Simplifying Endpoint Management - Best Practices for IT Teams

With the rise of remote work, IT teams struggle with the complexities of managing endpoints. Therefore, endpoint management has become essential.

Endpoints are the most vulnerable entry points for cyber attacks, and when compromised can lead to a security breach in the entire organization. With the increasing frequency of cyber-attacks, it's essential to have robust endpoint management in place to protect sensitive data and prevent unauthorized access.

Endpoint management can help companies ensure they are meeting these regulations by monitoring devices and enforcing security policies.

It also involves centralizing control and visibility over these devices, ensuring they are secure, up-to-date, and performing optimally. Further, it helps IT teams streamline IT operations and improve productivity.

Let's explore some of the benefits of endpoint management.

• Increased Security: Endpoint management helps IT teams protect their networks and devices from malware, viruses, and other cyber threats. With endpoint management, IT teams can monitor and control access to critical applications and data, enforce security policies, and manage software updates, ensuring that all endpoints are secure.
• Enhanced Productivity: Managing multiple endpoints, software versions, and configurations can be a time-consuming and complex task for IT teams. By automating routine tasks and providing remote access to resources, endpoint management enables employees to work more efficiently and collaborate with colleagues regardless of their location.
• Improved Compliance: Compliance with regulatory standards such as HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI-DSS is critical for many businesses. Endpoint management solutions can help IT teams ensure that their endpoints meet these requirements by providing visibility and control over device configurations, software updates, and user access.

Now, let's dive deep into the best practices of endpoint management.

Best Practices of Endpoint Management

Below mentioned are the top 4 best practices for endpoint management.

1. Establishing policies & procedures for endpoint management

IT teams play a vital role in managing the endpoints that are connected to an organization's network. However, endpoints such as laptops, desktops, smartphones, and tablets are susceptible to various security threats, and their management can only be complex with the proper policies and procedures in place.

Having clear policies and procedures in place can improve the efficiency of endpoint management. As a result, IT teams can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on strategic initiatives that can drive business growth.

Now, let's explore how these policies and procedures will help IT teams manage endpoints more efficiently:

• Centralized Management: By implementing policies and procedures for endpoint management, IT teams can centralize the management of devices, making it easier to deploy software, patch vulnerabilities, and manage updates. This can save time and reduce the risk of errors and inconsistencies.
• Reduced Downtime: Policies and procedures can help IT teams detect and resolve issues quickly, reducing downtime and ensuring employees can work without interruption. For example, policies and procedures can define protocols for device maintenance, updates, and backups, minimizing the risk of system failures.
• Improved Security: Policies and procedures can improve endpoints' security by establishing guidelines for device configurations, user access, and data backups. This can help IT teams prevent security breaches and minimize the impact of any security incidents that do occur.
• Cost Savings: By standardizing policies and procedures for endpoint management, IT teams can reduce the costs associated with managing devices. This includes lower hardware and software costs, fewer support tickets, and decreased downtime.

2. Identify, track, and manage all endpoints in your organization

With an increase in bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies in organizations, especially in the hybrid-work model, employees are bringing their own devices to work and using them to access corporate data. However, while BYOD policies can help increase productivity and reduce hardware costs, they also introduce new security risks and challenges for IT teams.

To effectively manage endpoints in an organization, IT teams must be able to identify, track, and manage all devices that access corporate data. This includes laptops, smartphones, tablets, and other internet-connected devices. By doing so, IT teams can ensure that all endpoints are secure, up-to-date, and compliant with organizational policies.

Moreover, with a comprehensive view of all endpoints, IT teams can identify trends and patterns that can help optimize device performance and reduce downtime. They can also automate routine tasks, such as software updates and patching, which can help free up time for more strategic work.

Further, IT teams can ensure that all devices comply with organizational policies and regulatory requirements, such as HIPAA or GDPR. This can help reduce the risk of penalties or fines for non-compliance.

3. Provide adequate SaaS app access to the users

As the organization grows, all users having the same level of access can be problematic for IT teams to manage access to different resources like SaaS apps. This can lead to security gaps and increase the risk of unauthorized access.

Therefore, implementing the least privileged access concept is the best practice for managing endpoints effectively. Least privileged access is a security model that limits user access rights to the minimum level required to perform their job functions.

In the least privileged access model, each user is granted only the minimum access privileges necessary to perform their job functions, which helps prevent accidental or malicious data breaches, cyber-attacks, etc.

Moreover, implementing the principle of least privileged access helps organizations comply with regulatory requirements. This can save organizations from legal and financial penalties.

4. Setting up a multi-layered security approach

As IT teams manage an organization's endpoints, employing a multi-layered security approach is crucial to ensure that all endpoints are secure and protected from potential cyber threats.

A multi-layered security approach involves using various security measures to secure endpoints, including antivirus software, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and other security tools. These measures work together to create a comprehensive security system that provides multiple layers of defense against different types of cyber threats.

The approach provides multiple opportunities to detect and respond to potential security threats. For example, suppose one layer of security is breached; the other layers of security can quickly detect and neutralize the threat before it can cause significant damage. In addition, this approach ensures that if one security measure fails, other security measures are in place to take up the slack.

Additionally, it enables IT teams to stay ahead of the evolving threat landscape. Cyber threats are constantly evolving, and new threats emerge every day. Therefore, IT teams must continuously monitor the threat landscape and update their security measures to keep pace with new threats.

Further, a multi-layered security approach allows IT teams to update and improve their security measures as needed, ensuring that they are always one step ahead of potential cyber threats.

Manage Endpoints in Organizations Effectively With Zluri

As organizations continue to adopt SaaS solutions and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies, the number and types of endpoints connecting to corporate networks have grown exponentially. Choosing the right endpoint management solution is essential to manage these endpoints effectively.

An appropriate solution, like Zluri, can efficiently manage your applications installed in various endpoints in organizations. Firstly, it identifies the SaaS apps available in an organization's SaaS ecosystem using nine effective discovery methods: MDMs, IDPs & SSO, direct integration with apps, finance & expense management systems, CASBs, HRMS, directories, desktop agents (optional), and browser extension (optional).

Zluri’s nine discovery methods

Among these discovery methods, desktop agents and browser extensions help IT teams detect the apps used in the endpoints in your organization. With the desktop agent, IT teams can collect the number of apps installed on a device, device-level information like product ID, hardware information, etc., app sign-in and sign-out details, and all the apps running in the background.

Moreover, browser extensions run locally in the organization to read browser activities and report them to Zluri's server for analysis. You can find SaaS apps in Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Safari extensions. Our focus is to collect data on the websites the users visit, like the URL, title, timestamp of opening/closing the tab, etc.

In addition, it helps you gain visibility to critical apps with high threat levels and risk scores. Finally, it alerts you not to use critical apps that can impact your data confidentiality and prevent your data from cyber-attacks.

So what are you waiting for? Discover and manage all the SaaS applications used in your organization's various endpoints. Book a demo today!