Tackling the cyber-threat

Devices can be managed from employee onboarding, with all applications set up ready for use, to the point when a device is decommissioned. “It’s possible to deploy an application on an employee machine without any user intervention,” says Ramesh. “That ensures that the employee’s time is spent doing more productive work.” IT teams can lock the device in case it is lost or stolen, helping to protect data.

Having a single interface can also help improve the productivity of IT teams. “Server patching is vital, but a server is essential to an organisation, so you cannot update it as you would other workstations,” he says. “Our system doesn’t require a system administrator to manually do the patching process, so it can happen during non-working hours.” Applications can also be updated based on policies designed to minimise disruption for employees. 

From a security perspective, the solution provides a simple way to safeguard devices, browsers and systems through intelligent monitoring and pre-emptive security mechanisms. Central to this is application control and privilege management, and the system capabilities have all been based on customer feedback, says Ramesh. “Companies can choose to allow certain interface applications only to run on workstations or mobile devices,” he says.

“They can also handle privileges for these applications, using just-in-time access, where people are granted only temporary access.” Controls can also be put in place around data, restricting which cloud services this can be uploaded to, and monitoring how information is sent outside of the organisation.

Alongside this, Endpoint’s next-gen antivirus (NGAV) capabilities provide ongoing protection against malware, including viruses, worms, trojan horses and spyware. This is complemented by the anti-ransomware solution, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to help counter ransomware attacks.

“There are millions of cyber-attacks happening on a daily basis and these encrypt all the interface data that is present,” explains Ramesh. “The solution for business continuity is to take backups, which we do with Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). But cyber-attackers know this, so they try to target the copies present in VSS. We use patented algorithms which prevent this from happening, so those VSS backups are tamper-proof.”

The ML element then learns from malware that is released every day, and updates the AI algorithms in response to this. “The moment it identifies behaviour that mimics the effect of a ransomware attack, it will notify the system administrator,” says Ramesh.