Cloud & Unified Endpoint

Cloud & Unified Endpoint Security & Management

What Is Endpoint Security?

Endpoint Security focuses on protecting an organization’s network against cyberattacks by securing its endpoints—including employees’ connected computers, smartphones, and even smart watches. Endpoint Security protects business systems, intellectual property (IP), customer data and employees’ devices from ransomware, malware, phishing and other cyberthreats.

Because endpoints serve as users’ points of access to an organization’s network, they are also potential entry points for malicious actors. Endpoint Security ensures the network is protected against compromise and data theft—even if an employee’s device is lost or stolen.

Endpoint Security includes cybersecurity solutions such as Endpoint Protection (EPP), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), Mobile Threat Defense (MTD), User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA), Identity and Access Management (IAM), Extended Detection and Response (XDR), and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), as well as antivirus and firewall services.

Benefits of Endpoint Security

Endpoint Security is essential for any business or organization that collects or accesses data—that is, nearly all of them. For most businesses, data is a valuable asset—and potentially their most valuable asset. Vulnerability to cyberattacks poses significant risks in terms of financial loss, reputational harm and regulatory issues. The benefits of an effective Endpoint Security solution include:

Data Protection

Protecting data from cyber threats—ensuring against data theft or loss from cyberattacks—is the primary purpose of Endpoint Security. As an enterprise grows in size and sophistication, so does its number and diversity of endpoints. And with more organizations taking advantage of the Internet of Things (IoT), WiFi connectivity, remote work and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) capabilities, defending against cyberattacks has become increasingly complicated—and necessary. Endpoint Security keeps users’ devices protected and businesses safe from data loss and theft.

Cost Savings

Although the average cost of recovery from a cyberattack is $4 million, some breaches have cost individual companies tens and even hundreds of millions in damages. Cyberattacks costs can include ransomware payments, expenses related to operational disruption, loss of intellectual property (IP), increased insurance premiums, regulatory fines and lost business—particularly when trust in an organization’s ability to safeguard customer and partner data is compromised. Endpoint Security detects and prevents breaches before they cause damage, saving companies significantly more money than they would spend to recover from a cyberattack.

Time Savings

Securing employee devices from cyberthreats is labor- and time-intensive for an IT department. An Endpoint Security solution streamlines the identification of and response to cyberattacks, freeing up an enterprise’s skilled IT professionals’ time and allowing service providers to focus on core business objectives. Secure endpoints also ensure maximized network and device uptimes for all users.

Regulatory Compliance

Increasingly, governments are legislating the security and privacy of data collected by businesses and organizations. Examples of data privacy laws include the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the European General Data Protection Act (GDPR) and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). Violations of security compliance laws such as these can result in steep fines and penalties. Endpoint Security is an integral component of ensuring data protection and privacy to comply with these regulations.

Endpoint Security Features

Endpoint Security should protect all end users’ devices from cyber threats. Any connected device or system that provides access to an enterprise’s network can be a potential point of entry for a cyberattack. An Endpoint Security solution should include:

Continuous monitoring, ideally powered by advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) including machine learning, to analyze files and block malware before it executes—whether the endpoint is online or offline
Protection against email-based cyberthreats via scanning and quarantining of emails containing potentially dangerous links and attachments
Centralized device management with control over which and how devices can access, download and upload data
Protection against malicious downloads from the web
Anti-exploit protection against zero-day vulnerabilities and memory-based cyberattacks
Behavioral monitoring with machine learning capabilities to authenticate authorized users and block bad actors
Data loss protection and remediation to prevent unintentional or intentional loss of data in the event of a cyberattack
Third-party software integrations to work with an enterprise’s technology stack, including complementary security solutions and tools
Dashboards, reports and alerts with prioritized warnings of vulnerabilities
Automated incident response including rapid detection, investigation and remediation

How Endpoint Security Works

Endpoint Security involves preparing for, preventing, detecting and responding to cyberattacks occurring at an organization's network endpoints—typically, users' devices. An Endpoint Security solution should help to:

Prepare an enterprise for IT outages, ransomware lockouts and business disruptions before they happen.
Prevent internal threats and data security risks effectively and efficiently
Detect security breaches and suspicious behavior as fast as possible
Respond quickly via automation to protect the business and mitigate risks

Although the different types of endpoint security tools work in unique ways, they all scan and analyze files for cyberthreats, limiting their ability to execute and infiltrate the network. Typically, endpoint security solutions involve a centralized console managed by system administrators or IT departments and client software installed on users’ devices. This client software authenticates user logins from the devices and blocks the use or execution of unsafe applications or the misuse of company data.

Advanced Endpoint Security solutions are cloud-based or a combination of on-premises and cloud-based (hybrid) and leverage AI and machine learning to proactively monitor for and adapt to each endpoint’s cyberthreats in real time.

What is Data Loss Prevention?

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is the practice of detecting and preventing data breaches, exfiltration, or unwanted destruction of sensitive data. Organizations use DLP to protect and secure their data and comply with regulations.

The DLP term refers to defending organizations against both data loss and data leakage prevention. Data loss refers to an event in which important data is lost to the enterprise, such as in a ransomware attack. Data loss prevention focuses on preventing illicit transfer of data outside organizational boundaries.

Why Data Loss Prevention?

Protect Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and comply with relevant regulations
Protect Intellectual Property critical for the organization
Achieve data visibility in large organizations
Secure mobile workforce and enforce security in Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) environments
Secure data on remote cloud systems

Causes of Data Leaks

Three common causes of data leaks are:

Insider threats — a malicious insider, or an attacker who has compromised a privileged user account, abuses their permissions and attempts to move data outside the organization.
Extrusion by attackers — many cyber attacks have sensitive data as their target. Attackers penetrate the security perimeter using techniques like phishing, malware or code injection, and gain access to sensitive data.
Unintentional or negligent data exposure — many data leaks occur as a result of employees who lose sensitive data in public, provide open Internet access to data, or fail to restrict access per organizational policies.

What is Email Data Loss Prevention?

Email Data Loss Prevention (DLP) mitigates the risk of data breach via email. And it satisfies compliance with 80+ built-in policies. It gives you out-of-the-box visibility and enforcement without the complexity and cost of disparate solutions.

Identify data unique to your organization

You can easily upload or create custom dictionaries or identifiers that are unique to your organization. These include financial services account numbers, local forms of ID and medical record numbers. This allows you to analyze the email data that matters most to you.

Deep Analysis and Fingerprinting

With Email DLP, you can accurately detect sensitive data within unstructured content. Over 300 file types can be scanned out of the box. Sensitive documents are fingerprinted—with both full and partial matching capabilities—even if the data resides in different file formats.

Automate Regulatory Compliance

Email DLP automatically looks for all standard forms of restricted content. And it quickly detects sensitive data with its pre-built dictionaries. With its detailed algorithmic checks that are built into smart identifiers, it minimizes false positives for credit card numbers, identification numbers and a wide variety of sensitive information. With Email DLP, you can comply with PCI, SOX, GDPR, PII, HIPAA and more.

Get Complete Visibility into Your Data

Email DLP is integrated with Enterprise DLP. This allows you to find, track and safeguard data in email, cloud applications, endpoints, on-premises file shares and SharePoint. And you can easily apply common data detectors across channels. This helps save you time and eliminates administrative headache.