Endpoint protection solutions are software tools that protect business information and IT infrastructure from cyberattacks. These solutions can include antivirus or next-gen malware protection, personal firewalls, encryption, USB device control, and vulnerability assessment.
They can also protect against critical threats like compromised credentials and phishing emails. They provide visibility across devices on and off-network, simplifying compliance and security operations.
Machine Learning
Modern endpoint protection platforms are powered by machine learning, making detecting and stopping threats that slip past signature-based detection easier. This includes malware, fileless attacks, and other advanced threats. An ML solution’s algorithm analyzes massive amounts of data, such as network traffic and system logs, to identify patterns in behavior and activity. This allows it to quickly and accurately categorize new processes, determine if they’re normal or malicious, and take action.
This capability is a significant advantage over traditional solutions, which often rely on human security analysts to parse through logs and watch screens. This process is time-consuming, inefficient, and prone to error. It also requires a significant investment of resources and can limit how much you can protect against the latest threat.
Threat Intelligence
The threat landscape is growing more complex and sophisticated as work environments become increasingly diverse. This creates new opportunities for cybercriminals to access data and wreak havoc with business operations. Fortunately, the proper endpoint protection solutions can help prevent these attacks.
Whether your company uses an on-premises solution or a software-as-a-service model, modern endpoint protection solutions can rely on threat intelligence to quickly identify and neutralize various cyberattacks. This includes advanced malware, phishing emails, compromised credentials, and more.
These solutions can detect and stop threats that bypass signature-based technologies using the latest behavioral heuristics features. They can also process data in a way that minimizes alert fatigue and enhances observability to reduce time to remediation.
Network Intelligence
Endpoints — computers, laptops, smartphones, and tablets — are cybersecurity’s frontline. Attackers use compromised endpoints to gain a foothold in a corporate network. These footholds allow attackers to steal data and exploit more systems through lateral movement. Modern endpoint protection uses advanced behavioral analysis, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to prevent and detect threats that traditional antivirus and other security solutions miss. They also provide a robust set of tools for securing and managing endpoints. Discovering all endpoints, and onboarding them into the corporate network, is a critical part of an endpoint protection strategy. This process includes registering, monitoring, managing, and upgrading these devices. It can also involve removing unneeded or outdated software. Privilege management solutions — which combine most minor privilege management with advanced application control capabilities to reduce the endpoint attack surface — are essential.
Cloud-Based Solutions
Modern endpoint protection solutions use a combination of signature-based detection and machine learning to stop threats. With signature-based detection, potential hazards are compared to a database of known malware. If a program matches a sample of known malware, it’s blocked.
Machine learning takes this a step further by crowdsourcing intelligence about attack techniques on a massive scale and in real-time. This information is fed back to the system, enabling it to make smarter decisions about whether a program looks like malware. Cloud-based systems are quick to deploy, easy to manage, and scalable. They also reduce management overhead by keeping threat information in the cloud instead of on-premise hardware, which can be vulnerable to attacks that destroy physical hardware or rewrite logs.
Endpoint Detection and Response
The security industry uses the term EDR to describe continuous monitoring that detects and responds to cyber threats on endpoint devices. EDR is the first step in a defense-in-depth strategy that includes endpoint protection (EPP) and threat detection and response (XDR). Think of it like a black box on an airplane that records dozens of data points during flight. When a plane crashes, investigators analyze the telemetry to identify contributing factors that may help prevent similar accidents in the future. Similarly, an EDR solution ultimately oversees all security-related processes on your endpoints. This allows you to “shoulder surf” an adversary in real time and observe their commands as they linger and navigate inside your environment.
Data Loss Prevention
DLP is a suite of software tools and security practices that detect, monitor, and prevent unauthorized data access or transmission. It helps organizations classify sensitive information, enforce security policies and meet compliance standards. The technology uses various techniques to protect data in motion, in use, and at rest. For example, protecting data in action ensures that content that moves through a network is not routed to unauthorized recipients or ends up in an unsecured storage area like cloud repositories or endpoint devices like laptops.
This includes email encryption and endpoint DLP features that scan workstations, laptops, and other endpoint devices on a corporate network to identify and secure sensitive information. Advanced DLP tools also prompt users to inform employees when their movements may violate policy or increase risk.
Endpoint Security Management
Modern endpoint protection uses a combination of strategies, technologies, and policies to form an overall security strategy. These tools protect PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and Internet of Things devices that access networks over local/intranet or remote connections. With today’s increasingly dynamic workplace practices like BYOD and remote work policies, ensuring employees can access the data they need on any device or location is more challenging than ever. These changes also create new vulnerabilities for hackers to exploit. Traditional cybersecurity solutions rely on an on-premises approach, with a locally hosted data center as the hub for a management console to reach each endpoint via an agent. But this model has many drawbacks, including creating security silos, which could lead to unprotected vulnerabilities within the network.
