An endpoint is any device that connects to your corporate network from outside your firewall, e.g., Computers, Laptops, Tablets, Mobile devices, Servers, Printers, IoT devices, POS systems, Switches, ATM machines, Industrial machines, Medical devices and other devices that communicate with your corporate network.
They encompass any machine or connected device that could conceivably connect to your corporate network. And for hackers, these endpoints are particularly lucrative entry points to your business networks and systems. It is therefore vital for your organization to consider every device that is or could be connected to your network and ensure it is protected.
Every endpoint that connects to your corporate network is a vulnerability, providing a potential entry point for cyber criminals. Therefore, every device an employee uses to connect to any business system or resource carries the risk of becoming the chosen route for hacking into your organization. These devices can be exploited by malware that could leak or steal sensitive data from your business.
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What is Endpoint Security?
It is the cybersecurity approach to defending endpoints...
In the modern context, Endpoint Security is about preventing file-based malware attacks, detecting malicious activity, and providing the investigation and remediation capabilities needed to respond to dynamic security incidents and alerts. Endpoint security enables businesses to protect devices that employees use for work purposes either on a network or in the cloud from cyber threats.
But it is hugely challenging because most endpoints exist at the interaction point between humans and machines.
It is very important area of cybersecurity and a chief concern for most organisation today, as more than 50% of workforce across the globe is still working from remote and the risks posed to their endpoints and their sensitive data are a challenge that’s not going away.
Costs of breaches is huge on organisations. Each data breach, costs on average $3.86 million globally with the United States averaging at $8.65 million per data breach according to Ponemon’s “Cost of a Data Breach Report 2020” (Commissioned by IMB).
And while technological solutions can be highly effective, the chances of an employee succumbing to a social engineering attack can be mitigated but never entirely prevented.
Hackers are deploying more sophisticated attack methods that see them come up with new ways of gaining access to corporate networks, stealing data, and manipulating your employees into giving up sensitive information.
All factors mentioned above, warrant that you take Endpoint Security far more seriously...
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How Does Endpoint Security Work?
For your Endpoint Security apparatus to be effective, you need to deploy a solution which you can manage 'centrally'. This centrally managed security solution should be able to protect endpoints like servers, workstations, mobile devices, and the eventual workloads from all sorts of cybersecurity threats. It should work by examining files, processes, and system activity for suspicious or malicious indicators.
A centralized management console allows administrators to connect to your entire network while they monitor, protect, investigate and respond to incidents. You can accomplish this by leveraging either an on-premise, hybrid, or cloud approach.
The traditional or legacy approach to endpoint security was based on your 'on-premise' security posture, wherein all the security functionalities were delivered from your locally hosted datacenter. Your data-center acted as the hub for management console to access your endpoints via some agent (client) to provide security. But this approach has proven to be ineffective in time, particularly because of surge in remote workers and BYOD. This along with the globalization of workforces, has highlighted the serious limitations of the on-premise approach, using Firewall etc.
That's why modern Endpoint Security requires you to shift to a “Hybrid” approach. In this you take your legacy architecture design, and then retrofit it for the 'cloud' to gain some cloud capabilities.
However, the purely a 'Cloud-native' approach to Endpoint Security has also emerged. Where the entire endpoint security solution is built 'in' and 'for' the cloud. These cloud based solutions still allow you to remotely monitor and manage endpoints through a centralized management console that lives in the cloud and connects to devices remotely through an agent on the endpoint. These agents can work with or independently to provide security for the endpoint, even if it does not have internet connectivity for some time. These solutions further leverage your security controls and policies based in cloud, to maximize security performance beyond the traditional perimeter. Thus, they are removing silos and expanding administrator reach.
With the endpoint set up properly, the cloud solution pushes updates to it whenever necessary, authenticates login attempts that are made from it, and administers corporate policies directly.
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Endpoint Security vs. Antivirus
Since we are talking in terms of solutions, you can here understand the basic difference between these solutions and Antivirus software.
Antivirus software still are installed directly on endpoints. They detect malware by scanning files and directories (of the endpoint) to discover patterns that match the definitions and signatures of a virus. They can also only recognize known threats and must be updated to detect the latest malware strains. Antivirus deals with one single endpoint that is in question...
But Endpoint Security is fundamentally different from the approach of antivirus software. Instead of protecting an individual device, Endpoint Security is concerned about protecting the entire business network, including all of the endpoints connecting to it. Right?
Antivirus solutions protects you from malware that is included within your businesses’ database of 'known' threats. But sophisticated threats typically do not feature a traditional signature, which could leave your business vulnerable. Endpoint security solutions take a more holistic view that protects your business from threats, such as data loss, fileless and signature-less malware, and phishing attacks, in addition to known risks.
An antivirus solution operates as a single program that performs a specific function. But an endpoint security approach offers the important advantage of 'integration,' whereby various solutions are included within a suite that can be easily integrated for more comprehensive security protection. Endpoint security solutions connect to the cloud and update automatically, ensuring your users always have the latest version available to them. Endpoint security also utilizes advanced technologies such as behavioral analysis that enable businesses to detect threats based on suspicious behavior from external and internal sources.
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Extended Canvas of Endpoint Security
All your endpoints are all exposed to humans (users) on a constant basis. In many cases, a breach is accidental—a result of a simple error. Even good employees may unintentionally leave their device unattended while they are still logged in to a sensitive area, they may leave a password on a desk, or access an unsecure network, e.g., one at an airport or a public hotspot. The overarching promise of Endpoint Security, is to protect your organisation from attacks resulting from both carelessness and intentional, planned breaches. In order to fulfill this promise, modern Endpoint Security takes an extended and expanded approach to information security, by incorporating the number of security features, as given below:
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Data Classification
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Data Loss Prevention
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Sandboxing
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Endpoint Encryption
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Network Access Control
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Insider Threat Protection
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IoT Security
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Secure Email Gateways
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Browser Isolation
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URL Filtering
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Cloud Perimeter Security
The client agents of your endpoint security solution can very well be capable of :
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Reporting device status information
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Enforcing application control,
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Universal Serial Bus (USB) control,
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firmware upgrading,
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URL filtering policies
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Providing malware protection
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Facilitating secure and encrypted connections
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Sandboxing suspicious files
Though I am tempted to finish this post here, but I will not do that. Because this is a great opportunity to share the following pieces of information with you.
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Core Functionality of an Endpoint Protection Solution
1. It has next-generation Antivirus for 'prevention.'
Traditional antivirus solutions detect less than half of all attacks. They function by comparing malicious signatures, or bits of code, to a database that is updated by contributors whenever a new malware signature is identified. The problem is that malware that has not yet been identified, or is 'unknown' malware, it is not in the database.
There is a gap between the time a piece of malware is released into the world and the time it becomes identifiable by traditional antivirus solutions. Right?
Next-gen Antivirus are capable of closing this gap, by using AI and machine learning, to identify new malware by examining more elements, such as file hashes, URLs, and IP addresses.
2. It has a powerful EDR component for 'detection.'
Since prevention is not enough always, you defenses may not be perfect. Some sinister attacks will always make it through your network defenses and penetrate your network. It is an irony that attackers are still free roam around within your network for days, weeks or months. Take the example of Solarwind's breach recently, where attackers were free to roam around (potentially) in corporate networks of more than 18000+ companies for more than 7-9 months before the breach was identified.
The onus of detecting the breaches is squarely on the companies, if they want to stop these “silent failures” by finding and removing attackers quickly. That's the point where your Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solution must provide you continuous and comprehensive visibility into what is happening on your endpoints in real time.
My advice to you is that you would be better off, if your company look for EDR solutions that offer advanced threat detection and investigation and response capabilities, including incident data search and investigation, alert triage, suspicious activity validation, threat hunting, and malicious activity detection and containment, etc.
3. You have Managed Threat Hunting capabilities.
Not all attacks can be detected by automation alone. You would need the expertise of trained security professionals or analysts in order to detect today’s sophisticated attacks. If your inhouse security analysts team is not capable of doing this job, then your company must find a reliable security partner offering you, Managed Threat Hunting.
Managed threat hunting is conducted by elite security teams that learn from incidents that have already occurred, aggregate crowdsourced data, and provide guidance on how best to respond when malicious activity is detected.
4. It relies heavily upon integration of Threat Intelligence.
It is a cat-n-mouse game between security professionals and threat actors. In order to succeed against cyber adversaries, your teams need access to up-to-date threat-intelligence. If possible, your threat-intelligence integration should strive to achieve a degree of automation in the process of triage and investigation of security events, with the goal of obtaining substantial knowledge of the event within minutes...
It should be capable of generating 'custom' indicators of compromise (IoCs) directly from the endpoints to enable a proactive defense against future attacks too.
There should be a human element as well, comprised of expert security researchers, threat analysts, cultural experts, and linguists, who can make sense of emerging threats in a variety of contexts.
All above mentioned components would deliver you a very sound endpoint security apparatus to your organisation!
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With thanks,
Meena R.
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This Article Was Written & published by Meena R, Senior Manager - IT, at Luminis Consulting Services Pvt. Ltd, India.
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