5 Key Considerations for Purchasing An Endpoint Security Solution

What are the five key considerations for purchasing an endpoint security solution? In other words, what do you need to weigh the most before making a selection—both in capabilities and otherwise?

Endpoint security remains a critical part of any enterprise’s cybersecurity platform. Even as detection takes precedence in business cybersecurity, prevention capabilities still matter. Additionally, endpoint security now offers distinct detection capabilities such as EDR to adapt to the new paradigm. 

However, there is no such thing as an identical endpoint security solution. Each endpoint security solution offers distinct capabilities for individual enterprise use cases. How can you know what to look for in your cybersecurity? 

Therefore, we present five key considerations for purchasing an endpoint security solution.       

Five Key Considerations for Purchasing An Endpoint Security Solution

1. Know Why You Are Purchasing an Endpoint Security Solution

Before purchasing an endpoint security solution, you need to understand why you are replacing your old legacy antivirus solution. 

Thus we must present you with some harsh truths: legacy antivirus can no longer protect your enterprise. In fact, legacy antivirus most often fails to stop modern malware and cyber attacks. Either the antivirus solutions don’t possess the threat intelligence to recognize modern threats or the capabilities to stop them. Additionally, legacy solutions can create integration issues with modern operating systems, creating new security vulnerabilities. 

Regardless, these legacy solutions won’t provide enough visibility over your endpoints; of course, this allows hackers to find blind spots in your network and exploit them without oversight or investigation. Further, antivirus solutions don’t always meet the individual use case expectations, creating possible challenges in the future.

However, you could also face these challenges with an endpoint security solution that does not meet your individual use case. Therefore, before purchasing an endpoint security solution, you need to examine your use case. Determine what capabilities you need, how endpoints connect to your network, and where they connect from i.e. remotely. All of this can affect your cybersecurity needs.      

2. Consider Scalability and Capacity

As alluded to above, your endpoint security solution must protect all of the endpoints connecting to your network. Of course, this includes devices connecting via bring-your-own-devices culture and remote employment. As such, your solution must handle a large number of users immediately and in the future as you scale. Indeed, before purchasing an endpoint security solution, you need to focus on scalability; this applies especially if you expect rapid growth for your business.

Any scalability discussion must include cloud and cloud adoption. Enterprises embrace the cloud for its flexibility, integration, communication, and collaboration benefits. Yet embracing the cloud requires the right kind of endpoint security solution. The cloud perimeter proves far more porous than an on-premises environment; it attracts threats radically different from other environments. 

Before purchasing an endpoint security solution, you need to determine what your environment looks like now and what it might look like in the future.  

3. Purchasing an Endpoint Security Solution for the Right Industry 

We mentioned “use case” numerous times in this article, and that does matter to purchasing an endpoint security solution. In addition to size and IT infrastructure, your enterprise’s industry changes the cybersecurity expectations facing your business. 

Moreover, your endpoint security must help you meet the regulatory requirements for your industry in particular. For example, working in a government-oriented business may require stricter requirements and cybersecurity policies. As a different example, healthcare has different data storage mandates than other enterprises.

While most endpoint security solutions can help you meet the bare minimum of governmental and industry regulatory requirements. Only with a fitting next-generation solution which matches your use case can you meet your compliance mandates. 

4. Budget, Budget, Budget

Unfortunately, every enterprise needs to consider its cybersecurity budget before purchasing an endpoint security solution. Ideally, every business should recognize the importance of information security and offer an appropriate budget. However, many enterprises still neglect their cybersecurity budgets. 

First, you need to recognize that data breaches can affect and damage businesses of any sizes. Research suggests small businesses actually suffer more data breaches than large enterprises. Moreover, small businesses often end up shuttering in the wake of a data breach, according to Switchfast Technologies. 

Large enterprises aren’t safe because of these facts—the damage to your business’ reputation alone can set your goals back significantly. So you need to allocate your budgets properly. 

Think of these new budgets as a short-term investment into your workflows and reputation. Skimping on your endpoint security can only cause hurt down the line.   

5. Know What You Need

Endpoint security offers several unique capabilities to enterprises. However, each solution provider emphasizes different capabilities in addition to different use cases. You need to figure out what you need most before making your selection. 

Some key endpoint security capabilities include: 

Antivirus or Antimalware

Once the heart of endpoint security, this capability now focuses on deflecting and deterring malware attacks like ransomware. Next-generation solutions utilize machine learning and memory technology.

URL Filtering

URL filtering restricts web traffic to only trusted websites. Thus users can’t access websites with malicious content in the first place, preventing infections.

Application Control

This capability controls what an application can and cannot do in your network and on your endpoints. It uses whitelisting, blacklisting, and graylisting to restrict unauthorized applications from running anything.  

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)

EDR functions like SIEM to uncover dwelling threats or penetrative threats. It supplements the digital perimeter by finding what slipped past the defenses. Also, EDR can alert your IT security team of potential threats and remediate them. 

Centralized Management

Trying to handle all of the endpoints connecting to your network from a disparate perspective only hurts your efforts. Centralized management supports centralized dashboards and role-based access control for all endpoints, improving visibility. 

Sandboxing 

Sandboxing allows your enterprise to test potential programs without bringing them into the network proper. Instead, the sandbox works as a dummy infrastructure, allowing your security team to evaluate the suspicious program. From there, they can determine if the program acts with good intentions or must be remediated. 

How to Learn More

You should download our 2019 Endpoint Security Buyer’s Guide. We cover the key solution providers and their key capabilities.