What is Endpoint Monitoring? Why Effective Security Needs It

Endpoint monitoring is a crucial aspect of endpoint management and cybersecurity that involves continuously monitoring and analyzing the performance, behavior, security, and compliance of endpoints. Endpoint devices include computers, servers, and mobile devices that connect to a corporate network. Through effective monitoring, organizations can ensure they function optimally, are secure from threats, and comply with organizational policies.

After reading this post, you’ll better understand endpoint monitoring, the differences between antivirus and endpoint monitoring solutions, and the benefits of real-time data. You’ll also learn about its role in cybersecurity efforts and what the future holds for endpoint monitoring in the age of remote workforces, multi-cloud environments, and sophisticated cyber threats.

• Endpoint monitoring definition
• Antivirus vs. endpoint monitoring
• What are the benefits of endpoint monitoring?
• How does endpoint monitoring help with cybersecurity?
• What to look for in an endpoint monitoring solution
  • 1. Works with the broadest range of endpoints possible, wherever they’re located
  • 2. Delivers true real-time data rather than periodic reports
  • 3. Supports automating as many endpoint monitoring functions as possible
• The future of endpoint monitoring solutions

Endpoint monitoring definition

Endpoint monitoring is the ongoing analysis of the activity and security status of all endpoints in an organization.

Endpoint monitoring collects metrics on all types of endpoints, including servers, desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices by:

• Analyzing the operating systems, applications, and file systems on endpoints
• Tracking the patch status of endpoint software to determine if updates need to be applied as part of patch management best practices for eliminating known vulnerabilities
• Monitoring the connectivity of endpoints and issuing notifications to end users or IT teams if there are any indications of poor performance
• Managing the overall security posture of endpoints to ensure that software configurations, patterns, patch status, and user activity don’t indicate the presence of any potential security issues or unauthorized access
• Automating actions by continuously observing devices on a network to automatically detect threats, isolate compromised devices, and block suspicious traffic

With this clearer understanding of what endpoint monitoring is, it’s helpful to distinguish what endpoint monitoring does from more traditional security measures like antivirus software.

While both have crucial roles in protecting your environment, they serve different purposes and operate differently. Let’s review the key differences between antivirus and endpoint monitoring.

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Antivirus vs. endpoint monitoring

Antivirus software has long been used to protect endpoints from malware, such as viruses, Trojans, and several types of ransomware. While antivirus software has historically been useful, it’s limited in addressing the modern security needs of endpoints. And the threat landscape continues to evolve.

Relying solely or even primarily on antivirus defenses to stop modern cyberattacks is risky and can leave significant gaps in your security posture.

Here are five main reasons why antivirus, by itself, is not a substitute for continuously monitoring endpoints across an organization:

1. Antivirus software relies on virus signatures to detect malware whose characteristics are already known by comparing the contents of a file to signatures (code sequences) of known attacks.
2. Any antivirus program’s protection is only as good as its latest database of malware signatures — assuming that the database has been downloaded and installed on the endpoint.
3. By definition, signature-based defense tools are not useful against zero-day threats (threats that haven’t been seen and analyzed before). And they’re even less helpful against types of attacks designed to evade signature-based defenses, including fileless attacks, which operate solely in an endpoint’s memory, and polymorphic attacks, which change their software over time to avoid detection.
4. Some antivirus programs perform behavioral heuristics to detect suspicious behavior on endpoints, but that analysis tends to be limited. For example, antivirus programs often lack the context of what’s happening on other endpoints, where subtle anomalies, viewed together, may indicate the presence of a sophisticated attack.
5. Antivirus represents just one of the many components that comprise a comprehensive endpoint security strategy. For example, while antivirus can protect individual devices, endpoint security encompasses all the methods needed to protect the entire network of connected devices.

Endpoint security demands a more holistic approach. Effective endpoint monitoring provides this broader
point of view.

Unlike traditional antivirus solutions that primarily focus on detecting and removing malware, endpoint monitoring has a broader range of benefits for enhancing overall network security and efficiency. Endpoint monitoring incorporates insights from individual devices alongside other aspects of endpoint security to provide the detailed visibility teams need to detect and remediate today’s cybersecurity threats quickly and effectively.

This brings us to the benefits of endpoint monitoring. Let’s examine how endpoint monitoring seeks to address the limitations of traditional antivirus solutions and how it can enhance your security strategy.

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What are the benefits of endpoint monitoring?

By addressing several key limitations and expanding the scope of protection, endpoint monitoring provides several advantages to simplify device management and control, improve device performance, help organizations meet compliance requirements, enforce security policies, and accelerate incident resolution.

Endpoint monitoring provides benefits needed for:

• Easier management and control: Endpoint monitoring can allow organizations to effectively and efficiently identify and track the performance of computers, servers, and other endpoint devices.
  
  Without accurate and comprehensive asset discovery, organizations have incomplete visibility of their environment, leading to ineffective management across all devices that connect to the network and increased security risks.

[Read also: Asset discovery and inventory: 9 ways Tanium makes it fast, complete, and accurate]

Additionally, endpoint monitoring helps organizations manage hardware and software inventory so IT teams can make well-informed decisions around provisioning, reclaiming unused licenses, software and hardware upgrades and replacements, and more.

• Better endpoint performance: Organizations need to know whether endpoints are delivering the performance and digital experience end users expect. By simplifying and unifying performance monitoring to provide a holistic view of your network through a single-pane-of-glass, organizations can manage all endpoints from one location, enabling IT operations and DevOps teams to more easily detect configuration issues and network bandwidth problems that might compromise user experience.

Monitoring endpoint activity and raising alerts when anomalies occur or triggering automation also allows IT teams to detect service disruptions early and remediate them as quickly as possible.

• Improved compliance and policy enforcement: Proper security configuration management is necessary for endpoint protection and compliance with applicable regulations and industry standards. Endpoint monitoring can help teams quickly identify and fix compliance issues, saving time and reducing human error. For example, endpoints with sensitive data, such as credit card information or personal information in healthcare, need to be strictly controlled.

Leveraging endpoint monitoring to apply and enforce security policies consistently ensures all devices follow the same standards, reducing vulnerabilities and breaches by creating a controlled environment that makes detecting and responding to issues easier.

• Faster threat detection and remediation: Protect endpoints from cyberattacks through quick risk identification, incident response, threat mitigation, patch management, and other cybersecurity operations with endpoint monitoring.

Endpoint monitoring can take security efforts from reactive to proactive threat detection by identifying and mitigating threats for crucial components like network access points. Continuously monitoring all endpoints for performance, suspicious activity, and violations of security policies also allows for quicker analysis and identification of security risks.

While these advantages greatly improve overall efficiency, endpoint monitoring extends beyond these operational improvements to help organizations create a more robust and proactive security posture.

In the following section, we’ll take a closer look at the security aspects of endpoint monitoring and how these advantages, along with additional features, help strengthen cyber defenses.

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How does endpoint monitoring help with cybersecurity?

Endpoint monitoring is more important than ever because defending against cybersecurity attacks has become a high priority for every organization. For example, cybercriminals have begun using generative AI (GenAI) to write grammatically correct, compelling phishing messages.

[Read also: The 3 biggest GenAI threats (plus 1 other risk) and how to fend them off]

Endpoint monitoring provides the visibility and alerts that IT and security teams need to not only protect endpoints from a wide range of threats, including phishing, ransomware, and unauthorized access but also supports an organization’s ability to remediate issues when security incidents occur quickly.

Endpoint monitoring supports proactive cyber defense through real-time visibility into endpoint activities, allowing immediate threat detection and response.

It helps manage vulnerabilities and ensure devices are up to date with security patches and configurations by reporting which endpoints don’t comply with an organization’s security policies and outdated or vulnerable software and hardware configurations, operating system versions, applications, and device drivers.

Additionally, it enables proactive threat hunting by identifying anomalous behavior and indicators of compromise, which can also aid in cyberattack investigations. These capabilities collectively strengthen endpoints against vulnerabilities by allowing organizations to remedy potential issues to minimize security and compliance risks.

But the best cyber defense is only as good as an organization’s offense. Endpoint monitoring can provide active threat detection, scanning, and analysis of endpoints to identify known threats or suspicious behavior. Endpoint monitoring solutions can also report key details, such as the service providers managing or accessing certain endpoints, which network gateways or Wi-Fi hotspots might be implicated in endpoint performance anomalies, and the IP addresses, whether blacklisted or merely suspicious, are trying to connect to endpoints, perhaps probing them in preparation for an attack.

When incidents happen, endpoint monitoring delivers the data and visibility teams need to quickly and effectively mitigate threats, including reporting on active processes and network connections, such as recent authentication activity, and log data that shows which users or services have accessed the endpoint and what firewall ports and protocols were used — all critical details that characterize an active cybersecurity attack.

[Read also: What is access control in security? An in-depth guide to types and best practices]

Having delved into the security aspects and benefits of endpoint monitoring, it’s evident how crucial this approach is for enhancing your organization’s cybersecurity. Now that we understand the importance of endpoint monitoring in safeguarding your environment, the next step is to selecting the right endpoint monitoring tool to achieve these benefits.

Let’s walk through how to choose the most effective endpoint monitoring solution to strengthen not only your management efforts but also your cybersecurity goals, including the importance of finding a solution capable of overseeing a wide variety of devices (no matter where they’re located), the significance of using a tool that leverages real-time endpoint data, and one that provides the ability to automate as many monitoring tasks as possible to free up IT resources by improving efficiency and productivity.

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What to look for in an endpoint monitoring solution

Effective endpoint monitoring ensures that IT and security teams have the most comprehensive and up-to-date endpoint data and inventory of endpoints possible. However, endpoint monitoring tools can create more noise than benefits without the right capabilities to act on these insights.

To ensure optimal performance and security of your network, here are three capabilities to look for when choosing a modern endpoint monitoring solution that will grow and scale with your organization:

Works with the broadest range of endpoints possible, wherever they’re located

Modern environments don’t just have one type of device. Endpoint monitoring solutions should be able to locate, report on, and manage across various devices and operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, in one platform.

Most organizations now permit employees to work from home at least part of the time. It’s important that an endpoint monitoring solution can analyze not just endpoints in offices but also endpoints in homes or other remote locations.

Managing endpoints from any location without needing VPN connections for remote access is essential in the digital transformation era.

Since endpoints typically house your business-critical applications, software, and sensitive information, not only are these devices the driving force behind your ability to operate successfully, but the data is also crucial to improving other systems that drive the business forward.

For example, integrating endpoint monitoring data with your Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system can enhance your ability to correlate events and identify potential security incidents quickly. Similarly, combining endpoint data with IT Service Management (ITSM) tools can streamline incident management and enhance overall IT operations.

Choose an endpoint monitoring solution where you not only gain comprehensive visibility, management, and control at the device level but can easily integrate this valuable endpoint data into other solutions that can also benefit from having the latest device information to improve the broader IT environment — all in one platform.

 
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Delivers true real-time data rather than periodic reports

Every second counts when troubleshooting performance problems, trying to track down a potential leak of sensitive data, or remediating an active security threat. Real-time data provides IT teams with the visibility to respond quickly and effectively to problems.However, not every tool that claims to provide “real-time” endpoint data can due to lacking the architecture needed to achieve this lightning-fast data collection.

Instead, teams are misled into believing they’re working with the latest endpoint information when, in reality, they’re working with stale data from hours, days, or even weeks ago simply because most tools cannot support pulling data any faster across the growing number of endpoints in modern environments.

This discrepancy in the endpoint solutions market around what real-time data means is not only frustrating but can ultimately be devastating to organizations, leading to missed opportunities to prevent issues, effectively remediate active threats, and other avoidable risks — all because the tool you believe and rely on for real-time visibility into what’s actually happening in the environment provides outdated information under the guise of it being in “real time.”

When it comes to true real-time endpoint data, look for an endpoint monitoring solution built with a specialized architecture that uses minimal bandwidth to ensure efficient data collection, processing, and transmission at scale while maintaining data security.

If the tool doesn’t include specific architecture to pull data in real time or the ability to integrate with endpoint monitoring solutions that do, make sure to ask what the vendor means when they describe their ability to provide real-time endpoint data. Settle for nothing less than real time being what’s reflected on the endpoint at that moment to ensure IT and security teams have the most comprehensive, actionable, accurate data possible to make informed decisions at any time.

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Supports automating as many endpoint monitoring functions as possible

If you’re not already using automation in your organization, you’re quickly falling behind. Without automation, organizations may struggle to keep up with the increasing volume and complexity of cyber threats and experience delays in threat detection and response, leading to higher risks of data breaches and security incidents.

Not using automation can also result in inefficient resources utilization, as IT teams spend more time on manual tasks instead of strategic initiatives.

Look for an endpoint monitoring solution that supports automation to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your processes.

For example, automation can continuously monitor endpoints, detect anomalies, and take immediate action without human intervention to allow for quick identification and response to potential threats and other security issues.

Automation can also simplify the process of updating and patching endpoint devices, ensuring that patches are deployed quickly and uniformly across all devices. This helps minimize the risk of security breaches and safeguards against vulnerabilities.
With the ongoing shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals, many security teams face challenges caused by being short-staffed. Automation can help make up for this shortfall by helping reduce the workload on security and IT teams by automating routine tasks, including monitoring, reporting, and performing risk assessments, allowing teams to focus on more strategic activities. This improves productivity and helps allocate your most precious resource — human innovation and ingenuity — better.

Automation can also enhance compliance with security policies and regulations by creating reports, alerting about possible violations, and ensuring endpoints comply with the necessary security standards to prevent non-compliance fines and legal penalties.

We are beginning an evolution from knowledge-based, gen-Al-powered tools—say, chatbots that answer questions and generate content—to gen Al-enabled “agents” that use foundation models to execute complex, multistep workflows across a digital world. In short, the technology is moving from thought to action.

Endpoint monitoring with automation is revolutionizing the way organizations manage and secure their endpoint devices. There’s virtually no limit to what automation can help organizations streamline and improve.
 

[Read also: 12 AI terms you (and your flirty chatbot) should know by now]

As technology advances, the future of endpoint monitoring promises even greater enhancements, transforming how organizations manage and secure their endpoints. Let’s explore how these advancements will shape the future of endpoint monitoring solutions.

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The future of endpoint monitoring solutions

Many consider endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions today’s standard for endpoint monitoring and management. However, these tools can be limited in their ability to alert organizations only to known attack types — not unlike the antivirus solutions they aimed to improve upon and replace.

Since traditional EDR solutions often use heuristics to identify known malicious activities, they’re designed to detect only specific activities, meaning attackers can usually evade EDR tools by hiding in known blind spots.

Additionally, most EDR solutions limit the amount of activity they record to reduce bandwidth and storage usage. While this EDR “feature” addresses the common performance challenges and significant resource drain of antivirus tools, it also results in incomplete data to perform and inform attack investigations and remediation efforts.

The lack of data storage capability also means EDR tools cannot capture all relevant activities in real time, which delays detection and gives malicious actors more time to inflict damage before being identified.

[Read also: 5 ways Tanium Impact helps businesses guard against lateral movements in cyberattacks]

Despite these limitations, EDR solutions did introduce the concept of automation as a missing but essential component of endpoint monitoring by recognizing the need for more advanced threat detection and response capabilities in response to traditional antivirus software.

While these basic automation use cases rely on simple pattern detection of known attack types and response actions configured from detection rules, EDR solutions began the movement towards automation for endpoint security — a central feature and necessary evolution that next-gen endpoint monitoring solutions are set to accomplish.

In the future, endpoint monitoring solutions must continue exploring ways that security automation can improve the detection of suspicious activities and threats, investigating those incidents, and mitigating attacks from within a single platform, making endpoint monitoring more effective and sustainable for organizations and teams of all sizes to achieve higher levels of efficiency, security, and compliance.

Critical to these future advancements in endpoint monitoring is prioritizing the use of real-time data to drive reliable automation actions based on what’s happening at that moment — not a few minutes ago.

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¹https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/why-agents-are-the-next-frontier-of-generative-ai

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Tanium has long recognized the need to provide operations, security, and IT teams real-time visibility into all endpoints. The Tanium platform provides converged endpoint management (XEM) that combines unified endpoint monitoring and management capabilities for IT operations and cybersecurity into a central solution, eliminating the need to jump from tool to tool to manage endpoints and respond to threats.

Tanium platform’s unique, highly scalable architecture optimizes real-time data collection to ensure it’s the latest endpoint information without slowing down networks or device performance. This reliable data is crucial for making informed decisions and taking swift action to mitigate risks.

Now, Tanium is advancing the category of endpoint monitoring and management even further with its vision for autonomous endpoint management (AEM), applying AI insights and machine learning concepts to accelerate and automate threat detection, threat remediation, and the ongoing monitoring and management of endpoints in today’s complex hybrid and cloud environments with the oversight, control, and assurance only real-time data can provide.

Key to addressing the diverse needs of modern IT environments is our work establishing key partnerships and integrations with leading vendors that utilize our real-time data insights, such as our integrations with Microsoft and ServiceNow, to provide immediate and accurate information that improves critical aspects of IT operations and security.

Schedule a personalized demo to discover how Tanium can help your organization meet its evolving endpoint monitoring and management needs today and in the future.