Businesses shifting to remote work need to focus on securing endpoint devices

Forrester Consulting conducted a study that shines a light on the increasingly complex realities of digital transformation, its impact on enterprise endpoint security for remote and hybrid workforces, and the need for proactive endpoint resilience strategies.

The importance of endpoint resilience

Resilient endpoints must rely on a persistent connection, providing IT and security teams with unrivalled visibility and control, independent of the operating system, and are able to recover automatically from any state to a secure operational state without user intervention.

“With remote and hybrid work environments solidifying their place in long-term business plans and operating models, there’s never been a greater need for endpoint security solutions that enable resilience, healing, and operational agility,” said Christy Wyatt, CEO at Absolute.

“Allowing employees to connect and remain productive no matter where they are, while also keeping company devices, data, and systems protected, is a critical capability defining the future of work.”

The study showed that traditional approaches to endpoint security are no longer effective in fighting off today’s rampant and accelerating cyber threats.

Securing endpoint devices

• Endpoint security has evolved with increased work-from-home (WFH) and hybrid work policies. Firms are refocusing their security priorities to match the realities of remote working. In the next year, they are specifically focused on automating the protection of sensitive or at-risk data (60%), geolocation of devices (52%), and security control health (48%).
• Security leaders are facing new endpoint security challenges. As the world migrates to a new work-from-anywhere environment, firms’ priorities are shifting. It is no longer an option to deprioritize risk associated with endpoint devices. Surveyed security leaders said their top challenges are maintaining compliance, enforcing security standards, and understanding the health of security controls.
• Security leaders struggle to measure the return on their firms’ existing security investments. Only 38 percent of respondents said they can measure the return on their firm’s security investments. To accurately determine ROI, decision-makers need overarching visibility into the health and function of the security controls installed on endpoints.

With businesses of all sizes shifting their work policies to allow employees to work from anywhere, corporations can no longer be solely reliant on network-based security; they need to increase their focus on securing endpoint devices. This means ensuring there is an unbreakable digital tether to all devices, capable of delivering complete visibility and control, enabling real-time insights into the state of those devices, and allowing them to autonomously repair security controls and productivity tools.

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