Gartner Names Winners of 2017 Endpoint Security Customer Choice Awards

Enterprise tech research and analysis co. Gartner, Inc.,  has announced the winners of the Gartner Peer Insights Customer Choice Awards for Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP). The announcement marks the latest addition to the company’s growing list of buyer’s resources, which already includes the 2017 Magic Quadrant for EPP.

According to Gartner, the Customer Choice Awards are a ranking of vendors by “verified end-user professionals” on the company’s Peer Insights website, a peer review site in the mold of G2Crowd, Capterra, and TrustRadius. The awards take into account both the number of end-user reviews, and the overall user ratings.

“In interpreting reviews, it’s difficult for IT professionals to balance the number of reviews for a company versus a company’s overall rating,” said Ken Davis, executive vice president of Products and Services at Gartner. “The Gartner Peer Insights Customer Choice Awards are designed to help end users navigate these issues to make better purchase decisions. We work hard to ensure that all of the reviews are submitted by an IT professional or business user who has had experience purchasing, implementing and/or using the enterprise solution they are reviewing — free from conflicts of interest.”

What We Talk About When We Talk About EPP

Per Gartner’s definition, Endpoint protection platforms are integrated solutions that provide “a collection of security capabilities to protect PCs, smartphones, and tablets.” Generally, an EPP solution has the following capabilities: anti-malware, personal firewall, port and device control.Gartner also notes that modern EPP products are expanding to include data protection features, such as disk and file encryption, data loss prevention and device control.

Winners Podium

For those of us familiar with Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for EPP, there are a few surprises to be had here.  Of the four winners of the Customer Choice awards, just two, Kaspersky and Symantec, also placed in the MQ’s leaders quadrant. Meanwhile, Trend Micro, the over all leader in the 2017 MQ, has been relegated to the “Honorable Mentions” section of the new awards.

Embattled Russian AV-firm Kaspersky Lab took the awards first place, the ever-so-prestigious “Platinum award,'” and was praised by customers for its easy implementation, and trusted protection. The full winner’s list can be viewed on Gartner’s site, or in the table below.