• August 17, 2023
  • Catagory Identity Management

Implement These Key Technologies to Improve Your Cybersecurity

By : Justin Folkerts

As attack surfaces flourish and put identities and endpoints under increasing threat, there are several key cybersecurity technologies you can’t do without.

The good news is that even though managing security can seem overwhelming in today’s dynamic digital landscape, many of these cybersecurity technologies are being integrated and consolidated to improve management and overall visibility.

Manage and protect your endpoints

With the maturation of the internet of things (IoT) and a hybrid workforce, you must make protecting endpoints a priority. Endpoint detection and response (EDR) enables you to detect and respond to advanced threats by using behavioral analysis to detect attacks in real time. It allowes security analysts to proactively detect and respond to ransomware and other attacks that signature-based antivirus applications tend to miss.

Endpoint protection platforms (EPPs), meanwhile, enable you to integrate your technology stacks so that you can scale and cover your ever-growing number of endpoints, as well as handle newer types of threats, including the latest malware. EEPs are leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to anticipate threats before they can gain a foothold within your network.

Unified endpoint security (UES) pulls together various endpoint security tools into a single platform so you can better protect all your endpoints, including servers, PCs, and mobile devices. The unification provided by UES improves overall visibility.

One of the most common endpoints today are mobile devices, which be protected with mobile threat defense (MTD) to thwart real-time zero-day threats, phishing, and other attack techniques that look to steal identities and gain privileged access.

Secure the edge

Because most organizations have seen a proliferation of endpoints, they are likely grappling with the ramifications of edge computing, including the cybersecurity challenges it raises. Coupled with the increase in cloud computing, it’s important to implement a secure access service edge (SASE) framework, which combines software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) and Zero Trust security solutions into a unified cloud-based platform.

SASE securely connects users by giving them access based on their identity and devices, securing them no matter where they work. SASE is cloud-native, delivering both infrastructure and security solutions via the cloud, protecting all edges whether it is physical, digital, and logical.

A secure service edge (SSE) protects Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), web, and private applications by integrating a secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB) and zero-trust network access (ZTNA) into a single cloud platform. SSE is another example of platform that unifies different tools to simplify management, as well as better support remote users.

Confirm identities

Authorized user access must be robust, which is why micro-segmentation is a critical cybersecurity practice. It limits lateral movement during a breach by segmenting workloads by identity, so that even if a threat actor obtains access through compromised credentials, there’s only so many places they can go, thereby mitigating the impact of the attack.

Because critical identity systems are increasingly vulnerable, it’s also critical to implement identity threat detection and response (ITDR) to safeguard your identity infrastructure from sophisticated attacks.

The cybersecurity stack is getting more complex and must scale with the rest of your IT infrastructure and cloud deployments. A managed service provider with a focus on security can help evaluate your immediately requirements for bolstering your cybersecurity as well as implement a long-term strategy that aligns with your business goals.

  • March 16, 2021
  • Catagory endpoints

What to look to for in an endpoint protection platform

By : Sanjeev Spolia

In the era of remote work, having a robust endpoint protection platform (EPP) in place is even more critical for maintaining network security. If you’re struggling to scale up to effectively secure each and every endpoint, you need to consider a cloud-based solution.

Even after many employees return to the office post-pandemic, a cloud-based EPP will continue to be essential for safeguarding organizations that have a great deal of remote workers because it makes it easier and more cost-effective to protect any workstation regardless of location, whether it’s desktop or laptop computer, or a smartphone or a tablet.

Prevention is just the beginning

An EPP is more than just anti-virus—it combines next-generation antivirus with more advanced security tools that leverage detection technologies such as signature matching, behavioral analytics, anomaly detection, and machine learning.

While different EPP offerings vary in features and functionality, there are a few things that should be included in any solution you may be considering. For starters, it should be able to prevent bad things from affecting your systems, such as malware and ransomware attacks, by applying behavioral analysis and machine learning to ward against file-based and fileless malware. It should also provide a great deal of endpoint control, including the ability to configure firewalls, ports, and devices.

But while prevention is table stakes in an EPP, you should be looking for more proactive capabilities if you’re to keep pace with the threats to your cybersecurity

Be more responsive

You shouldn’t just settle for comprehensive detection capabilities in an EPP. Because there are so many threat vectors to manage, you want to be able to respond automatically and effectively whenever possible.

To this end, EPP solutions are adding detection and response (EDR) capabilities so that you can detect, investigate, and remediate through automation capabilities, while also having the ability to customize the platform for your environment. Today’s EPP and EDR platforms recognize that the sheer volume of security alerts are far more than cybersecurity analysts can address without being able to automate some tasks.

Ideally, you want to streamline the number of tools implemented by your cybersecurity team—one per category is enough, although it’s fine if you want to take a best-of-breed approach rather than a single solution. However, having multiple firewall products to manage creates more problems than it solves. Open source solutions may also make sense because you can leverage the community support optimize them for more effective security. You should also keep the door open for integration with third-party solutions that add specific capabilities you need to secure your environment.

Ideally, an EPP implementation should not only improve security but also productivity of your IT staff, which is why it’s important to avoid complexity.

Simplify security with a partner

An EPP doesn’t have to be yet another costly cybersecurity implementation that must be maintained and managed. Cloud-based solutions facilitated by a managed service provider along with their team can help with detection and incident response, and even proactive activities such as hunting and penetration testing.

For smaller organizations, tapping into the expertise of a managed security services and availing itself the capabilities of a modern, cloud-based EPP can go a long way to keeping up with endpoint security requirements and mitigating the threats that come with a remote workforce.