Over the last 20 years endpoint security has altered fundamentally in many ways mirroring the evolution of the wider information security market, says Gregory Anderson, country manager at Trend Micro South Africa.

From the basic anti-malware scanners of the ‘90s to today’s sophisticated targeted attack detection products, the market has certainly come a long way but the question currently on the minds of CISOs everywhere is how to modernise to stay in touch with the latest threats.

A new white paper, “Securing endpoints against the next generation of attacks”, that Trend Micro commissioned from global research company Info-Tech Group explores what companies need to do to modernise their endpoint protection strategies and future-proof current investments.

As you grow so does your enemy
IT security teams are stretched to the limit in the current IT environment having to manage various security tools from multiple management interfaces. And they face a resilient and well-resourced enemy that has been drawn to cybercrime by the high-reward, low-risk spoils. The current cybercrime pool offers cybercriminals the tools they need to launch automated attacks at bargain prices on underground Internet forums. And this comes with an impressive ROI.

In addition to this, cyber-attacks are becoming increasingly targeted, persistent and surreptitious. Techniques like spear-phishing, social engineering, malware laden attachments, compromised URLs and zero day threats enable cybercriminals to infiltrate a targeted network and lay hidden for weeks if necessary, exfiltrating valuable data.

As companies grow and embrace BYOD and cloud, staff are becoming increasingly productive which is fantastic for business. But while productivity flourishes security teams are sent into a panic about locking down endpoint security. In other words a growing business means a growing attack surface.

Endpoint security matters
If you hope to hope to have a chance at defending your organisation against the next generation of cyber-attacks, you will need a plan. A worrying fact discovered by Info-Tech Research Group is that only 30% of IT organisations have consistently applied formal security standards for mobile devices, while 31% have none whatsoever. If organisations are this far behind they will quiver with fear in the face of the security threats that come with cloud.

I’m not saying that new technology is something to fear, in fact it is a tremendous opportunity, but it is detrimental that your business plans its defence. The Info-Tech report highlights that endpoint security needs to support the business, ensuring that data continues to flow through the organisation with minimum disruption while preventing any security gaps from appearing.

Here’s what Info-Tech recommends as the four key components of a modern endpoint protection strategy:
* Security beyond signature detection;
* `The ability to protect data on the move;
* Expanded platform integration; and
* Interactive security management interfaces.

Plan of action
First and foremost you need to implement a stealthy endpoint security solution within the business. Trend Micro’s Complete User Protection combines multiple capabilities under a single interface, including features like advanced targeted attack detection to spot and block the most insidious threats.

Modernising your endpoint protection strategy is another very important step. Key to the success of this is learning how to compile and catalogue all security applications, assessing your security applications and comparing functionality to identify gaps, determining how your security applications support your security initiatives and the consideration of an integrated solution, that is if you find significant gaps or misalignment with future security goals.

This may all seem rather overwhelming if you haven’t kept your endpoint security up to date. The sooner you start building your security army the better, cybercriminals are not going to give you a moment to build a last-minute defence and chances are, you will have lost valuable data before you even noticed they were there.