Most CIOs are limited by their endpoint tools.
They know what questions they must be able to answer about their endpoint environment. They know what actions they must take to manage and secure their endpoints at all times. But they are attempting to answer these questions and take these actions using legacy point tools that no longer work in today’s environments.
This article outlines how CIOs can solve these problems by replacing their legacy point tools with a new class of converged endpoint management platforms. To do so, we explore:
- Why legacy tools are not addressing today’s biggest endpoint challenges
- How this problem is solved by a new class of converged endpoint platforms
- What a converged endpoint management platform must do for you
What’s changed? The endpoint environment has transformed
In the past, organizations had to manage and secure a relatively limited number of endpoints, most of which lived on-premises within technology environments that rarely changed.
Today, CIOs and their teams must manage and secure millions of dynamic, diverse, and globally distributed endpoints located across cloud and hybrid networks. Each of these endpoints introduces operational risks and security vulnerabilities, and must be monitored, managed, and secured in real-time to ensure their performance.
These endpoints also face a growing wave of cybersecurity attacks. A ransomware attack now occurs every 11 seconds, and the potential impact of a breach continues to grow as business processes become increasingly digital and interconnected.
Unfortunately, many enterprises are struggling to manage and secure their new endpoint environment. They are still using legacy point tools that were designed to work in small, static environments, and are failing in today’s endpoint realities. Here’s why.
Why legacy point tools are failing in today’s environments
Most legacy endpoint tools were built to perform one task — often for just one endpoint category — and operate independently of each other. When IT teams attempt to develop a complete endpoint management and security capability using these tools, they are forced to build a stack of dozens of point solutions. And as the endpoint environment has transformed with new endpoints and new operational and security risks to mitigate, CIOs have been forced to keep adopting more and more tools. According to recent research, 95% of organizations have 20% of their endpoints undiscovered and unprotected.
These tools are also creating silos between IT and security teams
Many of these tools are licensed and used by individual functions, teams, and employees. They give everyone a different view of the endpoint environment and make it impossible to build cohesive end-to-end endpoint management and security processes. Worst of all, they stop IT and security from collaborating on key efforts — like applying patches and configurations — to close commonly exploited endpoint vulnerabilities.
Clearly, legacy point tools are failing to manage and secure today’s endpoint environments.
The solution: Converged endpoint management platforms
CIOs need a new technology solution that corrects the problems with legacy point tools, and overcomes the challenges of endpoint explosion, tool proliferation, and IT modernization. Converged endpoint management (XEM)platforms consolidate the functionality of dozens of point tools into a single dashboard where teams can see, control, and trust everything happening on their endpoints.
Most importantly, converged platforms eliminate silos in endpoint management and security. They act as the backbone for all crucial interactions between endpoint data, controls, and teams in one place, and give IT, security, risk management, and other technology functions one “home” to seamlessly collaborate from.
In sum: With the right converged endpoint management platform, CIOs can solve most of their core operations and security challenges.
Picking the right converged endpoint management platform
The endpoint tool market is going through a transformation, with these new converged platforms rapidly replacing old point tools. When evaluating the right platform to adopt converged endpoint management, CIOs must ensure they select a solution that provides three key qualities:
- Visibility into every managed or unmanaged endpoint in real-time.
- Control across cloud, on-prem, and hybrid estates in seconds.
- Truth composed of accurate, high-fidelity data for every endpoint team.
Consider these table-stakes for any converged endpoint management solution you evaluate, and the key to solving most modern endpoint management and security challenges created by legacy tools.
Explore what converged endpoint management looks like in practice.
