Secure Management of Remote Endpoints in the Wake of Covid-19
Business continuity was severely impacted by the pandemic and businesses had to rapidly shift to remote working culture. However, there are several challenges with the remote work culture and, one of them is to manage the security of endpoints. With employees working outside the professional physical space, securing these remote endpoints is the need of the hour.
What are remote endpoints?
A remote endpoint is a computing device that can be connected to a network without being nearby. A remote endpoint communicates continuously with the connected network. Some of the common examples of remote endpoints are Mobile devices, IoT devices, Servers, PCs, Tablets, and Workstations.
Endpoints can be used by:
- Employees to enter the IT infrastructure of an organization remotely. With endpoints like PCs and tablets, employees complete the business processes remotely.
- Customers to connect to the digital interface of an organization and browse listings.
- Attackers to enter the network of an organization and disrupt sensitive information.
Why endpoints are vulnerable?
Endpoints act as a point of entry for attackers as well as employees and customers. Cybercriminals use endpoints to execute malicious code and exploit the loopholes. Employees are connecting with the organization’s internal resources via remote endpoints that are vulnerable to cyberattacks. Cyberattacks can enter the organization’s internal network and gain access to sensitive data or high-value assets. Such an attack can degrade the service availability and reliability.
Organizations have been using antivirus systems to date for blocking cyberattacks. However, traditional antivirus systems cannot cope with the level of sophistication in modern-day cyberattacks. New solutions are being explored for reducing cybersecurity threats in the era of remote working. In the meantime, AI-led cyber security and compliance services are being preferred by organizations around the world. New-age technologies like AI and Machine Learning are playing a massive role in blocking sophisticated cyberattacks.
Action plan for secure management of remote endpoints
Now that you know about the shortcomings of traditional antivirus systems, you should look beyond it. Given modern-day cyberattacks on endpoints, an organization should follow these steps:
- Implement a behavior-centric security solution for your endpoints. A behavior-centric solution will quickly identify any anomaly on endpoints.
- Gain observability into the endpoints connected to your organization’s internal network. With rich observability, you can rigorously monitor the activities at endpoints.
- Cover all the endpoints that have access to your organization’s internal resources. It includes modern-day endpoints like IoT devices.
- Implement a centralized solution for monitoring all the endpoints connected to your internal network. You should be able to view the monitoring results under a single dashboard.
- Besides correlating the data centrally, you should also focus on security analysis for individual endpoints.
- Implement a cybersecurity solution that allows you to tackle known and unknown vulnerabilities at the endpoints. To reduce the manual workload, organizations are using AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations)for secure management of endpoints.
How AIOps is the solution for secure management of endpoints?
AIOps based analytics platforms can notify about current vulnerabilities at endpoints along with determining future threats. AIOps will boost automation in cybersecurity processes without hampering service availability. AIOps based analytics platforms are the perfect solution for rigorous monitoring of endpoints even when no one is at the organization’s premises. In the view of WFH culture, AIOps can help in maintaining business continuity and service availability. How AIOps enhances the security of remote endpoints is as follows:
- Rigorous monitoring: The biggest challenge is to monitor the endpoints outside working hours. An AIOps based analytics platform will monitor your endpoints without a break. It will record every bit of data that has passed through the endpoints. Even if you are using a cloud-based architecture where databases are wiped off the next minute, you can recall the data using AIOps. If an endpoint follows any abnormal path, it can be identified by AIOps platforms in real-time.
- Incident reporting: If a threat has occurred at one of your endpoints, you need to identify that endpoint quickly. Finding the endpoint responsible for an attack should be quick to decrease MTTD (Mean Time to Detect). If you decrease your MTTD, you will eventually decrease the MTTR (Mean Time to Resolve) for a cyberattack. AIOps-based real-time user monitoring tools can identify the interdependencies between endpoints to identify the root cause of a cyberattack.
- Proactive threat detection: An AIOps based analytics platform will study the vulnerabilities at endpoints closely to predict future threats. You can take proactive measures to reduce the vulnerability at endpoints.
- High collaboration: Are your IT teams able to collaborate and work together for removing endpoint security threats. AI-led cybersecurity and compliance services enhance the collaboration level between IT teams. With an AIOps based analytics platform, you can automate the feedback process. You can collect valuable feedback from your employees and customers to understand vulnerabilities at the endpoints.
Recent AI data analytics monitoring tools can monitor any endpoint that encounters your organization’s network. AIOps is also helpful for organizations that are using virtual desktop infrastructure solutions due to the recent WFH culture.
In a nutshell
If your organization has silos that are not sharing endpoint data, you cannot implement effective cybersecurity measures. AI data analytics monitoring tools disrupt the IT silos and help you in collecting data from endpoints. By the end of 2030, the global AIOps market will be worth more than USD 600 billion. Adopt an AIOps strategy for your remote endpoints!
