How to Choose an EPP Solution

An Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) is a fundamental component of malware and ransomware protection for organizations facing increasingly complex and frequent cyberattacks. The threat analysis and remediation capabilities of EPPs allow cybersecurity teams to avert the most common threats and empower security teams to remediate any successful incursions properly. 

Here’s what you need to know when considering an EPP solution.

What Is an EPP?

An EPP is an Endpoint Security solution deployed to endpoint devices like PCs, laptops, and mobile devices to detect malicious activity, prevent malware attacks and respond to cyberattacks and alerts. Ideally, an organization’s unified endpoint security framework includes an EPP with an Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solution to protect against cyber threats effectively. 

Whether an endpoint is within or outside the organization’s network, effective EPP solutions are generally cloud-managed, provide continuous monitoring and gathering of activity data, and can execute remote remediation steps. Cloud-native EPPs can also provide on-the-fly code analyses to detect and prevent malware from running.  

How EPP Works with EDR

In terms of handling malware, EPP solutions demonstrate what and when, while EDR explains the why and how. Tools like antivirus, anti-malware, data encryption, personal firewalls, intrusion prevention, and data loss prevention (DLP) fall under EPP; cutting-edge capacities like detecting and investigating security incidents and rectifying endpoints to a pre-infection state are the purview of EDR.

EDR solutions add extra protection to EPP solutions with threat-hunting tools for behavior-based endpoint threat detection. EPP and EDR provide robust endpoint security measures organizations need for a holistic approach to address traditional and advanced security threats. EPP processes operate with minimal supervision after initial installation and configuration. These systems complement each other, enabling EPP vendors to add EDR capabilities to their products and provide better protection.

What to Look for in an EPP Solution

An EPP platform should incorporate several integrated detection and remediation options. These should embrace the following: 

  • Credential theft monitoring
  • Web-based security
  • Rollback remediation
  • Malware scanning and blocking

When deciding on an EPP solution, consider the following criteria.

Real-Time Threat Data

EPPs should offer a consistently updated database of threats and threat actors. This data is used to prevent security incidents (as in malware and attack patterns) or to categorize and prevent composite attacks with some other data. When considering an EPP solution for your organization, ensure that the EPP provider has an independent security research team that draws data from other sources to expand its security coverage.

Integrative Framework

Endpoint security must work in tandem with the rest of the security stack and be capable of integrating with systems that give data about endpoints outside the corporate network, such as Mobile Device Management (MDM) and cloud monitoring services. 

Centralized Management

An EPP solution should offer a single point of contact for all endpoints and associated security technologies. Across the organization, there should be a single interface for configuration, alert management, insight into security incidents, and endpoint protection key performance indicators (KPIs), such as the number of security events identified and averted.

Cloud-Based

Organizations can host EPPs in a cloud environment like any other cloud-based security solution. However, a cloud-enabled EPP solution helps organizations integrate security for both on-premises and cloud-hosted infrastructure. Additionally, cloud-based EPP solutions have full, scalable functionality for preventing, detecting, and responding to threats to satisfy the expanding security needs of any organization.

A sophisticated cloud-based EPP delivers comprehensive and advanced monitoring with intuitive features such as remote issue resolution for security teams. The most attractive aspect of a cloud-native EPP is that all endpoints are monitored by a single, lightweight agent, delivering value more quickly with lower administration costs and simplifying product changes compared to traditional, on-premise deployments.

Artificial Intelligence

EPPs employ artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to perform real-time threat prediction and behavior analysis. The smartest EPPs transform endpoint security using an AI-based approach to event stream processing. The AI-based technologies in EPP solutions enable the identification of attacker actions in which they purposely strive to appear normal to conceal their techniques. The embedded AI approaches in EPP solutions demonstrate superior results in identifying invaders before exfiltration can occur.

Ease of Adoption and Use

EPP solutions offer all-in-one security solutions that make it easy for users to deploy and monitor security architecture from a single dashboard. Features that provide ease for endpoint users include Linux, Mac, and Windows platform support during the deployment of EPP, threat intelligence integration without a third-party tool, real-time threat detection, and visualization in one dashboard.

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