Endpoint security becoming critical focus area

Detecting and responding to modern threats on endpoints has become a key business priority according to a survey by the Enterprise Strategy Group. They polled 340 IT and information security professionals working at enterprise organizations to examine buying behavior, deployment trends, challenges, and future endpoint security strategies.

According to the research findings, 85 percent say that they plan to spend more on endpoint security. The reasons, highlighted in the research include improving incident detection (29 percent); improving incident response (29 percent) and mitigating risk from targeted attacks (24 percent).

This trend is being driven by high profile attacks seen over the past year or two. Traditional endpoint security such as antivirus and host-based firewalls, which are reliant on exact-match signatures and rules, are struggling to keep pace with obfuscation techniques used by today’s attackers.

Other highlights from the survey include:

Renewed focus on endpoint security strategies – Sixty-six percent have re-evaluated endpoint security policies, processes and tools to create a plan for improving endpoint security, and more than half (56 percent) have purchased new endpoint technologies in addition to those used in the past.

Endpoint forensic tools are adding value toward enterprise security analytics – One-third of respondents are integrating endpoint forensics solutions with network forensics and/or security analytic tools significantly, while another 39 percent are integrating endpoint and network forensics on a limited basis.

Traditional endpoint security falls short – Survey respondents also identified a number of endpoint security problem areas. For example, 38 percent said their security teams spend a lot of time “firefighting” incidents instead of conducting proactive process improvement or endpoint security strategy. Another 29 percent complain that endpoint security is based upon too many manual processes. Finally, more than one-third of organizations see endpoint security as a task to achieve compliance requirements.

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