The "Crown Jewels" in any business is its data. And the most damaging and high-profile attacks of recent years have all targeted sensitive or critical data assets. It's not surprising, then, that the volume and scope of cyber attacks is changing rapidly and that much of the innovation that we have seen in cyber crime has been in finding new ways to get to the “home” of the data—the endpoint.
In 2015, Symantec detected more than 430 million pieces of malware compared with just over two million, six years previously. That represents over a million attacks a day. The days when you could build a wall around your data center and think that mitigated the risk are long gone.
Now, nearly half (43 percent) of ransomware infections occur inside the business, with cybercriminals often targeting individuals and the endpoints on which they rely. Whatever their approach, the ultimate destination for cybercriminal attacks is the endpoint. With mobile working and the proliferation of devices housing your data outside the corporate firewall, the endpoint is increasingly vulnerable.
So how do you protect the endpoint? With a multi-layered approach. You need prevention to avoid attacks, if possible; specialized protection to catch threats as they strike; and detection and response to put remediation measures in place when things go wrong.
This multi-layered protection needs to work across all four stages of an endpoint attack:
• Incursion – Where are the threats coming from?
• Infection – Which endpoints do I need to protect?
• Infestation – How will malicious code spread?
• Inoculation – How do I clean up after a breach?
Focusing on one area to the exclusion of another gives a false sense of security. It’s like putting superbolts on the front door and leaving the back door open.
There is a confusing array of endpoint protection systems available. Some solutions put the emphasis on specialized protection, with machine learning defending against previously unknown threats. That will only be as good as the machine is at learning (its source data and how it leverages it) and it doesn’t prevent attacks getting onto the network in the first place.
Similarly, other systems place the emphasis on inoculation. Ideally, of course, we would never need to remediate.
Join us at one of our technical roadshows in your region and you’ll see that Symantec takes a different approach. Our Next Generation Symantec Endpoint Protection is one complete solution that provides the most advanced protection on the market. New features of Symantec Endpoint Protection enable you to intercept malware even after it has penetrated the perimeter, while artificial intelligence defends your endpoints against previously unknown threats and zero-day attacks.
And it works. Independent testing shows Symantec Endpoint Protection blocks 100 percent of incursion attacks and leads the way in stopping infection attacks (99 percent). (Source: “Real world test for Drive by Downloads” & “Deliberate Downloads” from live domains hosting malware” by TASER)
You can find out first-hand how our Next Generation Symantec Endpoint Protection protects your business against the changing face of threat. Visit the Symantec Endpoint Protection Technical Roadshow on its way to a location, near you, soon.
For more insights, read:"Intended and Unintended Consequences of Innovation".