BANGALORE, INDIA: Many businesses are finding that their current approach to endpoint protection and management isn't adequate or successful. Why? All too often, security and management are regarded as separate, independent activities, leading to wasteful overlap in some places, and excessive gaps in others. Increasingly, businesses are discovering that uniting all management and security tasks is the most effective path to protecting a growing number of endpoints and the information stored on them.

The situation
Endpoints have come a long way in the past few years. Not long ago, PCs made up the majority of the endpoints connecting into the business network (perhaps a few laptop machines, as well). Fast-forward to today and the variety of endpoints is staggering - devices like smart phones, PDAs, and portable entertainment systems have become ubiquitous in many businesses.

However, as endpoints multiply and extend the IP network, they are at constant risk of threats that can lead to system compromises, data breaches, or policy violations. Despite IT managers' awareness that threats to endpoints continue to evolve as much as the devices themselves, managing endpoints while protecting critical IT assets is proving to be difficult. This is mainly because of the following:

Independent security and management: Managing endpoint security and operations such as threat detection, protection against malicious codes, vulnerability scanning, backup/restore, and Network Access Control (NAC) can require multiple software agents, products, and servers. Often, management is independent and has little integration with other security initiatives. This is how a security team can end up trying to manage patches (an area not considered their domain), for example. With a lack of administrator skills, redundant processes, and considerable management overhead, this common scenario is set up for failure.

Neglecting data on endpoints: Typical endpoint security tools such as antivirus, anti-spyware, and firewalls were designed for network security or malicious code protection. Businesses also need (but often lack) data loss prevention, full-disk encryption, and regular endpoint backup to protect the data that regularly flows in and out of endpoint devices.