Global Survey Shows Growing Demand for Virtualized Desktop Environments

LEXINGTON, MA--(Marketwire - August 18, 2009) - Imprivata®, Inc., the employee
access management company, today announced the results of its "2009 Desktop
Virtualization Survey." The survey targeted executives across a wide array
of industries, including healthcare, financial services, state and local
government agencies, and others to better understand the rate of adoption
of desktop virtualization (VDI) and how organizations plan on securing
these new environments. The 132 survey respondents make up the trends
below.

Survey Findings

Desktop Virtualization Adoption Rate Grows; Driven by Economic and Desktop
Management Benefits

The survey results demonstrate that organizations are increasingly aware of
the productivity and economic benefits of implementing desktop
virtualization. In fact, nearly 73 percent of respondents indicated that
they are investigating or have plans to implement VDI solutions in 2009.

The survey further asked the companies that have implemented or are
investigating the use of VDI solutions in their organization to select all
relevant reasons for their implementation. Using VDI to simplify the
management of desktops scored the highest at 78 percent, while the
infrastructure cost savings in equipment, electricity and maintenance was
cited 72 percent of the time. The benefits of virtualization are well
known, but also lead to new security risks and
challenges, especially around managing user identities and the enforcement
of access policies.

Security Likely an Issue to Deploying VDI Environments

As companies continue to test VDI solutions for their organizations,
responding to the security risks raised by the new environment will be a
critical barrier to overcome for implementation. While 70 percent of
respondents indicated that they will be required to track and report user
access events in their VDI environment, nearly 73 percent indicated they
are still looking for security solutions that will help them meet these
requirements.

With user identities being relevant in multiple points within the virtual
desktop, coordinating and enforcing access policies becomes far more
difficult and error prone as all the systems have to be in-sync. Since one
of the advantages of having VDI is the ability to dynamically create
desktops specific to the user's role within the organization, having a
centralized way to manage user identities, roles and access policies is
critical. To address these security concerns, more than 36 percent of
respondents indicated that they are looking for ways to provide additional
strong
authentication to their VDI environment.

For Companies Looking for Strong Authentication, Preferences Vary Among
Several Options

Strong authentication will play an important role in making it easier to
set and enforce authentication and policy in these new virtualized
environments. Of the companies considering strong authentication devices
to secure their virtualized environments, recipients were asked to select
all applicable strong authentication technologies they were considering:

-- 37 percent indicated they are considering
fingerprint biometrics;

-- 28 percent indicated they are considering proximity or building access
cards;

-- 22 percent indicated they are considering One-Time Password tokens;

-- 16 percent indicated they are considering smartcards with digital
certificates.

Additional Content

-- Full results of the "2009 Desktop Virtualization survey" can be found
here: http://www.imprivata.com/employee_access_management_survey_results
-- Webinar: On August 19th, Imprivata will host a webinar with
Forrester's Natalie Lambert to discuss the benefits of a VDI environment.
Register here:
http://www.imprivata.com/webinar_desktop_virtualization_forrester

Quote attributed to Omar Hussain, President and CEO, Imprivata, Inc.

"As desktop virtualization gains momentum, one of the biggest issues that
companies will face is in managing user identities, roles and access
policies in this environment. Organizations understand the unique security
challenges desktop virtualization raises, and we expect to see more
emphasis around the need to manage multiple forms of strong authentication
and coordinate access policies in this environment -- critical next-steps
in the adoption of this technology."

About Imprivata

Imprivata secures employee access
to desktops, networks, applications and transactions. Its appliance-based,
employee access management platform, OneSign, enables organizations to
protect enterprise information assets while improving user productivity.
By strengthening user authentication, streamlining application access and
simplifying compliance reporting across multiple computing environments,
customers realize substantial IT Help Desk and administration cost savings,
while achieving the security standards they demand.

Imprivata is a recognized leader in Authentication and Access Management,
receiving numerous product awards and top review ratings from leading
industry publications and analysts. Headquartered in Lexington, Mass.,
Imprivata partners with over 200 resellers, and serves the access security
needs of more than 800 customers around the world. For more information,
please visit www.imprivata.com.

Imprivata is a registered trademark of Imprivata, Inc. in the USA and other
countries. All other product or company names mentioned are the property
of their respective owners.

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