Threats are evolving, but has your security stood still?

Traditional anti-virus products have done a great job of protecting businesses in the past, however as the threats evolve, these traditional products can no longer offer the levels of protection required.

Anti-virus products usually rely on signatures to detect threats and these signatures are updated regularly. However, the new breed of threats doesn’t use signatures and therefore can slip through undetected and it could take days, or even weeks, before you realise it.

This is the reason that companies who have up-to-date AV continue to experience big problems when it comes to cyber attacks, as seen in the recent WannaCry saga.

Endpoint Detection and Response

This is where Endpoint Detection and Response (or EDR as it’s commonly known) comes in, taking your organisation’s data security to the next level.

Anton Chuvakin first used the term in his work for Gartner in July 2013, explaining it as “the tools primarily focused on detecting and investigating suspicious activities (and traces of such) other problems on hosts/endpoints.”

As mentioned earlier, typical AV is a reactive concept, whereas EDR is proactive, predictive and works to identify advanced threats and never-before-seen malware, all of which are designed to slip past traditional defences.

Deploying EDR also provides you much more of a bird’s eye view into what’s taking place within your network at any given time, with McAfee outlining the following as primary functions of an EDR security system:

• Monitor and collect activity data from endpoints that could indicate a threat
• Analyse this data to identify threat patterns
• Automatically respond to identified threats to remove or contain them, and notify security personnel
• Forensics and analysis tools to research identified threats and search for suspicious activities

Do you need EDR?

Due to the pandemic, many of us had to work from home – and continue to do so to this day – accessing company files and data from personal devices. With the rise of sophisticated targeted attacks, every device that is used by employees in your organisation offers cyber criminals another potential route into your network, putting you at risk.

As EDR monitors those points of entry into your network, it can offer you greater peace of mind and the following benefits, outlined a recent PDF from Sophos:

The last word

Threats are changing and becoming more complex, which means your security system can no longer afford to stand still in today’s day and age. The days of buying an off the shelf anti-virus programme and installing it on your computer are now a distant memory, with proactive EDR systems offering much greater security to you.

The endpoint security market is currently worth an estimated £10bn globally and is on pace to reach over £17bn by 2028.

At Fifosys, we have an EDR solution that is fully managed and integrated into our Remote Monitoring and Management platform (N-able), which gives us a constant overview of the health of your machines.

The system is also integrated with our ticketing system so will automatically log tickets if an event needs further investigation. If you would like to learn more, please get in touch today and we’ll explain more about how we can help you.