YOU CAN LEARN A LOT ABOUT ENTERPRISE SECURITY FROM STAR TREK

“Security: The final frontier. These are the voyages of the modern enterprise, its unending mission to explore strange new attack vectors, to seek out new network anomalies and new defenses. To boldly secure where no NGFW has secured before.”

The intrepid crew of the Enterprise knew that the cloaked alien ships were firing with a vengeance from all directions. Unable to withstand the advanced persistent attacks of the invisible challenger, the formidable shields of the Enterprise collapsed, and her hull was breached. Only expedient breach detection and the rapid damage control of the dauntless crew would prevent the destruction of the Enterprise.

Meanwhile, back on earth, today’s enterprise realizes that a perimeter breach has happened or will happen. Zero-day exploits are the Achilles heel of enterprise security and frequently lead to undetected breaches. The ability to rapidly detect, contain, monitor, and remediate breaches is not an easy endeavor; however, it is essential to an effective security strategy. Enterprise-class breach detection systems (BDS) are a fast-growing segment of the security market space, and this emerging market has not evaded the short-range scanners of endpoint protection (EPP) vendors. Long denigrated for porous defenses, EPP products have consistently been improving their technologies against defiant attackers. Targeted persistent attacks (TPAs) are shredding and splintering EPP products, reducing them to excelsior. Is the traditional EPP vendor destined to become a chimera of EPP and BDS? Should it? It is only logical.

Part one of the Antivirus Evolution and Technology Adoption series, From Brain to Flame, Myths, Facts, and the Future begins with the early, single-threat focused antivirus (AV) tools through their development to anti-malware products, and on to their assimilation of diverse security technologies and emergence as EPP products.

The second and final brief in the series, An Old Dog Had Better Learn Some New Tricks, discusses what is in store for the next generation of EPP products, which should NEVER, EVER, be referred to as NGEPP.