Endpoint Vulnerabilities Can Be Disastrous for Organizations

In today’s dynamic business world, conventional centralized security systems are no longer reliable for defending dispersed IT environments. This brings endpoint security to the fore as threat actors have been targeting endpoints more often to breach an organization’s defences. Endpoint devices such as laptops, point-of-sale systems, virtual environments, smartphones, tablets and routers may often be more susceptible to cyberattacks because an organization’s traditional security measures do not adequately protect them.

• Cover all of the access points to your environment:

Endpoints are gateways to an organization’s networks and come in various flavours. Hackers are capitalizing on that diversity to launch increasing endpoint-focused attacks. These reasons illustrate the importance of taking endpoint security seriously:

1. Increase in the remote workforce: The internet has made remote work pretty darn easy, and more and more organizations are adopting a work-from-anywhere policy. While this arrangement sounds ideal, it exposes organizations to many vulnerabilities that can lead to cyberattacks.
2. Enhanced manual intervention: The old saying, ‘To err is human,’ can be a bane for endpoints. Employees may make mistakes like interacting with phishing emails and downloading malware on their devices, making endpoint protection essential for organizations.
3. Endpoints are used for various networks: Although most companies limit the networks their employees can access, every employee does not adhere to them strictly. And a company’s defence is only as strong as its weakest link. Cybercriminals can get through a company’s network even if one of the employees accesses a malware-laden network. That’s why endpoint monitoring and protection are essential.
4. Increase in insider threats: As insiders are privy to business-critical data, any loss can be detrimental to an organization. According to Verizon’s 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report, malicious employees contribute to 20% of data breaches. The attacks that insiders are involved in are, on average, ten times bigger than those conducted by external actors. An organization cannot protect its resources from insider threats without proper endpoint security measures.

• How can endpoints be protected?

Organizations can effectively protect their endpoints via network and device-level defences. At the network level, organizations can stipulate security policies about the authorization of access to restrict unauthorized access to their network. Also, organizations must ensure that all their endpoints are updated with the latest security measures to ensure hackers cannot leverage a vulnerability. To minimize human error, security awareness training can ensure that employees do not interact with malicious content or divulge their credentials to hackers. An effective security awareness training program helps organizations significantly reduce the chance of an employee action leading to disaster.

In addition, endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions can help organizations monitor, control and protect their endpoints against incoming cyberattacks. Here are some of the essential features of an effective endpoint protection solution:

1. Anti-malware: Endpoint protection solutions should detect and prevent malware from entering an organization’s systems before employees can interact with it.
2. Behavioural analytics: Behavioural analytics is essential for endpoint protection solutions as many malware variants, such as ransomware, have a typical behavioural pattern that makes them detectable without signatures.
3. Firewall and application control: The firewall and application control feature enables network segmentation and traffic blocking based on security policy and application-specific rules.
   URL filtering: URL filtering helps block malicious and inappropriate websites, saving organizations from phishing attacks and improper web usage on corporate devices.

• Datto EDR protects your endpoints effectively:

Datto EDR provides effective endpoint detection and response in an affordable, easy-to-use, manage and deploy package. It provides advanced threat detection to help organizations detect and mitigate threats to reduce potential damage. Unlike other EDR products built for large-scale enterprise teams, Datto EDR is purpose-built for MSPs. That eliminates many major EDR issues, such as high-cost, management complexity and alert fatigue. Each alert comes with a quick, easy-to-execute set of response guidelines to support cybersecurity teams in isolating infected hosts, terminating processes and collecting additional evidence.

As many as 77% of advanced threats bypass up-to-date antivirus products. Datto EDR enables you to detect and respond to sophisticated attacks. With its built-in continuous endpoint monitoring and behavioural analysis, MSPs deliver comprehensive endpoint defence:

1. Demonstrate Your Value: The Datto EDR dashboard provides insight into the suspicious behaviour detected and stopped on your customers’ endpoints. Communicating this information to them will keep your value to your client top-of-mind.
2. Eliminate Zero Day Threats: With new threats being developed and released into the wild daily, rest assured knowing that even the most advanced threats are caught by Datto EDR.
3. Focus on What Matters: You don’t have to be a security expert to get security expertise. Datto EDR Smart Recommendations ™ eliminate alert fatigue, empowering you to focus on what matters most.
4. Improve Security Compliance: Datto EDR highlights intelligent recommendations for security best practices to simplify standard security compliance. Many cyber insurance policies require minimum endpoint protection standards.

Source: ID Agent