How Can 360 Smart Networks Help Your Company Achieve End Point Security?

How Can the Cloud Keep Your Data and Network Safe?

As a Crowdstrike partner in Atlanta, 360 is attuned to the need to protect your systems from various access points, including laptops, smartphones and other devices. This article will focus on the advantages of partnering with 360 to ensure security across all endpoints.

CrowdStrike delivers cloud-based endpoint security. This enables 360 to leverage artificial intelligence that gives our clients instant visibility into systems across the enterprise and helps us protect endpoints on all connected devices. Our team can deploy CrowdStrike Falcon in minutes to provide real-time intelligence.

What Are the Major Impacts of Cloud-Based Security Changes?

Businesses need solutions that include endpoint protection platforms (EPPs) that move their networks away from the more rigid client/server architectures into flexible cloud architectures. Endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions create a heavier workload than traditional EPP tools but provide additional visibility to assist in remediation efforts.

The EPP/EDR industry still doesn’t address the need to harden endpoints to shore up vulnerabilities and meet configuration management and integration needs.

What Recommendations Are Available to Remedy These Gaps?

360 follows CloudStrike’s recommendations for stronger risk management of network and endpoint security. We evaluate your cloud-delivered solutions, or proposed solutions, to ensure you’re getting the performance you expected. Your company should choose vendors, such as 360, that offer an agile cloud architecture and support a range of services, such as managed detection and incident response.

Here are a few other best practices that distinguish full-service managed service partners from other IT consulting firms:

• Provide integrated EPP solutions with EDR capabilities with the same data repository and management console
• Ensure the platform’s detection capabilities include advanced behavioral approaches to detect and block security attacks
• Assist clients in hardening the endpoint against common misconfigurations and vulnerabilities

What Are the Latest Strategic Management Assumptions?

By 2025, up to 70% of larger organizations will have EDR capabilities. It’s important to keep your systems secure from cyberattacks by adopting this stronger protection protocol.

Endpoint protection and detection is undergoing a transformation. Symantec, Trend Micro, Sophos, McAfee, and Kaspersky Lab have dominated the anti-virus market for two decades. The shift will be to new players specializing in cloud-based preventive solutions.

Three trends are driving this expansion in the industry:

• Companies are moving from client/server architecture to cloud-delivered services.
• Traditional approaches don’t address the sheer volume of portable executables used by attackers or the shift to fileless attacks.
• Prevention isn’t enough; risk management leaders need the tools to detect and respond to attacks.

In light of these trends, you should re-evaluate your company’s endpoint protection to address any deficiencies.

Why Are Companies Hesitant to Go to Cloud Security Solutions?

Companies are reluctant to adopt cloud security due to the regulatory and legal intricacies of storing sensitive data in a third-party data center. For most organizations, cloud vendors, such as 360 powered by Cloudstrike, have tighter security and considerable operational maturity. Despite the challenges, cloud solutions have the same compliance capability as on-premises security applications.

However, the concentration of data makes cloud solutions attractive targets. Prospective buyers must realistically evaluate the risks of breached data. Cloud vendors will continue to develop reporting about what types of data are safe in the cloud.

What Are Some Recommendations on Cloud-Based Data?

The first step is conducting a review of your company’s purchasing policy to find the barriers to adoption and make sure they are based on facts. Purchasing decision-makers should justify any on-premise endpoint solutions to ensure at least one cloud alternative was considered.

It’s a good idea to prioritize vendors that provide agile cloud architecture and the option to augment and replace services as needed. True cloud providers:

• Propose viable cloud-first solution after a thorough review of your current architecture
• Create a roadmap for additional capabilities to replace on-premise agents
• Have a data management experience and machine learning expertise
• Can protect your data and are API-driven

What Are the Advantages of EDR Tools?

EDR Tools increase visibility and improve response time to incidents and remediation. Endpoint detection and response systems are now foundational to EPP security solutions. However, EDR solutions need cloud capability to perform the analytical and intelligence functions in order to deflect attackers. Security vendors have to stay on top of these fields to retain their relevance.

So far, the EPP industry has yet to address the need for hardened endpoints with configuration and vulnerability management. Most threats still target well-documented weaknesses in applications and configurations. As the WannaCry threat confirmed, a simple configuration change can leave organizations vulnerable or keep them safe from attackers.

Why Hasn’t the Industry Tackled This Gap?

The EPP/EDR industry has yet to tackle this vital cause. Your company might separate the security function from patch and configuration tasks, as many do. Your team might use vulnerability assessment tools to detect threats. Perhaps you have a small to midsized company that doesn’t use these tools or separate roles strictly. In either case, your security leaders need to have a basic understanding of the vulnerability your organization faces. This allows them to take steps to harden endpoints. 360 consultants help companies of all sizes assess their threat levels and better protect their networks through cloud-based and on-premise solutions.

What Does 360 Recommend to Harden Endpoints?

EDR solutions are more sensitive to possible attacks, which means they generate more alerts — which can be overwhelming. Fortunately, automation is being developed by Microsoft and other vendors that should help trim down the number of notifications. As playbooks develop, automation will enable self-healing protocols to take some of the load off security and risk management teams. This capability can already be see in Android, Chrome OS and IOS endpoints.

Here are the Cloudstrike recommendations that 360 utilizes to protect customer endpoints:

• Favor EPP/EDR vendors, such as 360, that have the capability to find vulnerabilities in your system as well as identify common misconfigurations. This may involve an investment in solutions that can deliver this capability.
• Use Windows 10 migrations to control endpoints that drift away from safer configurations.
• Utilize Microsoft Security Score to condition the image hardening.

If you suspect your business could be doing more to prevent breaches, contact 360 for a comprehensive assessment of your current on-premise or cloud-based security options.