Gartner Predicts the Future of Endpoint Security
What’s Coming for Endpoint Security?
Gartner recently completed an in-depth review of the entire endpoint security landscape. The analyst firm delved into every facet of endpoint security to determine which technologies were rising, which were being eclipsed by more modern approaches, and what the future holds.
Researchers pointed to unified endpoint security (UES) and unified endpoint management (UEM) as being among the major waves of the security future. While these technologies are still evolving they are rising rapidly in adoption as more and more vendors manage to unite their various endpoint offerings under one fully integrated umbrella.
Traditional Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
Traditional endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems have become a popular way to protect enterprise endpoints from attacks and breaches, and as a means of achieving secure remote access. Some vendors are adding to EDR capabilities via extended detection and response (XDR) suites.
What is the difference? EDR focuses on protecting endpoints only. XDR takes a wider view. It integrates security across endpoints, cloud computing, email, and other areas. This is particularly important in light of the larger trend of more and more people working from home. XDR offers a broader zone of protection.
Gartner notes that endpoint security innovators have been focusing on better and more automated prevention, detection, and remediation of threats. One of the goals is to protect endpoints while enabling access from any device to any application over any network and with a good user experience in terms of performance and low latency.
Vendors are introducing, for example, UES and UEM suites that combine elements of EDR, endpoint protection platforms (EPP), and mobile threat defense (MTD) into one integrated toolset. UES suites focus on endpoint security and provide some management features. UEM, on the other hand, stresses management and typically includes good security functionality, too.
What’s changing?
The lines are blurring. These products can secure workstations, smartphones, and tablets and manage it all from a single console. They offer a way for businesses to achieve some degree of vendor consolidation, at least on security. Instead of having one vendor for patch management, another for EDR, another for mobile device management, and others for MTD, EPP, and other functions, it can all be rolled into one consolidated system.
According to Rob Smith, an analyst at Gartner, UES offers plenty of benefits and is now on the radar for up to 20% of its target market.
“Unified endpoint security brings together endpoint and protection, as well as MTD under a unified platform, with tight links to endpoint management infrastructure for end user facing devices, such as Windows 10, macOS, iOS, Android and — in some cases — also extending to Linux and Chrome OS,” said Smith. “UES has the potential to be a single best-of-breed solution for all endpoint security, provided that the unified product’s cross-device data analytics is strong.”
He recommends that organizations evaluate UES adoption based on three goals:
- Extend detection and response beyond the laptop and desktop to mobile devices.
- Unify endpoint security and management workflows from a single console.
- Allow for complex, posture-based policy application along with supporting technology like secure remote access.
Organizations, therefore, should harness tools such as UES and UEM to consolidate all endpoint security onto a single suite to lower support costs and improve threat prevention and detection, and incident response.
The Power of Syxsense
Syxsense Enterprise bring the best of UEM and UES together. It is the world’s first Unified Security and Endpoint Management (USEM) solution, delivering real-time vulnerability monitoring and instant remediation for every single endpoint in your environment, as well as IT management across all endpoints.
This represents the future of threat prevention. Breaches can now be detected and remediated within one endpoint solution. It can scan for all vulnerabilities on any device, block communication from an infected device to the internet, isolate endpoints, and kill malicious processes before they spread.
Syxsense Enterprise can automatically prioritize and deploy OS and third-party patches to all major operating systems, as well as Windows 10 feature updates. IT and security teams can use Syxsense Enterprise to collaborate on the detection and closing of attack vectors. It offers management, control, and security for any and all desktops, laptops, servers, virtual machines, and mobile devices.
