Here at Devolutions, we have some special traditions. For example, at the beginning of the year our CEO David shares a Roadmap for the year ahead (and he’ll be publishing the 2020 version in February). Similarly, at the end of the year — which is now! — we take a moment to highlight some of the most notable, interesting and fun things that have occurred over the past 12 months. As usual, it’s been a busy and eventful year!
So please get yourself a nice cup of coffee or hot chocolate, put on your ugliest Christmas sweater, pick your favorite seasonal music as background ambiance, and get ready for a tour down memory lane as we revisit the first six months of 2019 here at Devolutions:
January
In January, we kicked off the year by announcing that we added chat to Devolutions Password Server and Wayk Now.
We also updated our review of some of the most popular password managers, and updated our review of some of the most popular free remote desktop solutions.
To wrap things up, we published one of the most hilarious Sysadminotaur comics of all time, “Slow Start” (hey, maybe we can talk Patrick into animating it!).
February
February brought cold winter weather (at least in our part of the world), Valentine’s Day, and David’s much-anticipated annual Roadmap, which provides a look at our key projects and plans for the year ahead.
On the security front, we announced the integration of Single-Sign On for Devolutions Accounts, highlighted some cybersecurity quick wins, and provided an update on our journey towards achieving SOC 2 certification.
As for fun stuff, we looked at robots everyone wants to work with.
March
March was a very busy month for us! We began by launching RDM Enterprise 2019.1 Beta, and then we announced the integration of Password Vault Manager into Remote Desktop Manager. We also launched RDM Free 2019.1.
Since security is always a top priority, we looked at the benefits of passphrases vs. passwords and highlighted that NIST now recommends against regularly changing passwords.
We were also thrilled to be recognized as a Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Privileged Access Management.
April
In April, we unveiled our new cloud-based password management solution for teams, Devolutions Password Hub, and we invited our community to give it a try.
We also highlighted how to use caching in Remote Desktop Manager and focused quite a bit on cybersecurity — for example, we looked at the history of computer viruses, revealed the scary list of worst passwords, and explored how to avoid 7 notorious online scams.
We also had some laughs thanks to Sysadminotaur #82: “Vulnerabilities”.
May
In honor of May the Fourth (a sacred date on the Star Wars calendar for the non-geeks out there), we kicked off the month with our challenging Star Wars quiz.
Then we shifted things into hyperdrive and launched a flurry of updates, including Remote Desktop Manager Free 2019.1, Remote Desktop Enterprise 2019.1, and Wayk Now 3.2.
We also shared our Trade Show Calendar in the hopes that you could meet us on our travels, and we wrapped things up by highlighting that strong passwords are not enough anymore to thwart hackers, which led to our sharing some best practices for preventing data breaches.
Of course, we had some geeky fun in May as well, including our quiz to test your level of geekiness, and our May poll question that asked about the definition of a true geek.
June
Who doesn’t love June? Kids are off from school, the sun is shining, and you can hang out with friends on the patio. In between games of volleyball, we were busy releasing Devolutions Password Server 2019.1.
Also in June, our Business Architect Maurice wrote an important article pointing out that companies cannot rely on encryption performed by a locally installed application, because cracking that encryption is simply a matter of time. That’s the bad news. The good news is that solutions such as Devolutions Password Server, CyberArk and BeyondTrust protect data at rest and in transit, while also ensuring that sensitive operations are carried out on a service tier that prevents users from interfering.
We’ve Only Just Begun…
If you think all of this is a lot of stuff, keep in mind that we’ve only covered the first six months of 2019. We’ll be looking back at July-December in the next installment of Devolutions’ Year in Review. Stay tuned!