Considerations for Effective Endpoint Security
By Mike Schrock, Senior Director of OEM Business Development, OPSWAT
As BYOD continues to grow in popularity, organisations will have to focus more resources on the protection of endpoint devices and the associated risks those devices bring with them. When trying to choose the best set of endpoint security products for your company, there are several considerations you should keep in mind.
Remediation Doesn’t Fix Lack of Real-time Protection
Targeting remote devices and endpoints has become so lucrative that cyber criminals are beginning to exploit the FYOD (Fix Your Own Device) trend as a way to infect devices. While Patch Management and whitelist application companies are taking different approaches when addressing this issue, they are both lacking the necessary security solutions for BYOD and partner endpoints. In order to fully protect endpoint devices, a comprehensive security solution is needed. Leaving endpoint devices unprotected is dangerous because it often provides an entry point for cyber criminals, giving them the necessary access and privileges needed to launch a sophisticated attack, similar to the breaches that happened at Target and Home Depot.
Finding a Comprehensive Solution
In order to fully protect endpoint devices, a comprehensive security solution is needed. Cisco’s most recent Annual Security Report, covers the need for enterprise adoption of “Continuous Security,” which provides context visibility, constant enforcement control and threat protection across the entire attack continuum.
Leveraging multi-scanning (multiple anti-malware engines) for more effective protection, as it’s hard for a single antivirus engine to catch all emerging threats on its own, is the best way to obtain a comprehensive solution for finding cyber maleficence by using the power of multiple antivirus engines.
No Silver Bullet – Is Antivirus Dead?
Protecting endpoints is no easy task, especially if a company has a large remote workforce. We all know that monitoring endpoints with only one antivirus engine does not provide comprehensive protection from cyber threats. In fact, the EPP (Endpoint Protection Platform) leader Symantec went as far as to publicly declare antivirus as dead. However, looking at Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms, you realise that the case is just the opposite; EPP and antivirus are not dead, but are rather thriving in both the business and consumer markets.
