Trends driving endpoint security demand in a Work from Anywhere environment

Beware. As fast as businesses adapt to meet the growing demand for ‘Work from Anywhere’ (WFA), cyber criminals have evolved their attack strategies to capitalise on this new way of working, with a 41 percent increase in attacks since the beginning of 2021 and a 93 percent increase year over year¹. The threat is growing.

As your value-add ICT distributor, Dicker Data’s local, certified security experts work closely with our world-leading technology vendors to design, build, deploy and support compelling security solutions for your customers. Here we explore endpoint security trends and vendor tips every IT partner needs to know to protect customer endpoint security in the evolving WFA world.

1. Prevention is better then cure 

Being proactive about endpoint security is vital. As cybercrimes have become more sophisticated, vulnerable endpoints have become key targets and entry points.

Keeping up and understanding the evolving security and threat landscape is key to protection. As ongoing education is one of the most effective forms of frontline defense, Dicker Data provides free access to security training for partners and their end-users at both the pre-and-post-sale stages.

For partners, the first step is identifying their customer security posture. Dicker Data encourages partners to execute security audits to uncover vulnerabilities. We then work together and help design best practice solutions and provide additional technical training to address the customer security and threat landscape, leveraging vendor technologies and solutions to mitigate security risk.

Demonstrating the capability of our leading vendors and the capability of their solutions, Cisco’s Secure Endpoint currently protects more than 80 million endpoints and stops threats before the compromise occurs. Not only does this alleviate business risk and threat, it reduces incident downtime, response times and boosts operational protection.

But what about human error? While there’s only so much you can educate end-users about phishing links or cyber traps, it is harder to control and prevent. Forcepoint Endpoint Security Solutions protect users from security threats, while also pinpointing potentially risky behaviour and rogue insiders. It prevents users from accessing malicious URLs and downloads whilst the individual endpoint is off or on the local company’s network.

Essentially, the greater visibility partners have on customer endpoints, the better the response. NetWitness® Endpoint empowers partners with a detection and response solution that continuously monitors endpoints and provides deep visibility, powerful analysis of all threats and behaviour anomality for early threat detection within an organisation’s endpoint. This reduces “dwell time” with faster root cause analysis and actional insights into the complete attack lifecycle and incident response investigations. Dicker Data is RSA’s exclusive distribution partner.

2. Smarter solutions, smoother recoveries

Self-healing endpoints coupled with AI at the threat detection layer will become the go-to solution. With users working remotely and corporate IT environments more dispersed than ever before, having the ability for an endpoint to self-heal after an attack or attempted attack reduces the workload for IT teams and increases an organisation’s resilience.

AI can help a security system to identify an attack, virus or malware by matching behavioural patterns to previously known viruses. Microsoft’s Defender for Endpoint provides unified next-gen threat detection, automated investigations, and response capability, including cloud delivered protection leveraging machine learning and AI. Many new viruses and attacks are modified versions of already-known attacks, and AI helps to identify and stop new attacks before they become embedded into a system.

Working with vendors who provide unified solutions addressing end-to-end security needs can simplify cybersecurity for customers. Citrix Unified Endpoint Management brings every app and endpoint into one unified view to increase security and improve productivity. It protects all types of endpoints without complicating the user experience or touching personal information. Check Point Harmony also provides comprehensive protection with endpoint being one of five security solutions that seamlessly integrate to offer the highest catch rates, low false positives, and automated forensics and data analysis. The simplicity of Check Point's Infinity portal allows partners to efficiently manage all their Check Point solutions in a multitenant environment.

Security is particularly important for small and medium businesses (SMB), where a data breach can make or break the organisation. Trend Micro Worry Free specialises in protection for SMBs and offers advanced automated threat detection and response against an ever-growing variety of threats. It’s ApexOne solution has been developed for customers with 250+ employees. Both solutions are managed via Trend Micro's Remote Manager Console, which provides a single viewpoint of all Trend Micro cloud-based solutions.

The Dicker Data difference

At Dicker Data, our team of security experts have a comprehensive understanding of the everchanging cyberthreat landscape, meaning we’re the best positioned distributor to help partners uncover end-user vulnerabilities. Our diverse endpoint security portfolio provides partners with access to multiple security solutions, ensuring we can create best practice solutions tailored to specific needs and technology environments, avoiding a “one-size-fits-all” approach and ensuring maximum protection. We understand the entire ecosystem of technology across hardware, software, and cloud that businesses need to operate successfully.

¹ Australian Cyber Security Centre