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How to choose the best Endpoint Security Solution

May 24, 2021
Protecting endpoints has never been such a challenging task for business leaders as today. Attackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated and skilled at exploiting vulnerabilities, breaching IT security infrastructures, and stealing confidential data.
 
According to research conducted by IDC, 70% of successful attacks by cybercriminals start at the endpoint. As a result, attacks and threats are increasingly getting more complex and unpredictable.
 
This article lists some exciting topics about endpoint security and five essential resources to prioritize when buying endpoint protection solutions.

Remote work and proliferation of devices

The potential attack frequency has increased due to the pandemic context. One of the main reasons for this phenomenon is the fact that, after the coronavirus outbreak, the global workforce migrated to the remote work model.
 
As a result, companies had to adapt and make significant changes to their infrastructure quickly. Employees who work from home are more likely to be less cautious and do not comply with corporate policy.
 
This situation provided cybercriminals the means to develop new strategies to exploit corporate networks.
 
According to a study, 70% of organizations that adopted remote work said that this factor would increase the cost of a data breach. 76% said that the time to identify and contain a potential data breach would increase.

Threats against endpoints

To report the dramatic increase in threats against endpoint due to remote work policies, we can highlight some data:
 
  • 50% increase in the number of ransomware attacks compared to the beginning of 2020;
  • E-mails, Trojan attacks, and phishing attempts through malicious domains associated with the COVID-19 theme have become more recurrent since January 2020;
  • Attackers are more focused on breaking into company systems through applications, such as Zoom.

Endpoint security

 
According to data from CheckPoint, 39% of security professionals are not confident in the resilience of their current endpoint protection solution. By the end of 2023, more than 50% of companies will replace their old antivirus products.
 
However, adopting the only antivirus is insufficient to guarantee adequate security for the company. In general, older antivirus solutions offer inadequate protection against advanced threats.
 
As an extra layer, companies are deploying on endpoint more sophisticated solutions like Next-Generation Antivirus, which has additional resources like EDR and Sandboxing features to prevent threats from having a chance to compromise endpoints.
 
It is also essential to have a vulnerability scanner and an endpoint manager to provide a broad, deep, and continuous view of device security.
 
For even more efficient protection, the company can adopt a Violation and Attack Simulation platform, which will help to continuously identify and mitigate vulnerabilities in the security platforms by automating thousands of attack attempts.

Five essential resources for endpoint protection

 
To help you build an efficient endpoint protection structure, we have listed the top five resources your company should have.

# 1: Anti-Phishing Capability

Today’s phishing attacks involve sophisticated social engineering techniques designed to trick employees into handing over private information or conducting fraudulent financial transactions.
 
Adopting a solution with anti-phishing capabilities is a way for organizations to stay ahead of cybercriminals and remove from employees part of the responsibility for detecting intrusions.

 

Points to ask:

  • Does the solution actively protect against complex and sophisticated attacks, such as zero-day, phishing, impersonation, spear-phishing, and compromising e-mails?
  • Does the solution scan websites and forms and do in-depth analysis on a heuristic basis?
  • Can the solution prevent users from using corporate credentials on non-corporate websites?

# 2: Anti-Ransomware Capability

 
Ransomware attacks, mainly the zero-day type, are considered difficult to identify and mitigate. Because of their very nature, it is impossible to know their existence until they attack.
 
This attack can reach your company through various paths like web navigation, e-mails, and even removable devices.
 
The endpoint protection solution must have anti-ransomware capabilities to mitigate risks and reduce damage.

 

Points to ask:

  • Does the solution protect against sophisticated attacks like zero-day ransomware?
  • Does the solution include file change monitoring and identify unsolicited ransomware behaviors such as encrypting files?
  • Does the solution have the ability to block an attack and recover encrypted files automatically?
 # 3: Content Disarming and Reconstruction (CDR)
 
Companies cannot affect productivity, inspect all files sent as e-mails attachments, and allow employees to download suspicious files without first checking them.
 
Your endpoint protection solution must be able to automatically sanitize files, also known as Content Disarm and Reconstruction (CDR) or Threat Extraction.

 

Points to ask:

  • Does the solution help the security team ensure that all files addressed to the company are safe not to compromise productivity?
  • Can the solution remove malicious content from documents?
 

# 4: Anti-bot capabilities

 
Bots pose a formidable threat to corporate security, as they are used often as an advanced persistent tool in attacks against individuals or companies.
 
Bots form a connection between the corporate network, control servers, and command. Using this, attackers can remotely control bots and instruct illegal activities.
 
Your endpoint protection must include anti-bot capabilities to prevent these attacks.

Points to ask:

  • Can the solution automatically detect and contain bot-based infections?
  • Does the solution continuously monitor outgoing traffic and identify communications with servers to identify compromised machines?
  • Can the solution block infected traffic, thus remedying the attack, and isolate compromised machines to prevent infection from the rest of the network through lateral movement?

# 5: Detection after an automated intrusion, including remediation and response

 
Although traditional endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions record suspicious behavior, they generally do not have many rules against attacks and cannot automatically remediate.
 
The lack of automation means there’s a high risk of waste from attacks left on endpoints, which will require additional teamwork to process and mitigate the generated impacts.
 

Points to ask:

  • Can the solution analyze, contextualize and remediate incidents in an automated way?
  • Can the solution automatically determine if the occurrence was an attack and how the attacker got into the network?
  • What is the impact on the company’s business, and how should the affected systems be cleaned?

Conclusion

There are many challenges involving endpoint protection. As criminals are getting increasingly skilled and using more elaborate attack structures, nowadays, it’s complex ensuring adequate device security.
 
It is essential to invest in an efficient Next-Generation Endpoint Protection solution to prevent attacks, financial damage, and business reputation compromise.
 
Source: HiveCore
 

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