What is Endpoint Security Protection?

Securing an endpoint is no longer as simple as it used to be because it can’t rely solely on antivirus. We must also realize that the threats we face on a daily basis, such as phishing or ransomware, have undergone radical changes. 

The question that arises is: what to use instead of (or besides) antivirus protection?

Users and their endpoints are seen as most vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Meanwhile, instead of actively strengthening protection at compromised endpoints and avoiding infection in the first place. The new solution is designed to get companies to accept that infection can happen no matter what they do and that the way out of the situation is to invest in a new mindset, namely, to focus on improving their ability to detect and respond to attacks – after the fact.

Yes, first responder monitoring and tools are valuable pieces of the puzzle, but these solutions focus on it and work well in large corporations with teams of security experts who have the time and knowledge to analyze threat and infection logs. Sometimes, despite a team of experts, it’s too late anyway.

Ransomware is a very good example. It turned out that TeslaCrypt encrypts and locks the file system in less than a minute. This leaves virtually zero time for reactions. Therefore, it is recommended to focus on preventing and stopping attacks as fast as possible.

What exactly does the endpoint mean?

In the language of cybersecurity, the endpoint can be any device with the ability to connect to the network. Common examples are desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets, printers, terminals, etc.

What “endpoint security” does?

It includes all protective measures to prevent and limit the adverse effects on terminal equipment. Nowadays, securing endpoints is much more than a typical antivirus.

The biggest threats to endpoints

• Phishing: Attacks to trick users into clicking malicious links and email attachments
• Spear phishing: targeted phishing attacks that seem to come from sources you know and trust
• Vulnerabilities: Bugs or vulnerabilities detected in software that can lead to security issues and exploits
• Malvertising: A malicious attack campaign that delivers loads of malware by pretending to be advertising
• Drive-by-downloads: attacks that install malware or spyware on an endpoint

The scenario of the sample attack

Every attack can be very different. For a better idea of how they can occur, let’s follow the example:

VirLock Ransomware:

VirLock is a ransomware that acts as a parasitic virus, infects files and spreads to other systems, creating new, unique versions of itself.

Stage 1. Initiation

The employee receives an email that appears to be from a trusted source. The message contains a link the employee clicks on. The link redirects to a website which looks familiar for a visitor. Before the employee becomes aware, malicious code exploits a vulnerability in his web browser and downloads a copy of VirLock to his computer. While the employee closes the browser window, VirLock is already installed.

Stage 2. Full and penetration of the final computer

VirLock penetrates computer’s resources for specific types of files such as executable files, document files, image files, archive files, etc. When found, VirLock encrypts the host files, making them no longer available and that’s not the end of it. It also infects using connections on the local network, which leads to further infections. It then locks the user’s screen, displaying a copyright infringement message and a ransom payment proposal to unlock the device and encrypted files. Then the only way is to pay a fine in bitcoin or accept the fact that the data will be irretrievably lost.

Stage 3. Infect additional endpoints

Due to the parasitic nature of VirLock, the presence of many infected files increases the chance of it spreading in the structure of an employee’s corporate network. As a rule, the employee unwittingly sends the infected files to his colleagues himself. This causes the infection to multiply and block more machines on the network.

Stage 4. Infection of the entire network

 Because the VirLock infection occurs throughout the machine, it eventually reaches an employee who has access to the resources of the network drive. That’s how VirLock gets there as well. And from there already a very simple way to infect the whole corporation. VirLock is just one example of malware that hackers use every day to bypass security. Companies can take advantage of a range of capabilities to detect attack attempts, respond to an attack, or try to recover data after infection, but the best way to minimize damage is to prevent infection, which should be taken care of first.

Endpoint Protection

Phishing methods are one of the most common methods of delivering malware, one of the prevention practices is to train users to detect phishing and learn their security habits.
Unfortunately, this consumes a lot of time and generates costs and is not always adequate to the results. Besides, let us not forget that even a learned employee can make a mistake. Therefore, endpoint protection should appear here, which is designed to detect an attack attempt shortly before the malware is out of control.

Benefits of Endpoint Protection

• It will stop attacks when they start: by cutting off the infection before it has a chance to spread drastically, which will reduce the costs and complexity of the procedures involved in recovering lost data
• It will strengthen your “weakest link”: as endpoints are the weakest link in our corporate network security structure, the use of security at the end of the network will greatly strengthen the entire defense
• It will ensure the safety of network users: everyone makes mistakes when one user is infected, then endpoint protection is designed to protect the rest of the company from an unauthorized disaster
• Pausing machines: Even if only one device is out of service, it can be costly for your business. Strong endpoint protection avoids downtime and maintains access to important layouts and files in your company structure. Endpoint protection is the first line of defense. This allows you to stop attacks and reduce the risk of data breaches or infections across your business. Safety training combined with a high level of endpoint protection is essential for the protection of both parts and the whole of the organization.

The Evolution of Endpoint Security

Endpoint protection has come a long way from a simple antivirus to a very complex structure. If you immediately thought about antivirus after hearing the term “endpoint protection“, don’t worry, you’re not the only one. They have a close relationship with each other, but only on the assumption that the security of the endpoint security consists of scanning the system and installing updates on it.
Before we look at the latest developments in endpoint protection, let’s look at how this technology has evolved.

The rise and fall of signature-based Endpoint Protection

Until recently, endpoint protection was to install software that was designed to scan files and compare them in their database on the principle of whether a file is malicious or not. What’s the attacker response? For a while, this sued companies to be one step ahead of the attackers. That’s why cyber criminals have started to create new malware designed to infect as many machines as possible before they are detected. That’s when network protection companies began to fight for samples of such software to create their imprint (signature) and add it to their database. In turn, the attackers began to create further versions that were not in the database.

Conclusion: criminals began to develop new encryption mechanisms and made small but numerous changes to malware code. This allowed the creation of countless clones and variations of programs, each of which had a unique signature.
Leaving users vulnerable to new malware variations, security companies had a big challenge as the signature database update grew very quickly. This situation forced a completely different approach to malware detection.

How do I protect my company’s endpoints from new and advanced attacks?

Malware detection against infection

It takes time to identify the new sample, create a signature, and add it to the block list. During this period, companies are at risk. One way to minimize an attack is to gather knowledge about threats from multiple sources and look for new attack and security events. This is done almost in real time, allowing you to monitor the security situation. However, the problem does not go away, as does signature-based protection. Unfortunately: to detect an attack, there must be a successful attack on at least one victim.

Behavioral analysis. Detects malware when trying to execute

While the signature of a particular malware can change frequently, the essence of malware usually works the same way. Thus, by monitoring malicious programs in real time, using the so-called behavioral method, we can detect the symptoms of malware attempts and block them immediately before they try to do any harm. Instead of chasing samples of malicious soft to blacklist, it’s simple enough to create a block of one behavior, which will give you the ability to block many malicious programs. Now and in the future.

White and blacklist

As an administrative check, it is recommended that you create lists of programs and applications that the end user can use. This limits the ability to fire unauthorized programs. The black and whitelist system works well in small businesses. Building its structure in large corporations, on the other hand, is quite complicated and time-consuming.

Sandboxing

The best way to definitively determine if a particular program is malware, is to fire it up and see what it will do. It’s best to do it away from things you don’t want to lose.

This is what sandboxing programs – sandboxes – sometimes called containers are used for. They create an isolated environment in which unknown files can be fired without damaging the parent system, i.e., testing them. When testing a file, we can tell you how the file will behave. The problem with sandboxing is that malware can say it doesn’t manifest itself in a virtual environment. Knowing that it is in the sandbox can hide its malicious attributes. The sandboxing solution does not have excessive requirements for system resources. Instead, it requires constant analyzing and employees willing to run it.

Don’t forget the basics of cybersecurity principles

Basic security awareness principles, secure configurations, as well as asset and vulnerability management are the foundation of an effective and workable cybersecurity program.

Organizations must regularly review and improve existing standard cybersecurity measures, such as: 

• Cybersecurity awareness campaigns and user programs. New cyber-attack tactics such as ransomware, phishing and privilege escalation are discovered every year. However, by regularly training and raising users’ awareness of new types of phishing and social engineering tactics, users become aware of modern cyber threats and can detect them on their own beforehand
• Effective asset management and software inventory are critical to understanding how and when your organization is exposed to specific threats and what digital footprints it leaves behind. Proper vulnerability management and patch management helps you properly verify known vulnerabilities and identify, prioritize, and correct unsecured configurations
• Multi-factor authentication should be introduced for all users. Cyber criminals prove every time that they can access sensitive data in a clever and fast way. This quickly leads to more serious forms of attacks. With MFA, accessing systems is much more difficult for cyber criminals.
• Privileged access management processes are also necessary. This limits the extent of damage that can be caused if an outsider gets access. The chance of spreading malicious viruses and/or software to other systems is also reduced
• Introduction of password protection for endpoints. The best solutions guarantee valuable conclusions and the necessary prevention. This will prevent cybercriminals from penetrating the protection of end devices to wipe their tracks

Get the most out of all your security tools

Too often, endpoint security and other security features are set to “monitoring” mode. This is done so often because administrators are afraid that some solutions may pause business services, or they are afraid of too many potential false positives.

As a result, many attacks succeed, which could easily be blocked. So, make sure that all security tools that prevent and block are enabled. The most basic functions such as machine learning, enabled preventive functions and quarantine are increasingly effective in stopping popular techniques used by criminal organizations. In this way, popular malware such as TrickBot (malware) and Ryuk (ransomware) are effectively blocked by available security products. In addition, known vulnerabilities (“Known indicators of Compromise”) block basic general techniques for connecting to C2s and retrieving as subsequent phases of an attack at the network level.

Endpoint Protection – Don’t just focus on malware: strengthen security against modern cyber attacks

The more sophisticated the attacks, the more often companies face problems other than malware. IT security team must look for early signals that can indicate an attack, such as code execution, persistence, stealth, command control, and lateral movement on the network. Customary “in depth” protection technologies may not be able to catch or respond adequately to these signals.

By introducing contextual and behavioral analysis technology in security solutions, often delivered in real time through machine learning and artificial intelligence, it has enabled the rapid detection and stopping of such attacks. The ability to perform context-based analysis and behavior is important when choosing security solutions

Work with a partner who’s an expert in the cybersecurity solutions you need

For any organization, it’s tempting to focus primarily on technology to help solve common cybersecurity challenges. However, each time cyber-attacks prove that to achieve a high and effective level of security, it is very important not only to have the right software and hardware, but also cybersecurity professionals on site. On the other hand, it is difficult to find committed, effective, and experienced experts. In addition, they are quite expensive.
Therefore, companies often look for partners with certified and talented experts whose services are complemented by cybersecurity management and cooperation with an SOC organization. Having a cybersecurity partner is worth paying attention to because it can help you in a cost-effective way, in daily signaling, detecting, and combating cyber threats.

Protect your network

Prevent

• creating policies and restricting access to our endpoints (firewall)
• regulation of applications run on endpoints (black and whitelist)
• identify and block malware that attempts to attack an endpoint
• (endpoint protection)
• updating the final system to prevent the emergence of vulnerabilities in the
• training end-users to raise awareness of the risks and teach them how to
• their safety habits

Detect

Ways to determine if security has been compromised:

• identify abnormal behavior (threat/anomaly detection)
• log monitoring (SIEM)
• identification of unauthorized or suspicious access

Respond

What steps should be taken to be sure that we are prepared for an attack:

• clearly state what constitutes a breach of security policy and who is to be notified in the event of a breach
• create convenient backup and recovery features from these backups
• develop procedures for whether and in what cases an emerging cyber threat/attack to notify clients, employees, legal advisers or law enforcement authorities of cyber criminals

Summary

Research shows that most companies have invested in ineffective security solutions. The high cost of a endpoint security solution does not mean that it will be an effective solution. In addition, most of these solutions do not have an easy management interface, making it very difficult to monitor and respond efficiently to threats. In addition, studies show that safety patches are generally not updated on an ongoing basis. Administrators also believed that the chances of a security breach were quite high. Respondents were also concerned that they could not fully identify infected terminal equipment.

The total cost of the security breach is quite large, taking into account the loss of business, production, loss of data and trust and the costs of legal proceedings. The survey showed that IT security administrators need to get an effective and manageable endpoint management solution to monitor endpoints and protect them from malicious threat attacks. Therefore, it is worth analyzing the current situation very carefully with a professional cybersecurity team and only then decide specifically what protection your organization needs.