In the good old days of IT security there was Anti Virus and that protected you from most security risks. Time past, and the new kid on the block was Anti Malware, Malware wasn’t picked up by the traditional Anti Virus software so you needed 2 products. This brought about the term “Endpoint Security”, mainly 2 products merged together (Anti Virus and Anti Malware) into one.
The world was again calm, but then the ongoing monetisation of cyber crime meant things started to become far more complicated and riskier for businesses, often in fact at too fast a-pace for Endpoint Security to keep up.
What Is Endpoint Protection?
Endpoint Security is a gatekeeper to your systems, using in most cases a definition list to see what programs or scripts are allowed and what should be blocked. With the rate of change being so fast, and cyber criminals often finding other ways to gain access there was more and more risk that the bad guys would create code that could in some instances get around the Endpoint Security in place. Couple this with an ongoing move to cloud services like Microsoft 365 in lots of cases your Endpoint Security was unaware that malicious activity may be happening all around it – a big problem for businesses grew.
What Are the Limitations of just Endpoint Protection?
While endpoint protection solutions are essential for any business, they have some limitations that make them insufficient for comprehensive cyber security. Some of these limitations are:
- Endpoint protection solutions are reactive, not proactive. They rely on signatures and heuristics to identify known threats, but they may not be able to detect new or unknown threats that use advanced techniques, such as polymorphism, obfuscation, or zero-day exploits.
- Endpoint protection solutions are not enough to protect against human error or insider threats. They cannot prevent users from clicking on phishing links, opening malicious attachments, or sharing sensitive information with unauthorised parties. They also cannot detect or prevent malicious or negligent actions by employees, contractors, or third-party vendors who have access to your network.
- Endpoint protection solutions are not enough to protect against network-based attacks. They cannot prevent attackers from exploiting vulnerabilities in your network infrastructure, such as routers, switches, servers, or cloud services. They also cannot prevent attackers from intercepting or altering the data that flows between your devices and your network.
What Is EDR, MDR?
Welcome to the world of Endpoint Detection and Response and its team mate Managed Detection and Response. EDR works by constantly monitoring and analysing your endpoints (computers and servers) and MDR works in the same way but instead of endpoints its looking after your managed platform – in most cases this is your Microsoft 365. EDR and MDR constantly watches your system and estates for any suspicious activity, triggering alerts if something is detected. We couple this with a SOC (Security Operations Centre) which means these alerts are then rapidly handled by the SOC service and either rectified or stopped in their tracks.
In b2b we are all about making IT as simple and straight forward as possible, we translate IT risk into business decisions articulated in a way you can engage with and understand.
EDR and MDR is something we feel every business needs, and as a Managed Service Provider we pick the best in class solutions for our clients. If your worried about your cyber security position then please contact us today and we would love to help you 🙂
