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What is endpoint security?

Endpoint security is an approach taken to protect end user devices and ensure they are safe to connect to corporate networks. End user devices can include laptops, smartphones, tablets, and desktops.

Whenever end users connect their device to an organization’s network, they create an entry point that can create a security threat. An endpoint security solution ensures users follow specific security management protocols before their devices can access an organization’s resources in the corporate network.

While endpoint security was once focused on antivirus software and device-specific solutions, modern endpoint security strategy adopts a zero trust security model. This model focuses on securing the entire user rather than only their devices or endpoints, such as adding identity management protocols before granting access to the enterprise network.

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Why is endpoint security important?

To improve the employee experience, many organizations have adopted BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) practices to give employees their choice of devices. However, any employee device that accesses the corporate network is a possible entry point for attackers, especially if that device is lost or stolen. Also, as companies allow more employees to work remotely, they may use public or home Wi-Fi connections that lack network security. Due to these changes, the increasing number of devices connecting to corporate networks has increased the security risks that organizations face. A lack of endpoint security can expose organizations to the risk of data breaches and not complying with government regulations or service agreements.

Making matters worse, the proliferation of connected devices in the Internet of Things (or IoT) has also increased endpoint security risks. The widespread use of IoT endpoints are often ripe targets for advanced threats because their wide proliferation makes it difficult to effectively secure them all.

This increase in endpoints means IT departments have to protect a larger attack surface from data breaches, malware, and other cybersecurity risks. Because these threats go after endpoints rather than the network itself, a centralized security platform is often not enough to protect organizations. The best solution is a comprehensive endpoint security approach that includes threat detection, device management, data leak protection, and user behavior analytics.

How do you secure and manage an endpoint?

To secure an endpoint, IT needs to ensure that a device can only access your network or company resources if it is used by an authorized user for approved tasks. While access security tools like two-factor authentication can help prevent unauthorized users from using an endpoint to access sensitive data, it’s also important to protect against internal bad actors.

To manage all endpoints, IT needs to be able to monitor user activity on each endpoint and recognize whether users are behaving suspiciously—before they cause data breaches. Because of the sheer number of endpoints in most organizations, it’s important that IT can monitor and manage all endpoints from one central console. In addition, taking a proactive approach to endpoint management often requires machine learning and behavioral analytics to stop bad actors immediately and automatically.

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Endpoint security best practices

Because every organization has different device and employee needs, no approach to endpoint security is the same. However, there are best practices to implementing endpoint security across an organization:

  1. Discover: Implementing endpoint security begins by discovering and identifying all devices connected to a company’s network. IT should use endpoint detection and response to monitor all new device connections, paying special attention to those they do not recognize. These unknown connections could be a sign of an attacker attempting to enter the organization’s network.
  2. Inventory: Once IT has discovered all endpoints on their network, they need to inventory which versions of the OS, firmware, and apps are running on each of these devices. This gives IT visibility into how endpoint devices function on the network as well as any known software vulnerabilities that need to be patched.
  3. Monitor: Now that IT has visibility into the endpoints on its network, IT should centrally monitor these devices and their files to recognize any changes. By using a single dashboard to unify all endpoint oversight, IT can use machine learning and security analytics to detect unusual behavior across their infrastructure.
  4. Protect: When suspicious activity is detected on the network, a strong endpoint security solution will proactively shut down access to that device before a breach occurs. This behavior-focused approach protects the organization without preventing employees from using the devices they want to get their work done.

The most comprehensive approach to endpoint management is to unify all business apps and tools inside a secure digital workspace. This simplifies the employee experience and makes it easier for IT to gain holistic visibility into every device and endpoint across the organization.

Citrix solutions for endpoint security

As more and more employees work remotely, IT needs a way to secure access to applications. Citrix Secure Private Access lets you deliver zero trust network access (ZTNA) access to all corporate apps, while giving employees the flexibility they need to securely work on any device.