“Humans have always been the biggest vulnerability in security, and that has become even more pronounced now that employees are working outside the corporate network,” says FC Boonzaaier, Endpoint Security and Privileged Access Management Team Leader at Nclose.

Endpoint security is a moving target, and needs a flexible, highly resourced strategy to be successful. Working with the right partner is the way to go. Once upon a time, the corporate network was secured behind a firewall and employees accessed it using corporate devices. That highly controlled environment wasn’t impregnable, but it was a lot easier to protect… and manage. Today, as we all know, the corporate network has ruptured to enable remote, anywhere/anytime working. An additional complicating factor is the parallel emergence of hybrid cloud strategies, which is seeing corporate data being stored—and moving between—multiple points.

How to secure the resulting heterogeneous universe of endpoints, which could theoretically be anywhere? 

“Humans have always been the biggest vulnerability in security, and that has become even more pronounced now that employees are working outside the corporate network,” says FC Boonzaaier, Endpoint Security and Privileged Access Management Team Leader at Nclose. “The human element remains the main factor when it comes to protecting devices, so educating employees on best practices and cyber hygiene has become critical.”

Boonzaaier argues that securing endpoints requires a multifaceted approach that includes data protection, intrusion prevention, exploit prevention, zero-day protection and device control. These all help to protect endpoints against attacks. An additional key element includes robust technologies to prevent the loss of data either to hackers or to bad apples within the company itself. 

In this new, highly distributed world, traditional antivirus programmes are being supplemented with endpoint detection and response (EDR) and extended detection and response (XDR). Both approaches take a more holistic approach to endpoint security. Boonzaaier believes that new technologies like moving-target defence (MTD), which Gartner describes as being “the future of security”1, will become more prominent. 

MTD prevents advanced threats.

He also believes that the policy-based secure access service edge (SASE) approach could begin to gain traction.

As the volume and sophistication of cyberattacks grow, and as the threat surface expands, it’s becoming ever clearer that finding and maintaining the right security posture is beyond the capability of most in-house security/IT teams. Nclose has built its business on providing managed solutions to these challenges, aligning alongside the client’s existing security capability, and customised to its business model and circumstances. 

“To be effective, security has to be hardwired into the business—and that’s truly the heart of the Nclose difference. When we partner with you, we integrate advanced security into your business processes, to become an extension of the business,” Boonzaaier says. “We build the platform to suit the client, and we leverage the collective intellectual property of our team to stay at the cutting edge.”

At the heart of it all is Nclose’s famed Blue Team. Blue Teams are focused on defence—ensuring that defences are in tip-top condition and that any threat receives an immediate response.

“Having this kind of team at your back is vital—relying solely on technology places a huge strain on the devices and reduces performance and life span, but it’s also too cumbersome,” Boonzaaier says. “A managed solution provided by a leading company like Nclose—the only South African MSSP to rank in the world’s top 250 and number 41 in the Financial Times fastest growing companies in Africa —is the route to peace of mind.”

1 Lawrence Pingree, “Automated moving target defense—the future of security” (26 January 2023), available at https://blogs.gartner.com/lawrence-pingree/2023/01/26/automated-moving-targetdefense-the-future-of-security/.

Want to know if Nclose fits your cybersecurity needs? Visit our website at www.nclose.com and feel free to contact us.