citrix Content Collaboration

At Citrix, we take content security seriously and have taken important steps to quickly identify and check the spread of malware. We have rolled out stricter security controls for Citrix ShareFile and Citrix Content Collaboration. Any content identified as malicious is quarantined, and certain user actions get disabled to contain the spread of malware. Read on for an overview of the updates or check out our documentation.

Faster Scan Response Time

Customers can upload and collaborate on any file type and size without worrying about the danger of malicious content. Any file that gets uploaded to Citrix ShareFile or Citrix Content Collaboration is scanned for malicious content at industry benchmark speeds.

Reduce Risk and Control the Spread of Malware

Citrix reduces risk and protects users from the further spread of malicious content by quarantining the file. Certain actions are disabled for the file like download and share. The image below shows how actions are disabled for the end-user.

2021 in Review: Citrix Content Collaboration

Citrix was named a Major Player in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide eSignature Software 2021 Vendor Assessment, September 2021, (Doc # US46742320). The report evaluated major esignature software providers for their role in improving content-centric workflows and how they can be leveraged for efficiency, productivity, and security gains.

The IDC MarketScape notes that companies should consider Citrix “if you are an existing Citrix Workspace or Citrix ShareFile customer or if your organization is looking for a robust intelligent digital workspace solution with integrated esignature.”

Citrix Workspace provides seamless access so you can initiate signature requests directly from the document. You can even customize the Citrix Workspace experience to add shortcuts to Citrix RightSignature. Delivered as part of Citrix Workspace, Citrix RightSignature simplifies workflows for employees and management for IT. Teams can quickly generate, share and archive documents in a single location.

Thinking beyond a simple electronic signature, recurring workflows can be automated by integrating internal systems via Citrix Workspace microapps or by using Citrix RightSignature’s rich public API. The enables employees to share documents for approvals or legal signature without leaving the business application.

Citrix ShareFile with Security

For small and mid-size businesses, determining the right balance of data security can be overwhelming. The good news is you can address these challenges by assessing your risk so you can avoid common vulnerabilities. Citrix ShareFile helps you to address the most common risks. Learn about four ways Citrix ShareFile can help you break bad security habits.

Citrix Enterprise Browser

The Citrix Enterprise Browser is the first of its kind, focusing on security as a transparent layer on top of an enhanced user experience. It is a Chromium-based browser that has been customized to the Citrix experience, is integrated with the Citrix Workspace app, and provides all the functionality of a native browsing solution to the end user’s work environment.

In addition, the browser also leverages the powerful capabilities of Citrix Secure Access, our cloud-delivered zero trust solution. Launching any internally hosted web application or a SaaS app with security policies from within Citrix Workspace will trigger the Citrix Enterprise Browser.

Let’s take a closer look at the two main pillars of this solution — Experience and Security.

Experience

Citrix Enterprise Browser combines the native capabilities of a Chromium-based browser with Citrix Cloud services, providing a state-of-the-art user experience for all enterprise use cases. From an experience perspective, Citrix Enterprise Browser helps enforce security policies and enables a seamless user experience.

Security

Securing the attack surface is paramount, and Citrix Enterprise Browser integrates with Citrix Secure Private Access and is fully validated for Citrix Secure Internet Access. This combination enables zero trust network access (ZTNA) and protects users against threats — with the simplicity and scale of a single solution and provides a seamless and secure browsing experience for end users.

Learn more about the Citrix Enterprise Browser. As Citrix Workspace continues to elevate and enhance the employee experience, we are excited for what’s to come in the first quarter of 2022.

Secure Distributed Workforces

With the growth in distributed workforces, threats have expanded with more complex attacks. That’s why a zero trust approach that is adaptive is so important. Not only does it help you to strengthen your security posture, you can also mitigate network and access challenges that can result in a poor user experience for workers and affect productivity.

Earlier this year, during the Citrix Launchpad: Security event, where we announced innovations and enhancements that will help you to protect your distributed workforce with groundbreaking advancements in intelligent and adaptive security. Let’s tale a look at a few highlights from the event and what’s ahead.

Citrix Secure Private Access for Zero Trust Security

Citrix Secure Private Access is our new cloud-delivered service that provides zero trust-based adaptive security for all access types and work scenarios. With Citrix Secure Private Access, IT gets adaptive access and authentication policies for all applications that help organizations unify VPN, VPN-less, single sign-on, and other access solutions based on what they have deployed in their datacenters.

With adaptive authentication and adaptive access policies, IT admins can define authentication and access policies based on users’ location, posture of the end-user device, and risk score of the user. If the system detects any changes before or during the user session, security controls like watermarking, session recording, and logging off the user are automatically triggered and enforced, always protecting access.

As a cloud-based solution, Secure Private Access is easy to deploy and manage, is scalable on demand, and is always updated with the latest protections, with security controls enforced in real time, at the edge. And as a contextual solution, it gives users access only to the resources they need.

Google Chromebook, Citrix Workspace, and Citrix Secure Internet Access

We also introduced a new joint initiative with Google that enables a zero-trust environment to help you reduce cyber threats and minimize your organization’s attack surface. By bringing together Citrix solutions — Citrix Workspace app and Citrix Secure Internet Access — with Chrome OS, we’re delivering for organizations a simple but powerful way to enable secure, productive work.

Citrix Web App and API Protection with Bot Management

We’ve added bot management to Citrix Web App and API Protection, our cloud-delivered security solution that provides comprehensive, up-to-date security for all your apps, no matter their architecture or where they’re deployed. With our new bot management capabilities, IT can filter bad bot traffic and reduce the strain on your infrastructure. Customers can protect apps from account takeovers, prevent content from being scraped, and more. Watch the announcement below.

Learn more about the newest security features Citrix has to offer in our blog post and be on the lookout for more announcements.

What’s Next with Citrix Analytics

It was quite a year for Citrix Analytics for Security. We released several new capabilities to support our Citrix DaaS, VDI, and Workspace customers. Let’s dive into a few of the newest features and look at what’s to come.

Generic SIEM Integration — This allows security data to flow seamlessly to popular SIEM platforms such as Microsoft Azure Sentinel, Elastic Search, and others. The integration enables security admins to export Citrix Analytics for Security risk insights and user profiles summary and correlate this information with non-Citrix IT data for deeper threat hunting.

Azure Sentinel Workbook — Citrix Analytics for Security dashboards for Sentinel enable you to review customer risk insights and user profile data, create new custom views, and correlate with logs and event data flowing from other IT products.

Malware Detection for Files — Alerts and actions are available for users who upload infected files within Citrix Content Collaboration. Details such as malware name and exact file location are also included. New actions are also provided, which include the ability to “disable a client user” and “remove access to a shared folder.”

New Templates for Risk Detection — This helps admins getting started with Citrix Analytics by providing a great foundation for common use cases like defining risk indicators for conditions such as unauthorized virtual apps, an unsupported Citrix Workspace app version, or unauthorized operating systems.

Citrix Analytics for Performance

Session Timeline View — This provides granular visibility into session experience and the factors that affect it. It allows admins to see which part of a user’s session was subpar, what that trend looked like, and the specific factors that influenced it. These are very helpful data, provided in an easy-to-consume format!

Service Continuity Visibility — Service continuity is a resilience feature that allows users to connect to apps and desktops during Citrix Workspace and/or Cloud Delivery Controller outages. Citrix Analytics now shows how many sessions were launched in outage mode so admins can ensure the feature is working as expected and can keep users productive.

Citrix Analytics is expanding rapidly. The features we’ve covered are only just a few from the portfolio we continue to build-on. To learn more about these incredible solutions, check out our What’s new with Citrix Analytics — Q4 2021 blog post.

Support Your Digital Transformation with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Service

The Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 2112 Current Release (CR) is now available, alongside updates to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service. Whether you’re leveraging the on-premises release or our Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service cloud offering, we have introduced new capabilities and features that will bring greater value to your business and support your digital transformation.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the highlights:

  • Service Continuity: Earlier this year, we debuted service continuity, which offers industry-leading cloud resiliency for our customers. Service continuity is now available on Chrome and Edge browsers using a browser extension for both the Citrix Workspace app for Mac and for Linux. It is also in preview for CSP multi-tenant and Citrix Workspace app for Android and iOS.
  • VDA Upgrade Service (Preview): This cloud-based service is designed to simplify the VDA upgrade process for admins, who can leverage it to update their existing base images easily without the need to perform a manual upgrade or reinstall the VDA.
  • Image Portability Service (Preview): Leverage the Image Portability Service to streamline how you create, update, and manage images across complex hybrid and multi-cloud deployments. After creating a one-time, single base image, this service automatically deconstructs and reconstructs the image in the locations to which you want to deploy it.
  • Web Studio Cloud Health Check Integration: With a new unified interface that integrates Cloud Health Check with Web Studio, you can automate or proactively run health checks for your VDAs, StoreFront servers, and Profile Management and troubleshoot issues quicker within your cloud deployment.
  • App Protection: Our App Protection solution is now available for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service with Workspace. This ensures that your virtual resources in the cloud have the same level of protection as on-prem resources against keyloggers and screen scraping.

New Citrix Capabilities on Azure

We’ve released several new features and capabilities that show how Citrix and Microsoft solutions continue to be “better together.”

We are bringing our flagship provisioning technology, Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS), to Azure. Leveraging our PVS provision-on-demand technology, you can rapidly provision and stream Azure-hosted VMs in a matter of minutes. This long-awaited offering enables you to accelerate your time-to-value without sacrificing scalability and performance. We’ve also made the following enhancements for Citrix on Azure:

  • Azure AD Group Based Administration: This feature enables you to assign and manage administrative access to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service based on Azure AD group membership, without the need for separate management in Citrix Cloud.
  • Scale up to 5,000 VMs in two regions under a single subscription: Our recent update allows you to now deploy 2,500 persistent and non-persistent machines to two different regions within a single Azure subscription.
  • Support for Azure Stack HCI: Azure Stack hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) 20H2 is now a Citrix Ready validated solution on Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service that delivers an enterprise-scale, affordable hybrid HCI solution.
  • MCS Azure Support for Machine Profile: As an admin, you can now capture machine profiles from Azure VMs and copy the machine properties to new VMs in a machine catalog through Citrix Studio.

Be on the lookout for the next Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Long Term Service Release (LTSR), which will bring together more than two years of feature innovations, fixes, and performance enhancements since the 1912 LTSR. In the meantime, whether you’re looking to upgrade or build a new site, we encourage you to test the 2112 CR in your pre-production environments to prepare for the upcoming LTSR.

Accelerate IT Modernization, Boost Productivity, Secure Your Workforce

At Citrix, we continue to modernize workflows in our portfolio of product solutions to ensure customers receive a great digital experience regardless of device, location, time, or network. We’ve facilitated the shift to a hybrid work model for organizations across all industries by providing the most complete workspace. Learn more about how Citrix Workspace accelerates IT modernization, enables secure distributed work, and boosts worker productivity.