A guide to understanding Advanced Endpoint Protection

What is Advanced Endpoint Protection (AEP)?

Advanced Endpoint Protection, abbreviated AEP, refers to the next-generation software solution for securing your devices from evolving threats. Incorporating novel security tools and integrating them into one solution enables IT and Security teams to not just identify and respond to incidents faster but also reduce the risks of a data breach.

How are standard and advanced solutions different?

Though both solutions provide protections for devices used to access enterprise resources, the capabilities available to AEP solutions offer greater granularity when responding to and handling security incidents.

Comparatively, both standard and advanced solutions offer prevention of known malware threats, for example. However, identifying unknown threats requires threat-hunting which, on standard offerings, is a largely manual, time-consuming process performed by specially trained security professionals. With AEP however, leveraging machine learning (ML) technology empowers administrators of all skill levels to automate the intelligence-gathering and threat-hunting processes, cutting down response and remediation times drastically (more on the specific features that set AEP apart in the next section).

What are the features of AEP?

As mentioned in the previous section, advanced tooling is what separates AEP from standard solutions. Let’s take a deeper dive into the tools that put the “advanced” in advanced endpoint protection.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in threat detection

Before, we mentioned how ML is used in AEP to streamline and automate threat-hunting. This is just one benefit of incorporating AI technologies to augment your security stack. The power of AI for cybersecurity lies in its blazing-fast data gathering and analysis capabilities.

“AI improves its knowledge to “understand” cybersecurity threats and cyber risk by consuming billions of data artifacts.” — IBM

It is from this foundational ‘understanding’ that AI and ML can be utilized by AEP to:

• Gather threat intelligence and compare its findings to other sources of truth
• Discover malicious code by analyzing patterns and behavioral analytics
• Learn about the threats and attack heuristics to better predict trends
• Prioritize responses to best protect endpoints based on formulations
• Catalog findings index and share threats and attacks knowledge globally

Enhanced Detection and Response (EDR)

Endpoint detection and response technologies identify behaviors and threats that are suspicious or malicious to close security gaps. This is similar to malware protection in standard endpoint security, alongside active monitoring, data aggregation and reporting features that alert administrators to issues detected.

What differentiates EDR in AEP is how integration adds dimensions of visibility to security protections, providing admins with:

• Telemetry data that is enriched with additional analysis from cloud-based tools, like AI
• Gathered logging data may be forwarded to a database, or SIEM solution, for centralized storage and further analysis
• Deep insight into device health in real-time and auditing compliance goals to detect incidents faster
• Threat intelligence data that is shared with management and identity solutions holistically across your infrastructure
• Advanced incident response workflows shorten the timeframes: from discovery to containment

Threat-hunting and remediation processes

Before, we mentioned how ML is used in AEP to streamline and automate threat-hunting. This is just one benefit of incorporating AI technologies to augment your security stack. But it’s a necessary one given the growth of AI-powered technologies, coupled with the evolution of threats, increasing attack frequency and the continued shortage of talented security professionals.

The fact remains that even with a highly skilled security team on hand, each of the other factors alone has contributed to overwhelming human threat hunters. With a clear need that requires being able to process data in real-time to perform functions faster and more efficiently than human limitations permit, AEP’s integrated design helps maintain equilibrium by empowering security teams to:

• Automate the “low-hanging fruit” of your threat-hunting process
• Utilize available resources more efficiently and thus, more effectively to mitigate risks proactively — not reactively — after irregularities are detected
• Focus on performing granular tasks that require human cognition and input
• Remediate affected endpoints using automated workflows tuned to their baselines and compliance goals
• Share data findings among integrated tools to fortify protections while iteratively informing other processes in the security lifecycle

Deep integration with the security stack

The common thread that ties together all the endpoint security tools in AEP is integration. It is the core element that fuels the individual features and functions, allowing for comprehensive controls to combine and work together as one cohesive solution.

While different solutions implement integration to varying degrees, the most secure, modern method of sharing critical data between tools is by using an Application Programming Interface (API). AEPs using API for secure, rich data sharing allow organizations to:

• Streamline the gathering, management, storage and reporting of up-to-date telemetry data
• Facilitate the development of automated workflows, like advanced incident response tasks
• Synchronize management, identity and security solutions to ‘unlock’ features and workflow tasks that add layered protections to security plans
• Modernize protections based on Zero Trust models, requiring explicit device and credential health verification of each request
• Converge IT and Security teams to better respond to and refocus on securing endpoints accessing enterprise resources regardless of device or OS type from anywhere in the world