Combating endpoint management and security challenges post COVID-19

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An overnight push to remote operations has made remote workforce management the need of the hour. The post-pandemic endpoint management industry has transformed largely. Endpoint Central has been remote-ready way before hybrid workspace became the next normal. Right from onboarding to retirement, across hybrid workspace and highly heterogeneous OS ecosystems, ManageEngine Endpoint Central performs activities that ensure maximum productivity, helps IT admins oversee the organization's remote endpoints, proactively secure all network devices, encrypt corporate data, and much more.

In a recent ManageEngine survey, 47 percent of IT professionals admitted that they’re facing new challenges in remote work. According to an Owl Labs survey, about 62 percent of employees have started working remotely on a regular basis.

Today's corporate network environment is a distributed and dynamic environment with many moving parts that need to be managed, authenticated, and secured without any deterrence to the end user's productivity. A solution that provides effective endpoint management security while still delivering a seamless end user experience is vital.

Features

Endpoint Central offers full-fledged support for diverse remote endpoints ranging from desktops, smartphones, tablets, servers, point-of-sale devices, thin clients, IoT, wearables, kiosks and other network components. It also supports the entire endpoint management life cycle for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, tvOS and chromeOS. Learn more!

The usage of Secure Gateway Server, when roaming agents access the server through the internet, prevents the exposure of Endpoint Central Server directly to the internet by serving as an intermediate server between the Endpoint Central server and roaming agents. The concept of BYOD involves employees using their personal devices to access corporate data on the network, such as from personal laptops, mobile devices and tablets, whereas COPE allows the company owned devices to be extensively personalized like using non-work related apps or customizing the device configuration. While the advantages of BYOD/COPE often include improved productivity and reduced cost, it's adoption in organizations has also increased security risks since business-critical data are accessed from personal devices that are prone to vulnerabilities. 

Endpoint Central helps manage all corporate-owned and personal devices from a single console, with security features like per-app VPN and global HTTP proxy. While traditional VPN protects the data on the internet, the data available on the corporate apps can be protected by configuring per-app VPN, which creates a VPN when data on the specified apps is accessed. The feature Global HTTP proxy provides data security by ensuring that the internet connectivity and all personal and business communication are always re-directed through a single proxy. Learn more!

The aim of Endpoint Central's zero trust mechanism is to remove security assumptions and implement foolproof strategies in place. Our zero trust architecture has identity authentication in the centre of it all. Our Conditional Access policies enforce a user to perform security actions if they want to access an internal resource. This protects an organization's assets as well as the network data while still enabling the users to stay productive irrespective of their location. Endpoint Central's robust Client Certificate Distribution keeps away unauthorized clients from connecting to the server. Each agent has a unique certificate and a corresponding private key signed by the server's trusted root certificate authority. Only upon the successful validation of the certificate and the key, the server connect to the agent. In-depth security features like completely restrict sharing data between managed and unmanaged apps, restricting sharing of data using AirDrop to other devices, restrict cut/copy/paste between managed and unmanaged apps, and restricting users from connecting to any external storage drives ensures corporate data does not get transferred from managed devices.

Endpoint Central provides configurations that help administrators manage applications, system settings, desktop settings, and security policies. These are beneficial in base-lining systems, and ensuring that targets can be selected at user or system level. Endpoint Central also allows a group of configurations to be applied together using the collection feature. By deploying predefined configurations, or by deploying custom scripts, IT admins can modify firewall settings and secure corporate data, which is extremely critical in remote endpoint protection. Endpoint Central helps you in improving the security posture of your organization by facilitating the implementation of these controls that are the recommended practices for reducing attack surface, namely CIS, GDPR, ISO, PCI, HIPPA, VPAT, RBI and NIST.Learn more!

With cybercrimes exponentially on the rise and hackers becoming more and more sophisticated, staying one step ahead of them is vital. One of the most common entry points for these attacks are unpatched systems. Endpoint Central provides fully automated patch management solutions for Windows, Mac, Linux, and third-party applications. Using Endpoint Central, IT admins can automate patch deployment every step of the way, and save time, effort and help desk resources. To avoid bandwidth congestion and ensure system availability in a remote endpoint management environment, system administrators can schedule the installation of patches on a convenient day and time by configuring a deployment policy. Endpoint Central allows the agent to download patches directly from trusted vendor sites, instead of downloading from the server. This ensures bandwidth consumption and smooth patch cycles while the workforce is remote. Endpoint Central agent also has the intelligence to switch between direct download and server download when toggling between LAN and internet connections.

With the increasing adoption of remote workforce, patching cycles have been disrupted, making vulnerability prioritization the need of the hour. Leverage the advanced vulnerability dashboard and prioritization filters to narrow the threat landscape by fixing the vulnerabilities. Use Automated Patch Deployment to seamlessly automate patch cycles. Learn more!

Endpoint Central scans your network periodically to fetch software and hardware inventory details, and detect any changes in the network. A remote work environment gives unmonitored freedom to the end users to download malicious applications or to be tricked into downloading one. With Endpoint Central, you can remotely initiate an asset scan anytime, anywhere, and once it is completed, a detailed report will be sent to the configured e-mail ID. Detect the presence of risky software like BitTorrent, Pando, Usenet, End-of-life software and uninstall them immediately. Leverage application whitelisting to ensure that these applications are never allowed to execute in the endpoints.With system administrators having the need to ensure that no computers on the network have any prohibited software installed on them, Endpoint Central allows you to prohibit software and add an auto uninstall policy, in few clicks. You also have the option to notify the user and request them to uninstall the software on their own. Learn more!

Unknown hardware and storage devices can pose dangerous threats to enterprise data and devices, especially in remote endpoint management. Since, this usage cannot be completely eliminated in a remote work environment, Endpoint Central's secure USB feature helps administrators limit the scope of USB device usage, selectively based on roles and departments, by enabling IT admins to centrally block or disable them in the network. This prevents unauthorized download and upload activities, as well as the possibility of injecting harmful malware into the network. Endpoint Central offers advanced features like detecting and immediately classifying 18+ types of in-built and external peripheral devices for Windows and Mac endpoints as trusted, allowed, temporarily allowed or blocked, tracing and auditing all device and file actions, and viewing all actions on the device and file action trends at a glance. Learn more!

Browser-based has been gaining importance in internet security. To deal with this alarming vulnerability influx, it is vital to protect network data and systems from privacy breaches and malware. Browser attacks, such as man-in-the-browser and crypto-jacking, can fly under the radar, making their detection challenging. Since web browsers don't come packed with high-level embedded security, IT admins need to customize the security level to keep intruders at bay. Endpoint Central ensures this complete process is simplified by providing a powerful browser security extension. Admins can configure the browser settings in a single click, and deploy them to users' browsers centrally, regardless of their physical location. Once configured, users cannot override them, nor can they bypass the warning screen to access infected websites. Learn more

Remote work can lead to a significant increase in the number of help desk tickets. Endpoint Central integrates with five different help desk solutions namely Jira, Zendesk, ServiceDesk Plus, and Spiceworks, to provide endpoint management features directly from the help desk console. These integrations help boost help desk productivity by reducing ticket turnaround time, enabling the IT team to meet SLAs faster.Learn more

Efficiently control network devices from a remote location using Endpoint Central's comprehensive modern management features that enable an easy migration to Windows 10, bulk enrollment, application distribution, and better endpoint security including being able to wipe endpoints remotely. These capabilities lift off weight from an IT admin's shoulders, and increase overall productivity, reduce unnecessary downtime, and improve network security.Learn more

About Endpoint Central

Endpoint Central is a unified endpoint management solution that’s easy to set up and use, and is friendly on an organization's budget.This ManageEngine endpoint management solution enables IT admins to address network challenges confidently, and ensure that the remote endpoint management and remote endpoint security tasks are performed efficiently.