Point Tools are Failing: Why We Need a New Class of Converged Endpoint Platforms

Most CIOs are limited by their endpoint tools. They know the questions they need 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. 

For CIOs to solve these problems, they first need to replace those legacy tools with a new class of converged endpoint management platforms. 

What’s changed? The entire endpoint environment 

In the past, CIOs had to manage and secure a relatively limited number of endpoints, most of which lived on-premises within technology environments that rarely changed.  

CIOs now need to 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. Today, a ransomware attack occurs every 11 seconds, and the potential impact of a breach continues to grow as business processes become increasingly digital and interconnected. 

Unfortunately, many CIOs are struggling to manage and secure their new endpoint environment. They are still using legacy point tools designed to work in the small, static environments of yesterday and are failing in the endpoint realities today. Here’s why.

Silos: 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 from each other. When CIOs 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.

The result? Using legacy endpoint management and security tools, organizations…

• Face a growing visibility gap. According to recent research, 95% of organizations have 20% of their endpoints undiscovered and unprotected. 
• Wrestle with increased complexity. 75% of IT, security, and business leaders now report too much complexity from their technology, data, and operations.
• Can’t answer basic questions. These include â€œHow many endpoints do I have? What applications run on them? How many have basic controls applied?”

These tools are also creating silos between IT and security teams. Many are licensed and used by individual functions, teams, and employees, giving everyone a different view of the endpoint environment and making 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 such as applying patches and configurations to close commonly exploited endpoint vulnerabilities. 

Clearly, legacy point tools are failing to manage and secure today’s endpoint environments. CIOs need new tools built around a new approach. 

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. This solution must offer a holistic approach to endpoint management and security that unifies three core aspects of these activities. It must cover:

• Every endpoint: They must create visibility across laptops, desktops, mobile devices, containers, sensors, and every other type of endpoint from one agent. 
   
• Every workflow: They must perform a full range of actions—from asset discovery to threat hunting, to client management—all from a single console.
• Every team: They must use this single source of truth and common set of tools to align cross-functional teams and individual roles.  

A new class of converged endpoint management (XEM) platforms meets these criteria. These 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. By doing so, these converged platforms give CIOs and their teams:

• Real-time visibility and a single source of truth for their endpoint data
• Reduced tool sprawl and significantly less complexity to manage
• Instant and accurate answers to their most important questions

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, offering IT, security, risk management, and other technology functions a single space to seamlessly collaborate from. With the right platform, you can drive most of your endpoint use cases for most roles:

• CIOs can patch, update and properly configure their endpoints.
• CISOs can investigate and respond to threats in real time.
• Infrastructure teams can scope cloud migrations in weeks (not years).
• Procurement teams can see if they’re licensing software they don’t need.
• Data custodians can find and remove sensitive data at scale.
• Auditors can track if a company complies with its regulations and compliance.

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. 

Learn how Tanium converged endpoint management platform can solve your core operations and security challenges here.