A recent article published by CISO MAG states that “cybercrime will cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021, up from $3 trillion in 2015.” The article also suggests that cybercrime will be more profitable than the global trade of all major illegal drugs combined.
Now, throw in a global pandemic that has forced millions of workers to work from home, removing them from the reach of IT teams and manager supervision. In turn, criminal organizations and individual bad actors see a growing “available market” in terms of computing endpoints to attack. They see the coronavirus pandemic and resulting mobilization of the workforce as an opportunity to take advantage of cybersecurity weaknesses.
While businesses work to modernize their security systems, criminals respond by mutating and evolving older attacks while innovating to develop new threat vectors. With major security breaches frequently making the headlines, it seems like cybercriminals are more motivated than ever to get their share of stolen treasure.
Why Standard Security Won’t Cut It
With cybercriminals scaling operations and refining their strategy and tactics, businesses and organizations can’t rely on the same behaviors, processes, and antiquated protection of standard antivirus software. If your company still uses standard antivirus software to protect its network, you may suffer from the following vulnerabilities:
- Signatures– Antivirus software works on a database of signatures of known viruses. As the number of viruses continues to grow, so does the library of signatures to keep track of them. The challenge then becomes the frequency of updates to include the most recent signatures and the time it takes to develop those signatures. Additionally, the massive growth in the number of virus signatures forces the size of the antivirus database to grow at the same pace—running that kind of scanning on an older system can degrade performance.
- Alerts– Antivirus software will flash an alert if something matches a signature in the database, which is useful, but is anyone actually responding to that alert? By nature, the effectiveness of antivirus software relies on the staff that oversees it.
To protect against modern threats in scale, organizations need newer, more comprehensive security. Fortunately, recent developments have filled in the gaps left by traditional antivirus software.
Cloud-native Endpoint Protection: A New Solution
One way to think about the differences between endpoint security software and antivirus solutions is an evolutionary timeline. Antivirus was the way to go for a while, but as threats evolved, so did the need to find a new cloud-based approach to security to handle the changing threat scale and magnitude.
Endpoint security is the evolutionary response and looks at every device on the network as a potential gateway into the organization. It gives IT or the security team a way to manage and control each of those points centrally.
The Intrinsic Value of Endpoint Protection
Unfortunately, many organizations have not taken an intrinsic security approach regarding endpoints, servers, and network deployment. Intrinsic security doesn’t approach security as a bolt-on component. Instead, it views cybersecurity as an organic, fully-integrated process that exists at every level of operation.
How can your business achieve the vision of intrinsic security? Combining well-trained employees with the deployment of a cloud-native endpoint protection platform (EPP) will allow you to monitor and secure all endpoints from a single console. Furthermore, leveraging this software to conduct behavioral analytics will help you spot any anomalies and protect your network from any internal threats.
The Case for Comprehensive Cybersecurity
Cybercriminals aren’t taking a break. They see the potential value of their efforts, as evidenced in headlines on breaches around the world. In response, organizations have “doubled down” on their investment in cybersecurity tools to counter the evolving threat.
While these investments are a step in the right direction, using new technology but taking an old approach to cybersecurity leaves seams and holes for bad actors to slip through defenses. By embracing the concept of intrinsic security and having a holistic mindset of built-in defense, you can better protect your business assets and data.