Core administrator-led capability enables organizations to recover secure access in minutes during cyberattacks and Windows outages.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Aug. 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- IGEL®, a global software company delivering the IGEL Adaptive Secure Endpoint Platform™, today announced the general availability of Emergency Mode, a core management capability within IGEL Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery™ (IGEL BC&DR™).
During a security incident, ransomware event, or Windows outage, authorized administrators can use IGEL BC&DR™ with Emergency Mode to centrally reboot supported IGEL Dual Boot™-enabled endpoints into IGEL OS and recover secure access without relying on users to initiate recovery.
The need is urgent. Ransomware complaints rose by 14.42% in 2025, according to the FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report, with attacks expected to increase as new and sophisticated threats emerge. Organizations may recover data centers, networks, and applications quickly, yet employees can remain unable to work while affected Windows endpoints are investigated, reimaged, or replaced. Emergency Mode helps close this endpoint recovery gap through an administrator-controlled reboot into IGEL OS on in-place hardware.
For critical sectors, including healthcare, financial services, government, transportation, and critical infrastructure, the primary benefit is continuity of essential services. By recovering secure user access in minutes, organizations can help sustain patient care, transactions, public services, and other mission-critical operations while incident-response teams investigate and remediate the affected Windows environment.
From the Universal Management Suite™ (UMS™), administrators can reboot a single device, selected groups, or entire endpoint fleets. Devices remain locked into IGEL OS until an administrator changes them back to Windows.
During the event, the Windows partition is isolated and preserved for forensic and compliance review while users resume work on the same device, reconnecting to authorized applications and resources as incident-response teams continue their investigation.
"Organizations have invested heavily in the ability to quickly recover data and infrastructure, but few can recover user access at the endpoint just as quickly," said Klaus Oestermann, CEO of IGEL. "IGEL Emergency Mode closes that gap by giving administrators a controlled way to reconnect people to authorized resources in minutes."
IGEL BC&DR™ with IGEL Emergency Mode supports IGEL's reboot, reconnect, resume approach. It helps organizations prevent endpoint compromise, contain risk by moving supported devices away from an at-risk Windows environment, and recover secure user access while investigation and remediation continue for many weeks.
"The recovery time objective (RTO) and the actual recovery time (RTA) your users experience during an event are rarely the same number," said Sterling Wilson, Field CTO for Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery at IGEL. "Emergency Mode puts endpoint access recovery inside the incident response timeline, so administrators aren't managing it as a separate, device-by-device project." IGEL BC&DR™ complements data resilience, security operations, incident response, threat removal, and endpoint remediation. Emergency Mode provides access continuity and preserves the Windows partition exactly as it was, untouched, so security and IT teams can complete their own forensic and recovery work.
IGEL BC&DR Emergency Mode is now generally available to eligible IGEL BC&DR™ customers at no additional cost. To learn more:
- Explore IGEL Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery™
- Read the blog: Reboot, Reconnect, Resume: A Faster Path to Business Continuity Amidst an Incident
- Download the eBook
About IGEL
IGEL® is a global software company delivering the IGEL Adaptive Secure Endpoint Platform™, a trusted and governed endpoint platform for secure access to cloud, VDI, DaaS, SaaS, Secure Browsers, enterprise applications, as well as OT endpoints. At its foundation is IGEL OS, an immutable operating system that helps reduce endpoint attack surface, preserve a known-good endpoint state, and support secure access across distributed work environments. Through the IGEL Preventative Security Model®, the platform adds attested workload delivery, centralized governance, and contextual enforcement, aligning endpoint security with Zero Trust and SSE/SASE architectures from key IGEL Ready partners.
IGEL Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery™ (BC&DR) helps organizations restore secure access on Windows endpoints affected by ransomware, other cyberattacks, or outages. Founded in 2001, IGEL is headquartered in Germany with U.S. offices in San Francisco and Fort Lauderdale, working with an ecosystem of 130 leading technology brands. Learn more at www.igel.com.
Windows is a trademark of the Microsoft group of companies.
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