In the era of remote work, having a robust endpoint protection platform (EPP) in place is even more critical for maintaining network security. If you’re struggling to scale up to effectively secure each and every endpoint, you need to consider a cloud-based solution.

Even after many employees return to the office post-pandemic, a cloud-based EPP will continue to be essential for safeguarding organizations that have a great deal of remote workers because it makes it easier and more cost-effective to protect any workstation regardless of location, whether it’s desktop or laptop computer, or a smartphone or a tablet.

Prevention is just the beginning

An EPP is more than just anti-virus—it combines next-generation antivirus with more advanced security tools that leverage detection technologies such as signature matching, behavioral analytics, anomaly detection, and machine learning.

While different EPP offerings vary in features and functionality, there are a few things that should be included in any solution you may be considering. For starters, it should be able to prevent bad things from affecting your systems, such as malware and ransomware attacks, by applying behavioral analysis and machine learning to ward against file-based and fileless malware. It should also provide a great deal of endpoint control, including the ability to configure firewalls, ports, and devices.

But while prevention is table stakes in an EPP, you should be looking for more proactive capabilities if you’re to keep pace with the threats to your cybersecurity

Be more responsive

You shouldn’t just settle for comprehensive detection capabilities in an EPP. Because there are so many threat vectors to manage, you want to be able to respond automatically and effectively whenever possible.

To this end, EPP solutions are adding detection and response (EDR) capabilities so that you can detect, investigate, and remediate through automation capabilities, while also having the ability to customize the platform for your environment. Today’s EPP and EDR platforms recognize that the sheer volume of security alerts are far more than cybersecurity analysts can address without being able to automate some tasks.

Ideally, you want to streamline the number of tools implemented by your cybersecurity team—one per category is enough, although it’s fine if you want to take a best-of-breed approach rather than a single solution. However, having multiple firewall products to manage creates more problems than it solves. Open source solutions may also make sense because you can leverage the community support optimize them for more effective security. You should also keep the door open for integration with third-party solutions that add specific capabilities you need to secure your environment.

Ideally, an EPP implementation should not only improve security but also productivity of your IT staff, which is why it’s important to avoid complexity.

Simplify security with a partner

An EPP doesn’t have to be yet another costly cybersecurity implementation that must be maintained and managed. Cloud-based solutions facilitated by a managed service provider along with their team can help with detection and incident response, and even proactive activities such as hunting and penetration testing.

For smaller organizations, tapping into the expertise of a managed security services and availing itself the capabilities of a modern, cloud-based EPP can go a long way to keeping up with endpoint security requirements and mitigating the threats that come with a remote workforce.