Top 6 Best Endpoint Security Software for 2024

The internet and its digital transformation has made several things simpler than ever. While it is definitely a boon for us, it comes with a lot of challenges and precautions that we need to take to ensure our online presence, personal computer, professional devices, business network and the data associated with all of it are kept safe and secured from malicious actors.

To ensure improved security and vigilance, endpoint security is a key aspect for a business and personal user. In this article, we’ll see some insights on endpoint security, its importance and the options you can explore.

What is Endpoint Security Software?

Endpoint security is the process of protecting your desktops, laptops, mobile devices, browsers, users and any other plug-in devices associated with the primary endpoints from external threats. With modernization of technology, the malicious actors and their attack vectors are equaling evolving.

Businesses and end-users need robust endpoint security software to protect their devices from spear phishing, backdoors, Trojan horse, worms, ransomware, spyware, adware and other nefarious threats from unknown entities.

This system that protects endpoints from external attacks and ensures the safety of devices and data associated with it is called Endpoint Security Software.

Why will Endpoint Security Software make a difference?

With evolving threats, attackers can automate and orchestrate attacks with a high level of customization and accuracy yielding better results for their cyber-threat campaigns. Especially with the support of bots in the DDOS attacks, hackers can manipulate the targeted endpoints in several directions until their goal is achieved.

With endpoint protection software, businesses can detect, prevent, identify, analyze and take action in a more efficient way as they only need time to fix the issue and not identify it. Endpoint Security Tools are a vital part of IT teams and MSPs for their efficient service and management.

How to choose the right Endpoint Security Software for your network?

While evaluating the options in the market we must know the key capabilities to look for in a endpoint security software. These key features are the fundamental for a efficient endpoint protection tool that will give businesses and IT professionals an upper hand against cyber criminals.

The five key endpoint security features to look for,

• Threat Protection
• Automated Detection and Remediation
• Alerting and Reporting
• Device and Application Control
• Data Security and Data Loss Prevention

Threat Protection

Identifying threats is a critical aspect of endpoint security, and the software you are evaluating must be able to detect and respond to advanced threat vectors including emails, phishing, malicious sites and downloads, malicious programs, and more.

Automated Detection and Remediation

While alerting is important, the endpoint security software should go one step ahead and be able to remedify the security issue without manual intervention of security professionals automatically. This is another important feature as threats are mostly hyper-fast and waiting for security professionals to handle it will only make things worse for a business and better for threat actors. Your endpoint protection software should detect and fix threats automatically unless a special use case is triggered.

Device and application control

Managing and monitoring devices and their applications are a need of the hour, as any threats deployed into your network are mostly associated with either of these. Control over devices and applications is needed to scrutinize the security layer of devices and to ensure there are zero unprotected devices and the right detection and authentication protocols are in place.

Data loss prevention

Cyber-attackers will breach into your network, access your data, encrypt, delete or extort data for additional benefits. Hence, your endpoint security tool must be able to prevent data being extorted or encrypted.

It should act both proactively and reactively to understand the attack vector, act accordingly to counter the threat and ensure your business critical files are secured all the time. Data transfer to external network must be alerted and permitted only after approval from the right individuals.

Alerting and reporting

Any anonymous security events have to be monitored and alerted by the endpoint security software. The events have to be monitored, recorded and reported for a periodic analysis, which will help IT teams see a pattern and take necessary measures to reduce the event in future. The reporting must be detailed information of the events for better decision-making.

Endpoint Security Software Market Analysis

The Endpoint Security tool market is always evolving with competitive vendors and amazing features every year. Choosing the right endpoint protection software for your business could be challenging, especially if it is your first time evaluating the endpoint security tools directly.

In this article, we have evaluated the products from both primary and secondary research to give you first hand information about the tool that will suit your network.

As per Gartner research, the endpoint security market contains several players in the Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries and Niche Players categories. However, we will only be looking at the Leaders as there are six active players that have been included in the Leaders category of the Endpoint Protection Platform Magic Quadrant.

Top 6 Best Endpoint Security Software for 2024 – Best Endpoint Protection Software

As per Gartner Magic Quadrant, Leaders “have broad capabilities in advanced malware protection, and proven management capabilities for large enterprise accounts. Increasingly, Leaders provide holistic XDR platforms that allow customers to consolidate their other tools and adopt a single-vendor solution.”

Microsoft Endpoint Security Software – Microsoft 365 Defender

Microsoft 365 Defender provides Extended Detection and Response(XDR) capabilities for endpoints, cloud applications, emails and business documents. It uses AI to identify, detect and alert IT teams for critical alerts.

The self-healing technology automates remediation more than 70% of the time, ensuring IT teams can focus on other high priority tasks.

Microsoft Endpoint Security Software Defender 365 had some nice enhancements recently.

• Improved mobile threat defense capabilities for iOS and Android is moved to GA.
• Microsoft now delivers endpoint protection across all major OS platforms.
• Improved macOS support with the inclusion of threat and vulnerability management.
• Protection from phishing attacks for users who have access to the most critical information. Customers can customize account workflows to offer these users an extra layer of security.
• The addition of Azure Defender and Azure Sentinel are another major green flags to choose Microsoft over other options.

Microsoft offers deeply integrated Security Information and Event Management(SIEM) and XDR for end-to-end visibility and prioritized actionable insights across all your enterprise assets.

Pricing: $60 per user per year

Crowdstrike Endpoint Security Software – Falcon

CrowdStrike provides a flexible and extensible platform Falcon. It provides a variety of options and capabilities like Falcon Insight, Falcon Discover, Falcon Prevent, Falcon Device Control, Falcon Firewall Management, etc.

Crowdstrike endpoint security tools are tailor-made for customers working with more stringent compliance or operational requirements.CrowdStrike offers products like Falcon Pro, Falcon Enterprise, Falcon Premium, and Falcon Complete.

Features:

• Automated threat hunting, alerting and reporting.
• Endpoint threat detection, protection and expanded visibility.
• Cyber intelligence against threats for immediate response.
• Device monitoring and control

Pricing: $59.99 per endpoint per year

Trend Micro Endpoint Security Tool – ApexOne

Trend Micro Endpoint Security Software comes with advanced threat detection and response system against modern threats including fileless and ransomware attack vectors.

Provides insights, initiating investigation when needed, visibility over a unified EDR tool-set, managed detection and response from a singe agent.

Features:

• Strong SIEM integration
• Open API Set
• Cross generation blend of advanced techniques
• Pre-execution and runtime machine learning
• Fileless, living of the land and ransomware detection capabilities
• Ability to reduce false positives
• Protection against scripts, injection, ransomware, memory, and browser attacks through innovative behavior analysis

Pricing: $39.95 per endpoint per year

SentinelOne Endpoint Protection Software

SentinelOne Endpoint Security Tool offers protection against most of the cyber threats with Singularity XDR approach. It works on a static AI engine that will assist in precautionary detection and protection of your network.

Comes with seamless data ingestion, flexibility, cross-stack visibility, integration with other security tools, and automation.

Features:

• Protection against threats and modern attack vectors
• File ingestion and analysis
• Lightweight agent
• Singularity XDR – A unified approach towards EDR and XDR.

Pricing: $45 per endpoint per year

McAfee Endpoint Security Software – Trellix Endpoint Protection

McAfee Endpoint Protection Tool comes with amazing capabilities that will allow IT professional to perform on-demand scanning, containment of applications, behavior monitoring, rollback remediation, firewall management, web security management and integration with MVISION MDR for further enhancements. McAfee Enterprise and FireEye combo is now known as Trellix.

Features:

• Advanced defenses for advanced threats
• Machine learning enables to be adaptive to modern threats and patterns
• Single pane of glass approach for all your endpoint security needs
• MVISION insights for swift and high-priority case handling and remediation

Pricing: $31.06 per endpoint per year

All the above-mentioned endpoint security software are the best in the market as per Gartner, G2 Crowd, Software Advise, Capterra and our own analysis and testing of the tools and their capabilities.

The pricing is almost similar for the vendors except for the case of McAfee. If your evaluating endpoint protection tools, I would suggest you map your requirements to the features provided by the vendors and also calculate your budget and the price of the licenses.

ManageEngine Vulnerability Manager Plus

ManageEngine Vulnerability Manager Plus is a robust solution for bolstering endpoint security. It boasts features such as automated vulnerability assessment, timely threat intelligence updates, and seamless integration with existing security systems. The platform’s user-friendly interface simplifies the complex task of managing vulnerabilities, enabling IT teams to be efficient and productive.

Vulnerability Manager Plus stands out with its competitive pricing model, aligning with budget-conscious clients without compromising on quality. Customer reviews highlight its efficiency in identifying and addressing vulnerabilities promptly, contributing to a heightened sense of security.

Features:

• Automated vulnerability assessment
• Timely threat intelligence updates
• Security configuration management
• Web server hardening
• Zero-day vulnerability mitigation
• Antivirus audit
• Patch management

Pricing: 100 workstations and single-user license starts at $1195

Honorable Mentions – Best Endpoint Protection Software 2024

Sophos Endpoint Protection Tool

Sophos Endpoint Security Software is another key vendor in the list of Leaders as per Gartner Magic Quadrant and we agree to that. Sophos provides MDR, EDR, XDR, Zero-Trust approach, Central management and anti-ransomware protections. The pricing is around $45 per endpoint per year.

Give a try on all these endpoint security software vendors, evaluate them for your network and see which suits your ecosystem and demands better. Endpoint Protection Software are crucial part of enterprises and SMB’s as their presence will avoid major damages to their business operations.

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