Ransomware is frightening. We’ve all seen what it can do and how much it can cost. But did you know that on average, ransomware payments hover around $200k and range from around $6000 to millions. While huge businesses might laugh at a $6000 pay-out, smaller businesses don’t see it that way. Money isn’t all you lose in a ransomware attack. You lose your good reputation and you might lose your customers! With over 4,000 ransomware attacks daily, it’s unlikely ransomware will never affect your business. Network security professionals advise a layered defense, and they are building this starting with endpoint security and endpoint, detection and response (EDR) tools.
What is an endpoint?
Endpoints are any device you can connect to the internet, and use to access an enterprise network. While PC’s, laptops and mobile phones immediately leap to mind, endpoints can be anything from an ATM or industrial machine to a medical device or smartwatch. In short, if it connects to the internet – it’s an endpoint and it needs endpoint security. If protecting an ever widening range of complex digital products sounds like a security nightmare, you’d be right. When reworking your security strategy, it’s important to use three tactics to create a layered defense.
- Segmentation of apps and virtual networks to reduce attack surfaces and stop any malicious programs from moving laterally.
- Encryption of the communications between users, applications, and the network to prevent data theft while in motion.
- Threat protection and intelligence that add context and indicators of compromise (IOCs) to watch out for into endpoint security or EDR tools improving detection of sophisticated attacks.
Why is Endpoint Security Important?
Let’s explore why endpoint security is so critical to enterprise.
- Protecting all endpoints – Endpoints come in a rainbow of types, brands and with a myriad of different functions and capabilities, and they must all be protected to ensure they work correctly, and to ensure the safety of any data passing through them.
- Securing remote workers – The COVID pandemic forced almost 70% of the world's workforce to work remotely, and 92% of these remote workers expect to continue working remotely at least once per week, while 80% say they will be working remotely 3 or more days per week. The entire remote workforce needs powerful endpoint security to ensure remote systems do not attack or infect organizational assets.
- Sophisticated threat protection: Endpoint security and EDR security must be as cutting-edge as the cyber-criminals they are trying to defend against. Automated threat protection is a must, as cyber-crime never takes a holiday.
- Protecting identity – Protecting user or employee identity is as important to the enterprise as it is to the employee him/herself. Compromised identity means the potential for compromised log-in credentials, and thus insider threat, a rising threat in the past few years.
What is Endpoint Security?
Endpoints are the devices we use to connect to the internet, including everything from mobile phones and tablets, to PCs and even smart watches. If a device can connect to the internet, it’s susceptible to ransomware attack, meaning that businesses should be in a constant state of alert. Endpoint security protects endpoints from attack or compromise from malware or other advanced persistent threats (APTs).
What is EDR?
Endpoint, detection, and response, or EDR, is a version of endpoint security that detects threats and infections already lurking within your network environment and responds to them. EDR solutions collect and monitor all endpoint data, narrowing in on what area of your network has been attacked, and working with other security devices to respond to the attacks, protecting the network and end users.
How does Endpoint Security Work?
Endpoint security and EDR security have the lofty goal of protecting all users and devices on the network, and all the data associated with them. It does this by monitoring and examining every file that enters the network, seeking out tell-tale, and often hard to spot signs of a malicious file. Endpoint security uses threat intelligence to compare files within the network with their database of confirmed threats, and also looks for signs of new variants or strains that might not be in the database yet.
An administrator console includes many EDR tools to control the security of all connected devices. When endpoint protection or EDR software is assigned to an endpoint, it performs updates and applies patches, administers security policies on that device, and authenticates the device and user when they sign into the network.
Application control is another element of endpoint security we can’t do without. Application control blocks users from running, accessing or downloading unsafe or suspicious applications that can exfiltrate or steal company data.
A great endpoint security or EDR solution will watch each individual device and user on the network, will detect ransomware and malware quickly, and will alert administrators to any other potential attacks on the horizon.
Sangfor Endpoint Secure
Sangfor Endpoint Secure is the next level for defending endpoints from ransomware. Using the Sangfor XDDR security framework, Endpoint Secure integrates tightly with Sangfor’s other security solutions including Next-Generation firewall (NGAF), secure web gateway (IAG), and Cyber Command threat hunting NDR platform, which all work together cooperatively to seek out threats throughout the network against endpoints and respond to them quickly. Endpoint Secure is highly flexible, scalable, and provides ease of management for administrators. More importantly, it has a unique and innovative ransomware honeypot deployed on every endpoint that has been proven to detect and stop ransomware with over 99.999% effectivity.
Endpoint Secure provides enterprise other next-gen functions include:
- Scheduled or on-demand vulnerability and security policy compliance scanning
- OS patch management
- Global threat correlation using Neural-X threat intelligence
- Compliance monitoring
- Enterprise asset tracking
- Cloud based sandboxing
- Anti-proxy detection and protection
Ransomware is here to stay, and whether you like it or not, you must be aware of the threat out there to your own welfare and that of your business. If you do nothing else, ask administrators today what network and endpoint security they have for you when you are using devices outside the office. Don’t wait. Ransomware is coming.
