Problems Solved with Endpoint Security Solutions

What problems are solved with endpoint security solutions? How does endpoint security handle the challenges facing modern businesses in the digital age? 

Before you can find the right solution, you need to understand the problem you’re trying to solve. Ideally, you actually want to identify multiple problems which a single solution can solve; too many IT environments struggle under the unnecessary weight of too many solutions trying to solve individual problems. 

It’s often easy to dismiss cybersecurity because it appears to solve only a single problem. However, this stems from a misunderstanding; cybersecurity isn’t just one problem but a series of problems your enterprise faces every day. 

So what problems end up solved with the addition of endpoint security? 

Problems Solved with Endpoint Security Solutions

Problem: Ransomware Fears Paralyze Us

For a moment, it looked as if the threat of ransomware was waning. Yet since the beginning of the pandemic, ransomware underwent a surge the likes of which never before seen. Solutions Review covered many of the most prominent incidents from this year alone. 

Ransomware should scare you. If a hacker succeeds in their attack, ransomware can lock your most important files or workflows or even your entire IT environment; hackers could use the opportunity to steal and sell your data or just demand the ransom to decrypt your network. It’s costly, embarrassing, and difficult to solve completely. 

Ransomware proliferation is one of the many problems solved by endpoint security. At its core, endpoint security provides next-generation firewalls, email security, and next-generation antivirus which all contribute to enacting a strong digital perimeter. Such a perimeter can deflect ransomware attacks and deter less experienced hackers. 

Note: endpoint security helps with the prevention aspect of ransomware. To prepare your business for an attack that does manage to penetrate the perimeter, check out the Backup and Disaster Recovery Guide. 

Problem: Our Data Keeps Moving From the Environment

Here’s the thing about data; it’s only useful (and also safe) if you know where it is at all times. How could you use data if you can’t find it? Moreover, how can you secure what you can’t see? 

So you know why it’s necessary. But do you know why keeping an eye on your data can pose such a challenge? It’s because as your IT environment scales and you add new users, data can move in patterns you never anticipated. Users tend to manipulate and store sensitive information wherever it makes sense for them as individual workers. Of course, this means that data moves into separate accounts via emails, or into public cloud databases that lack adequate security, or into new silos over which you have no vision. All of these are ideal targets for hackers. 

Endpoint security intervenes here with Data Loss Prevention (DLP). DLP, as the name suggests, prevents users from moving, storing, or transferring data outside the network without permission. No more will sensitive data end up in cloud databases with no authentication protocols; now you can ensure that data stays in the databases you can monitor and secure. 

Problem: We Don’t Know What Our Apps Are Doing. 

What applications does your enterprise use every day for its workflows? Could you offhand name all the applications you use? Who decides what applications get added to the network or which applications your employees use? How do you know those applications are safe? 

Applications can walk the fine line between secure and unsecure. Some applications might be actively malicious, working to bug your IT environment and maliciously steal data. Others may not have such active malice but could be hijacked by threat actors. After all, applications have more flexibility in their movements and interactions, which hackers covet and IT security teams fear. 

Here, endpoint security helps with application control. This capability monitors who can upload applications, how applications interact with the environment and with data, and how applications move through the environment. 

This only skims the surface of the problems solved with endpoint security solutions. For more, check out the Endpoint Security Buyer’s Guide or the EDR Buyer’s Guide.