Businesses are adding more endpoints, but can’t manage them all

Most enterprises struggle to maintain visibility and control of their endpoint devices, leading to increased security breaches and impaired ability to ward off outside attacks, according to a survey conducted by Ponemon Institute.

Findings show that the average enterprise now manages approximately 135,000 endpoint devices. Despite $4,252,500 of annual budget spent on endpoint protection, an average of 48 percent of devices – or 64,800 per enterprise – are at risk because they are no longer detected by the organization’s IT department or the endpoints’ operating systems have become outdated.

Additionally, 63 percent of respondents find that the lack of visibility into their endpoints is the most significant barrier to achieving a strong security posture.

Sprawling centralized infrastructure

IT organizations are facing unprecedented rates of distribution point sprawl, which has grown rapidly since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. 61 percent of respondents say distribution points have increased in the last two years, and the average endpoint has as many as 7 agents installed for remote management, further adding to management complexity.

Updates are hardest to maintain

62 percent of respondents say new OS and application versions are the most difficult to maintain across all endpoints, followed by patches and security updates at 59 percent, and network settings and connectivity issues at 50 percent.

Lacking resources

66 percent of respondents say that their organizations don’t have ample resources to minimize endpoint risk. Consequently, respondents indicate they could only stop 52 percent of attacks with their current technologies and expertise.

As cyberattacks increase in frequency and magnitude, organizations are under increasing pressure to implement effective endpoint management solutions. Fifty-four percent of respondents had an average of 5 attacks on their organizations in the last year, at an average annual cost of $1.8 million. The cascading effects of system downtime and disruptions to employee productivity have left organizations scrambling to keep up.

Fortunately, enterprises now have options that can help eliminate costly infrastructure and repetitive human effort, while also continuously monitoring and automatically remediating endpoint issues with simple customization that keeps the edge of your network secure.

“The world has been changing at unprecedented rates in the last two years, yet there haven’t been any significant innovations in the endpoint management space for over a decade, since the advent of cloud computing,” said Deepak Kumar, CEO, Adaptiva. “Unfortunately, most organizations are running uphill with endpoint management tools that weren’t designed for today’s distributed, decentralized, and digital-first world. IT needs tools that provide organizations with total and complete visibility over their endpoints, with real-time and continuous delivery of content to keep them healthy, patched, and secure. This won’t be achieved by the dominant endpoint management solutions in the market today, which still rely on bloated centralized infrastructure, in the cloud and on-prem.”

Source: https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/07/14/businesses-are-adding-more-endpoints/