The
Cybersecurity world, as I had mentioned in one of my previous blogs, is no
doubt full of techno jargon. While using
these fancy terms might be great for marketing efforts in order to attract new
customers, the bottom line is that at some point in time, you are going to have
to break this down for people to understand.
This is especially critical when you onboard a new customer.
They are not
going to care about the techno jargon that you dazzled with them before, now
they want to make sure that the product or solution is going to work, and yield
a positive Return On Investment (ROI) down the road.
Such is the case
with this new piece of techno jargon. It
is called “Endpoint Protection”. Although
the deployments that are involved with this can be fairly complex, depending
upon your requirements, simply put, all that it means is beefing up the lines
of defenses that you have for all of your devices, whether they are physical or
even in the cloud.
Probably the
most typical example of this are the wireless devices that you have given to your
employees in order for them to conduct their daily job tasks. Obviously, given the sheer importance of them,
you will want to ensure that are as Cyber secure as possible.
So how can
one go about doing this, in clear and simple terms? Well, here are some tips:
1)
Deployment:
It
is always preferable to use the same Cyber vendor for Endpoint Protection
solutions, unless you have a compelling reason to use different vendors. But whatever route that you do decide to go with,
always try to stick to the same deployment methodology. True, each product/solution will be different,
develop a set of best standards and practices that are uniform. That way, it will be easier to troubleshoot
issues, and do upgrades in a consistent manner over time.
2)
Configuration:
As
just mentioned, whenever you do software patches and firmware upgrades, keep a
detailed history of what has actually been installed. Or if you make any changes to the Endpoint
Protection solution itself, that has to be documented as well. Remember, depending upon how large your
organization is, you will need to inform all of your employees well ahead of
time of the changes that will occur. But
first, it is highly advisable to have a meeting with the representatives from the
other departments to see what the impact will be, and how it can be minimized. This is technically known as “Configuration
Management”.
3)
Logging:
If
in the unfortunate chance your business has been hit with a security breach, you
will want to at some point conduct a detailed forensics investigation to determine
how exactly it happened. You will need
all of the evidence that you can get, and one of the best forms of this are the
log files that are outputted from the Endpoint Solution. Thus, make sure that data is being collected
on a real time basis, and that your solution is optimized at all times. Further, by using Generative AI, keep track
of any unusual or abnormal behavior that occurs on the network traffic to and
from all of your Endpoint Devices.
4)
XDR:
Not
to throw more techno jargon out there but this is an acronym that stands for “Extended
Detection Response”. This is actually a
much more sophisticated version of the traditional Endpoint Solution; in that it
can do the following:
*It
can actually be a very proactive approach by always changing the attack surface
that may exist on all of your Endpoint Devices.
This is an attempt to confuse the Cyberattacker in case they are
targeting a specific device of a particular employee. The main benefit of this is that it will make
any vulnerabilities harder to detect and subsequently exploit.
*It
can further beef up the defenses for both the CPU and the memory. This is a critical area in your Endpoint
Devices that the Cyberattacker can literally hide out in going unnoticed, and even
deploy malicious payloads onto them, making detection almost impossible.
*It’s
database will always be updated on a real time basis with the latest threat
profiles, so that it can offer maximum protection to your devices. Also, since Generative Ai is now being used
in Endpoint Protection solutions, it can even now learn on its own and even
make reasonable extrapolations as to what future threat vectors could possibly
look like. This is a far cry from the traditional
Antivirus and Antimalware software packages of today. For example, their databases are only updated
at intervals, and the timing of that is largely dependent on the vendor.
My
Thoughts On This:
Although procuring
and deploying an Endpoint Protection solution may appear to be an expensive
proposition, the truth is that they are really not. A lot will depend thought upon how many
devices you want to protect.
Of course, it
is always wise to make sure that all of them are Cyber fortified. In fact, if you make use of a cloud
deployment, such as that of Microsoft Azure, the Endpoint Protection solution
will already be there.
All you have
to do is just deploy it, and make sure that it is properly configured for your
environment. But my suggestion here
would be to engage with a Cloud Services Provider (CSP) that can actually do
and manage all of this for you.
Some of the
other key benefits of making use of an Endpoint Protection solution for your
business include the following:
*It is
lightweight, in terms of its file size and the processes that run within
it. This means that there will be no
disruption to your existing processes.
It will also not result in “bloatware”.
*Apart from
keeping log files, the Endpoint Protection solution also acts like a “Black Box”,
very similar to the ones you hear about being used in commercial aircraft. Meaning it can also record all of the activity
that occurs for each and every device for which you have the solution deployed
upon.
This will
also prove to be a great boon if you ever need to conduct a Digital Forensics
Investigation.
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