Endpoint Protection
Summary
This article describes the importance of endpoint protection and the types of threats an endpoint can be a victim to. It also gives insights on data leakage and offers possible solutions for protecting an endpoint.
The Importance of Endpoint Protection
Data leakage is a common event in many companies, that don’t spend their time and budget on developing proper cyber security systems for the sake of secure data transmissions, storage and in the era of third party cloud services, it is often a difficult challenge to keep confidential information inside the organization. For the purpose of solving this problem, companies have created several software products, that help preserving integrity and confidentiality in the work environment and preventing unexpected data leakage. In this study we will discuss different methods of endpoint protection, how they work and the types of threats, that are important to look for, when setting up a company environment or developing such a software ourselves.
Data Leakage
Trusting third party companies (agents) with handling confidential data has several advantages: partner companies may gain access to customer data, that can be done by using the same service as the distributor (data owner). This way not only reading, but also updating and altering data in any way can be more efficient, but can also lead to worse data quality, due to peturbation. One of the main goals of the agents is to keep the data quality as high as possible while also preventing data leakage via endpoints. This means the protection of computer networks, that are remotely bridged to client devices, such as mobile phones, laptops or tablets. Many companies are trying to ensure endpoint security by using a single, multi-purpose software solution, that enables administrators to setup a centrally managed security system, but there are also several specialized products on the market. 53% of the companies, that took part in the 2018 Insider Threat report have been victims of insider attacks more than once a year, which highly emphasises the importance of the usage of proper cyber security systems.
Endpoint Protection Platform
One of the best solutions to achieve endpoint protection is to use an Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP), which consists of several tools, that can protect our systems from unwanted intrusion, such as firewalls, antivirus systems and data encryption.
Endpoint protection platforms are software using signatures to ensure negative endpoint protection. They also have access to an own database, which stores signatures of collected threats and use it to match them with other signatures, which helps them detecting possible threats. An EPP also uses different services to monitor processes running in networks for the sake of malfunction, virus detection. Even though most attacks can be stopped by monitoring and signature matching, some viruses are still able to get in the system and that’s where the so-called Host-based Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS) takes action. It does not only wipe out malicious activities, but is also capable of deep behavioral inspection. The annihilation of threats, that already got into the system needs to be done as fast as possible, since the virus can spread really fast and take over the whole system.
Endpoint Detection and Response
This is one of the newest cybersecurity technology, which combines endpoint management solutions and endpoint antivirus systems to wipe out malicious activities. EDR are complex systems also designed to monitor the state of multiple devices at the same time in bigger security infrastructures. Since this technology uses a moderner approach to endpoint detection, machine learning also plays a huge part in the functionality of EDR systems using calculations and well-tested algorithms to catch several kinds of suspicious activities from ruining the infrastructure without the need for manually created signatures. When relying on this method, attacks can be detected not by analyzing the file system, but by interpreting and monitoring the system, focusing on its malicious activities providing stable, real-time capture and alerting solutions. Some examples of EDR technology are FireEye Endpoint Security and Symantec Endpoint Protection.