How many devices access your company’s network, and how secure are they? Organizations must ensure their networks remain safe, but without endpoint protection, that security all too often comes at the cost of flexibility and remote accessibility.
Fortunately, with endpoint protection tools and monitoring software, you can protect your network and maintain security while supporting remote access and hybrid work. With that in mind, let’s explore endpoint protection strategies, tools, and what makes it valuable for any organization.
What is Endpoint Protection?
Endpoint protection is the use of advanced security tools and processes to secure devices, including servers, computers, and mobile devices, from cyber attacks. Also known as endpoint security, endpoint protection can detect malicious activity and keep cyber criminals out of a corporate network, protecting company data and applications.
Endpoint protection is an essential part of any cybersecurity strategy, especially for organizations with bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies or a remote/hybrid workforce. Every connected device can provide bad actors with a point of ingress, but advanced endpoint protection can mitigate those risks.
Why is Endpoint Protection Important?
In today’s digital landscape, where employees can use their favorite devices when working from the office or remotely, endpoint protection tools are more important than ever. Unsecured endpoints can create security vulnerabilities, allowing hackers and other bad actors to access a company’s network or even leave the network open to insider attacks.
Endpoint protection guards against these threats by using multiple levels of security to protect devices and networks. This helps ensure employees can securely access the company network without increased risks.
How Endpoint Protection Operates
Endpoint protection uses a combination of multiple security features to detect, block, and respond to threats in real time. These include:
Antivirus, antimalware, and antispyware solutions
Firewalls
Intrusion prevention
Network access control
Network administrators can also use role-based access controls to restrict user access through endpoint authentication. In these cases, it’s recommended to use zero trust security, wherein default access is the most heavily restricted, and users need to be granted any further access to the network.
These features, when combined, create several layers of protection to keep networks and devices safe. This helps safeguard sensitive data across endpoints and ensure business continuity, even in the face of multiple threats.
Core Components of Endpoint Protection
As mentioned, endpoint protection is made of multiple security tools and solutions. So, let’s delve a little further into how they work together.
Firewalls protect your network from attacks by scanning and filtering any data that attempts to enter your network. They monitor and regulate traffic based on set rules and factors, such as IP addresses, ports, and company protocols, thus preventing unauthorized access.
Antivirus software scans systems, devices, and software for malicious code. When it detects viruses or malware, it isolates and removes it, keeping devices and networks safe both proactively and reactively.
Encryption is used when transmitting data. Essentially, it scrambles data while in transit between devices so that it's useless to anyone who attempts to intercept it. Once the data reaches its intended destination, it can be safely decrypted and read normally.
Endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools detect and investigate suspicious activity on network hosts and endpoints. They analyze logs, files, configuration data, and more to find anomalies and take action, keeping endpoints safe.
Together, these solutions create several layers of security that keep devices and endpoints safe at all possible points of entry or interception.
Endpoint Protection vs. Antivirus: Key Differences
While antivirus software is a key component of endpoint protection strategies, just using an antivirus tool isn’t enough to provide the multiple layers of security that endpoint protection requires.
Endpoint protection platforms provide a holistic approach to security, providing multiple layers of protection. This includes data encryption, threat detection, and remote management so IT teams can support devices from anywhere.
Antivirus software, on the other hand, does one job, although it does it very well. Its job is to identify, block, and remove viruses from a system, which, while nonetheless important, still provides little protection against compromised accounts, insider attacks, and other bad actors.
So while antivirus solutions are an essential part of any suite of endpoint protection tools, they are only part of the whole.
Top Benefits of Endpoint Protection Solutions for Cybersecurity
With all that said, what are the benefits of using an endpoint protection solution?
Advanced endpoint protection is essential for a secure IT infrastructure, as the many benefits of proper cybersecurity cannot be overstated.
First, implementing endpoint protection provides threat detection, enabling IT teams to identify and resolve potential threats or issues before they become a problem. Stopping threats at the source allows business operations to continue unimpeded.
Additionally, proper endpoint protection provides centralized management of your network and endpoints. This allows you to monitor and support multiple devices at once, making it easier to watch for suspicious activity and roll out updates and patches across devices.
Of course, this also allows IT teams to respond to incidents more quickly. The combined security tools and features enable teams to act fast when a problem occurs, minimizing both downtime and damage.
Altogether, this leads to a reduced risk of cyberattacks. Good endpoint protection strategies provide multiple layers of protection from malware and bad actors, so organizations have less to fear.
Use Cases of Endpoint Protection Strategies
While this all sounds great in theory, how does advanced endpoint protection work in practice? There are several use cases for endpoint protection tools and strategies that can help industries of all types. Use cases include:
Managing BYOD devices: As more and more businesses enable employees to work on the devices they prefer, whether in the office or on the go, the need to monitor and manage disparate devices has become essential.
Streamline updates: Endpoint protection tools make it easy to roll out security updates and patches to devices across the network.
Support remote work: Endpoint protection addresses the biggest security risks of remote work, allowing remote and hybrid employees to connect safely and secure their devices.
Data loss prevention: Endpoint protection tools can encrypt data in transit and monitor its transfer to ensure it stays safe from unauthorized access.
Endpoint detection and response: Monitoring and responding to threats in real time allows businesses to keep their endpoints safe across the network.
How to Choose the Right Endpoint Protection Platform
When you want an endpoint protection solution, it’s imperative to find one that meets your business needs. Consider these key factors when looking at your options:
Scalability: You need a solution that can scale to meet your growing business every step of the way.
Ease of integration: Does the solution easily integrate with your existing devices and network?
Ease of use: No matter how powerful a solution is, if it’s difficult to use, you won’t be able to get the full value out of it.
Real-time threat detection: Make sure you use a solution with a robust suite of tools, including the ability to detect and manage threats as they appear.
Compatibility: Not all solutions work with every device and endpoint; you must ensure your solution is compatible across your network.
Get Started with Advanced Endpoint Protection Using Splashtop AEM
If you’re looking for powerful protection across all your endpoints, Splashtop AEM (Autonomous Endpoint Management) has everything you need.
Splashtop AEM makes it easy to keep endpoints secure and compliant from a single console. You can automate routine tasks, roll out updates and patches, and enforce policies with ease, across all your endpoints. Splashtop AEM also includes real-time threat detection, automated response, and antivirus management.
As a result, organizations and IT teams can efficiently manage multiple devices while ensuring their networks are secure.
If you want even more security for your endpoints, Splashtop Antivirus helps protect your business and mitigate the risk of cyberattacks. It can be seamlessly managed and deployed across devices from within Splashtop, with customizable policies and advanced threat security.
Splashtop Antivirus includes multiple features designed to protect networks and endpoints, including anti-malware scanning, device scanning, firewalls, anti-phishing scanning, and alerts. With all these layers of security, companies can keep their endpoints secure at all times.
Learn more about Splashtop and get started now with a free trial.
