I was thrilled to catch up with Syxsense during Black Hat USA 2024. Syxsense is a cybersecurity company that provides unified endpoint management and security solutions. The company specializes in offering tools for managing, securing, and monitoring endpoints across a wide range of devices and operating systems. Syxsense combines patch management, vulnerability scanning, and endpoint protection into a single platform, making it easier for organizations to detect and respond to security threats in real time.
Syxsense’s solutions are designed to help businesses of all sizes maintain strong cybersecurity postures by automating the management and protection of their endpoints. This proactive approach enables organizations to reduce their attack surface, ensure compliance, and improve overall security operations. The company is known for its user-friendly interface and its ability to provide comprehensive visibility into the security status of all managed devices.
Organizations are increasingly confronted with the threat of cyberattacks as vulnerability exploitation re-emerges as the dominant initial attack vector. According to Kevin Mandia, Mandiant CEO, the number one vector for initial attacks in 2023 was vulnerability exploitation, a marked shift from phishing as the primary attack vector in recent years.
Against this backdrop, traditional endpoint and vulnerability management solutions are struggling to keep pace. The sheer volume of endpoints, the complexity of modern IT environments, and the relentless onslaught of new vulnerabilities are leaving organizations exposed and overwhelmed. If attackers can break in faster using this method, then IT and security operations teams must collaborate to fix them sooner. In fact, it took over a month to resolve 50% of vulnerabilities for half of the organizations surveyed last year, highlighting the critical need for swift action.
The consequences of inadequate endpoint and vulnerability management are severe: data breaches, ransomware attacks, and operational disruptions can cripple businesses and damage their reputations. According to a recent study by IBM, the global average cost of a data breach has risen to a staggering $4.88 million, underscoring the urgent need for effective solutions.
Unified Endpoint Security with Syxsense
So how can organizations, as Mandia recommends, reduce their attack surface, improve their patch management, and better respond to incidents?
With a unified endpoint security solution that can help prevent vulnerability exploits by proactively and continuously identifying and remediating endpoint vulnerabilities and security risks. Gartner defines unified endpoint security in Hype Cycle for Endpoint and Workspace Security, 2024, as “an architectural strategy that integrates endpoint management and security teams, workflows and tools. Integration fosters faster time to respond and remediate, while addressing the underlying causes of security issues.”
This is where Syxsense shines. Syxsense transforms endpoint and vulnerability management by providing an automated, intelligent, and comprehensive solution that empowers organizations to regain control of their IT environments. Syxsense’s micro-agent supports rapid deployment and minimizes the impact on endpoint performance, ensuring a frictionless administrator and user experience. The solution’s real-time visibility and granular control enables IT and security teams to identify and remediate vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. This dramatically reduces an organization’s attack surface, while simultaneously increasing efficiency and proving continuous compliance.
Proactive Security with Syxsense Automation
Syxsense seamlessly integrates endpoint management, patch management, and vulnerability management into a single, unified solution, eliminating silos and streamlining workflows. But unified endpoint security solutions need robust automation and orchestration to keep up with the never-ending flow of vulnerabilities and risks.
With a first-of-its-kind automation and orchestration engine, Syxsense Cortex™ revolutionizes endpoint security by automating routine tasks, speeding up identification and response times, and freeing up valuable IT resources so they can focus on business-critical strategic initiatives.
When Syxsense Cortex debuted in 2021, its intuitive drag-and-drop interface enabled vastly easier endpoint and vulnerability management. Today, Syxsense Cortex includes a pre-built library of hundreds of playbooks. These playbooks include workflows that automatically scan for needed patches and deploys them within specified maintenance windows, enforce endpoint security policies, keep devices compliant, and provide mitigations for Zero Day vulnerabilities that lack available patches.
By leveraging intelligent automation, Syxsense ensures that endpoints are continuously hardened with automated patching and remediation, significantly reducing the attack surface. If the worst happens, many organizations struggle to recover, as seen with the continuing operational disruption from the Change Healthcare ransomware attack.
Streamlining IT and Security Operations
Ask any IT or security leader about coordination and collaboration between IT and security operations teams, and you’ll undoubtedly find out that operations are not so smooth. The reality is that traditional siloed endpoint and vulnerability management solutions do little to encourage teamwork.
By combining endpoint visibility, patching, compliance, vulnerability management, and vulnerability remediation within a single solution, Syxsense eliminates the need for separate tools and the silos that come with them. This unified approach enables all teams to work together seamlessly in one console – this empowers IT Ops teams to take on patching and remediating vulnerabilities while security operations teams can focus on monitoring and threat hunting. For example, IT Ops teams can use Syxsense to deploy patches faster across endpoints, while security operations teams have real-time visibility into the patch status of each device.
This approach also significantly reduces tool sprawl, a common issue if organizations juggle multiple security tools to support different types of devices. According to research from Enterprise Security Group (ESG), “Over 66% of organizations surveyed using more than five endpoint security and management tools in their tech stack noted that they have already experienced at least one cyber-attack.”
By consolidating and automating these functions, Syxsense eliminates the risks generated through manual hand-offs between IT and security operations teams. With a single platform and tailored dashboards, organizations benefit from a unified source of truth. Staff recruitment is simplified as specialized skills are unnecessary and training is manageable, all while enhancing overall security posture.
Partnering Across the IT and Security Ecosystem for Improved Security
Syxsense has now taken unified endpoint security to a new level by partnering with Absolute Security. Syxsense recently joined the Absolute Application Persistence-as-a-Service (APaaS) partner program, where Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) can leverage Absolute’s firmware-embedded Cyber Resilience Platform to ensure continuous integrity of endpoint applications used to defend remote and hybrid PC deployments against cyber disruptions and attacks.
Leveraging Syxsense Cortex, customers that have devices with APaaS can now maintain application integrity across their entire device fleet automatically. This assures that Syxsense’s endpoint protections will continue to function across disruptions that may take down business operations.
Combining Absolute APaaS with Syxsense’s automation-driven security and management gives enterprises the added assurance that their endpoint security services are fully optimized, working as intended, and adding maximum value to their customers’ security and risk programs.
Founder and Customer Insights
Ashley Leonard, Founder and CEO of Syxsense, states, “At Syxsense, we are committed to helping organizations proactively defend their IT environments. Syxsense’s innovative solutions provide the necessary tools to stay ahead of these evolving threats. With our combination of automation and intelligence, organizations can regain control of their endpoints, vulnerabilities, and IT operations, ensuring business continuity and resilience.”
Iron Road Healthcare turned to Syxsense in the wake of the Change Healthcare breach. With a mature cybersecurity posture, they were already using a tool for vulnerability scanning. “We had a solution that was great for finding vulnerabilities, but remediation was a very manual process – and tedious,” according to Johanna Birkett, Systems Analyst at Iron Road Healthcare. Automating remediation was a fundamental requirement for endpoint management, however, any new addition to their stack would need to be easy to onboard and use, as well as provide good value. Johanna is delighted with the results: “It’s an easy tool to use. Budgets are a big deal for us, and Syxsense is sensibly priced – I am just a big fan. I’ve really loved working in Syxsense, and I’m glad we have it.”
Take the Next Step
Syxsense provides a comprehensive, automated solution to mitigate the growing threat of cyberattacks on the endpoint. By integrating endpoint and vulnerability management with intelligent automation for remediation, Syxsense ensures your organization stays ahead of the curve. Prevent your next breach—experience the power of Syxsense today. Request a demo to see how Syxsense can protect your organization. Follow them on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/syxsense/ #CyberSecurity #EndpointSecurity #ITSecurity
About the Author
Gary Miliefsky is the publisher of Cyber Defense Magazine and a renowned cybersecurity expert, entrepreneur, and keynote speaker. As the founder and CEO of Cyber Defense Media Group, he has significantly influenced the cybersecurity landscape. With decades of experience, Gary is a founding member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, a National Information Security Group member, and an active adviser to government and private sector organizations. His insights have been featured in Forbes, CNBC, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as on CNN, Fox News, ABC, NBC, and international media outlets, making him a trusted authority on advanced cyber threats and innovative defense strategies. Gary’s dedication to cybersecurity extends to educating the public, operating a scholarship program for young women in cybersecurity, and investing in and developing cutting-edge technologies to protect against evolving cyber risks.