As technology has evolved and become more distributed, the end point is no longer a just a point of entry from users accessing data and applications. It is a conduit for critical business information. That means we need to look at endpoint protection differently as a tool for blocking incoming threats and protecting organisations from unwanted data egress.
Ali Rossi, the Data Protection lead for Zscaler in the APJ region says our endpoints now access to broader resources for computing.
“The cloud means endpoints are an increasingly important target for threat actors. But by reimagining what and endpoint can do for security, it can become a powerful tool to thwart malicious parties,” he says.
Rossi says we can use the endpoint to better understand what data is moving by using tools such as data classification and applying more sophisticated technology such as fingerprinting or optical character recognition. This enables us to use data loss prevention (DLP) tools to better protect critical information assets.
Rossi says “As the threat landscape evolves, organisations need to ensure they are prepared for new types of attacks. These can come from advanced persistent threats and targeted attacks insider threats and phishing, and socially engineered targeted attacks where the malicious attacker is trying to access our most sensitive data using more sophisticated methods and technologies.”
Being able to better understand what data is moving through endpoints is crucial. By doing this natively on the endpoint, it’s possible to identify what part of this data is sensitive so we can put the right protection controls in place. That means making decisions about whether to allow data to be copied to removable media or allowing it to be printed.
While threat actors are leveraging AI, Ali says the best way to counter AI-led attacks is to also use AI.
“We want to leverage AI to understand our environments, our applications and our endpoint devices so we can detect any sort of threat or any sort of abnormality. We can also use generative AI to be able to classify our most important and sensitive data as these are typically the target for these attacks,” explains Rossi.
With the Office of the Australian information Commissioner noting that a substantial amount of data leakage occurs accidentally through the actions of employees, endpoint solutions are a powerful DLP tool. As well ensuring malicious code is not executed the unsuitable movement of the sensitive data out of our network can be detected and stopped.
Traditional Endpoint DLP Slows You Down.
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