On the Importance of Staying Streamlined in Endpoint Security

When we talk about next-generation endpoint security for modern enterprises, we usually talk about it in terms of layers. Your digital perimeter needs layers to adequately confound hackers. Your chosen endpoint protection platform should have more layers so it can stop hackers at different levels of infiltration. Your threat detection should have layers to catch new forms of cyber attacks.

Following this logic, enterprises embracing next-generation endpoint security often build their platforms out of multiple solutions and products simultaneously. Last year, Marc Van Zadelhoff, General Manager at IBM Security, said the average business customer uses 85 security tools from 45 different vendors.   

Common sense approves of this line of thought. Yet there is a strong argument for a streamlined endpoint security solution on your enterprise’s network. In fact, a streamlined approach to your endpoint protection might be the missing step to a more secure digital presence.  

Here are a few reasons why:

Streamlined is the Opposite of Overwhelming

You might believe, as a business decision-maker, that having multiple endpoint security solutions deployed at the same time will improve your security standing. In many network architects’ imaginations, having so many layers to their endpoint security is like constructing an elaborate physical security system (complete with lasers). Yet they often fail to recognize the major problem with so many solutions operating at the same time: someone has to manage all of them.

Your security team will have to make sure all of these endpoint protection platforms are properly deployed, patched, and monitored. Properly patching your solutions is of especial importance; failing to patch even your next-generation solutions can allow vulnerabilities to persist and evolved threats to slip past your digital perimeter.

Moreover, haphazardly patching your solutions demonstrates a failure to truly understand the cyber threats most threatening to your enterprise individually. Each enterprise needs to prepare for cyber attacks designed for their industry, size, and geography.

In other words, the administrative workload required from having so many solutions will prove overwhelming. Your security team burnout rates will increase, and getting your employees to comply with this elaborate system will create its own nightmares. And you need employee buy-in to ensure your digital perimeter stay strong.    

Instead, having a streamlined next-generation endpoint security solution will allow your security team to more easily monitor your perimeter and patch it consciously and in a timely manner. Additionally, streamlined solutions will save your staff plenty of headaches as you move forward.

Integration and Inefficiencies Abound

Having an overwhelming number of endpoint security solutions operating simultaneously can also create severe integration issues as the solutions’ programming clash with each other in the network. Unless the solutions are partnered or otherwise designed to integrate with each other, endpoint protection platforms can create visibility issues and inefficient processes when mixed.

Additionally, failing to enact a streamlined approach to your endpoint security can create compliance issues possibly creating more costs down the line.   

Streamlined is Relatively Inexpensive

The principle “you have to spend money to make money” seems tailor-made for modern cybersecurity. Board members and C-level executives may initially balk at the price tag for a next-generation endpoint security solution. However, the savings over the long term it can offer in preventing or mitigating a data breach can be in the millions. Just that knowledge alone can loosen the purse strings.  

Yet having a dozen or more endpoint security solutions simultaneously deployed will certainly run a high bill; the inefficiencies such a platform brings will certainly affect the cost-benefit analysis in a negative manner. Having a single streamlined endpoint security solution deployed will help keep costs down while still providing the protection you need.

Other Resources: 

• You Need to Hire More Female Cybersecurity Professionals
• In Focus: The Desperate Shortage of Women in Cyber Security
• Gartner’s 2018 Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP): What’s Changed?
• 4 Tips For Endpoint Security Solutions (That Everyone Forgets)
• Comparing the Top Endpoint Security Vendors — Solutions Review
• Answering the Top 4 Enterprise Endpoint Security Questions
• What Can We Expect for the Future of Endpoint Security?
• The 25 Best Endpoint Security Platforms and Tools of 2018