Top 15 Endpoint Security Best Practices

Endpoint security means protecting the endpoints in an organization’s network from threats using various security measures.

An endpoint is a device that connects directly to a network. Examples: Computers, smartphones, laptops, tablets, routers, switches, printers, IoT devices (like sensors), and more.

The volume of endpoints has increased exponentially in the last few years with organizations adopting remote work and BYOD policies. This means the attack surface has also increased.

With no security measures in place, cyber attackers could target and compromise those devices and access your network, steal confidential data, and harm your business. Around 68% of respondents in a survey say their organization experienced at least one endpoint attack.

Therefore, protecting your devices and business is important by implementing endpoint security best practices, solutions, and techniques.

In this article, we’ll learn endpoint security in detail, common risks, and best practices.

Common Endpoint Security Risks

Have a look at some common endpoint security risks:

• Phishing attacks: Attackers trick people into clicking a malicious link and downloading malware on their devices by sending text or email messages that appear genuine. They use it to gain unauthorized access, steal data, etc.
• Ransomware attacks: Encrypting data and locking users of their systems, attackers demand heavy ransom to decrypt data or hand over system access.
• Data /device loss: Theft or loss of device and data to the wrong hands triggers misuse. They could sell your data to third parties or misuse the stored information to harm a business.
• Improper patches and updates: Failing to patch or update your systems or software on time allows attackers to find vulnerabilities and exploit them.
• DDoS attacks: Hackers make a system unresponsive and unavailable for legitimate users by jamming the network with an overwhelming number of concurrent requests.
• Drive-by-downloads: These threats install malware to an update or a patch that appears to be a trusted download for thousands of users.
• Botnet attacks: Botnets run on compromised endpoints and spread infections to other endpoints to execute a large-scale attack.
• Inadequate access controls: The chances of endpoint security risks, like unauthorized access and data breach, increase with poor access control mechanisms for data and systems.

15 Endpoint Security Best Practices in 2024

Secure endpoints in your organizational network from attacks by following the below endpoint security best practices:

#1. Identify Endpoints

Know all the endpoints connected in your network to be able to protect them.

To do this, locate each computer, laptop, smartphone, tablet, IoT device, router, virtual environment, software and application, and other systems across departments. Ask department heads to produce the list of devices they currently use for official work.

Create a detailed document with:

• Device details
• The owner’s or assignee’s name
• Permission level
• Applications they run
• Usage details

This way, you create an inventory of all your endpoints and get a deeper visibility on each. Lower security risks by using monitoring tools and vulnerability scanners to find vulnerable or unauthorized endpoints and fix them immediately.

#2. Prevent Shadow IT

69% of tech executives in a Tori report find shadow IT as a top cybersecurity concern.

Shadow IT refers to a practice where an individual or department uses IT software or hardware without informing the organization’s admins, IT department, or security team. These devices could be non-secure and connecting them to the network could lead to security risks. It opens security loopholes and allows attackers to infiltrate the network.

So, assess your network regularly (after a quarter is good) to detect unauthorized systems and prevent shadow IT from compromising your security perimeter. Frame a policy and communicate it with your employees to reduce shadow IT risks.

#3. Encrypt Data

Encrypt your sensitive and confidential data moving across different channels (like emails) or stored on drives to improve its security.

Stay secure from security risks like data leaks, ransomware, phishing, man-in-the-middle attacks, and more using this excellent technique. You can also use encryption tools or data loss prevention (DLP) solutions to achieve efficiency. So, even if you’ve lost your device, no one can access the encrypted data.

You can even prioritize encrypting different types of data if you face financial or time constraints. For example, encrypt most critical information first, such as financial data, employee and customer personally identifiable data, highly confidential operational data, and so on. Next, start encrypting data across your organization with time.

#4. Implement Access Controls

Cyberattacks happen not just from outside, but inside of your organization too. 76% of organizations in a survey reported insider attacks from 2019-2024.

You can never know who will turn against you and want to harm your organization. Personal grudges or money could be the reason. Since they already access confidential data and systems, planning an attack or selling data (to competitors or on the dark web) becomes easier for them.

So, limit user access privileges and permissions, giving only the required level of access to users to be able to perform their duties, not anything more. Utilize access control mechanisms such as:

• Zero-trust security: Trust no one when it comes to cybersecurity and ask for verification when someone asks for access.
• Principle of Least Privilege (PLP): Give the least amount of access permissions for a user to perform their job.
• Identity and Access Management (IAM): Allow only the right people to access the right devices with the right permission level by managing business processes, methods, and technologies.

#5. Monitor Continuously

Imagine you’ll have no idea what’s going wrong with your endpoints. You don’t know how many devices are connected to the network and what their security levels are because you don’t monitor them. So, attackers hunting all the time for vulnerabilities could actually find them in applications running on these endpoints. Soon, they exploit them to conduct a massive attack before you know it.

Monitor all your endpoints continuously to identify vulnerabilities, errors, update requirements, outdated licenses, and issues. So, you will have enough time to fix security issues and restore it.

You can also use endpoint monitoring tools to speed up the monitoring process. These tools help you track all endpoints in real time and notify you if anything looks suspicious, so you can secure your devices immediately.

#6. Patch and Update Regularly

Never delay patches and updates to your devices and systems.

Suppose your security team reported that an important business application is outdated. The good news is the update is now available for it. But something came up and you forgot about it or thought you’d be doing it in a few days time. The next day, you come to know some hackers launched an attack and compromised all the data from the application.

Example: Equifax had to pay at least $575 million as a settlement as it failed to apply a security patch, leading to a massive data breach.

Safeguard your business and customer data from attackers by applying patches and updates immediately. This way, you can reduce the likelihood of attacks and preserve your reputation in the market before your customers and partners.

#7. Back-Up Data

Back up your valuable information in secure servers to protect it. It enables data replication by storing endpoint data on multiple servers at multiple locations.

For instance, an attack happens and some of your endpoints are compromised and data is stolen. Backing up data will save you here. Even if you lose your data by any chance, the backed-up data is still available.

Also, focus on server security in all locations, both digitally and physically. Protect your data by using stronger security mechanisms in these facilities. This helps you minimize downtime and restore your business operations during or after a security incident.

#8. Create Stronger Password Practices

Instruct your employees to use stronger, complex passwords. Communicate to them the dangers of using a weak password like ‘12345’, their birthdays, names, etc. that are easy to guess.

Cyber attackers use advanced skills like social engineering and guessing passwords. This way, they can compromise endpoints and applications and data stored on them. 81% of data breaches happen due to weak and/or stolen passwords.

Therefore, develop a stringent password policy in your organization.

• Use complex and strong passwords with uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols
• Never share passwords with anyone
• Share passwords only if required but not via emails
• Change passwords frequently
• Use multi-factor authentication to secure endpoints

#9. Conduct Pentests

Conduct penetration testing (Pen test) on your endpoints to assess their security posture. Pen testing simulates cyber attacks using similar techniques, tools, and processes to find vulnerabilities and measure business impacts.

Evaluate how secure your endpoints are based on these tests and find vulnerabilities in them before real attackers do. This way, you can fix those vulnerabilities and secure your endpoints and data in them. In addition, learn how robust your device security is to withstand cyberattacks from different roles as well as authenticated or unauthenticated positions.

Conduct automated or manual pen testing to find vulnerabilities such as authorization and authentication issues, misconfigurations, client-side issues, server-side vulnerabilities, etc. Examples of tools: Vulnerability scanners, proxy tools, exploitation tools, etc.

#10. Create Incident Response Planning

Create an effective incident response plan to find and respond to security incidents. Security professionals and organizations use this plan to protect their assets from attacks such as data leaks, malware, phishing, password theft, and so on.

Create your incident response plan by following the below strategies:

• Develop an incident response policy that covers roles and responsibilities, tools and technologies to use, and processes to detect and fix issues
• Build your team – a CISO, a manager, communication specialists, and security professionals
• Assess endpoints to find risks and vulnerabilities
• Analyze security issues and prioritize them based on risk severity
• Contain and remove the security risk
• Recover your endpoints and make them operational again
• Document the incident and learn from it

#11. Enforce Remote/BYOD Policy

Organizations are accepting modern approaches like remote work and bring-your-own-device (BYOD). Although beneficial, they could be risky.

• Create a secure policy for BYOD and remote work and make your employees abide by them.
• Review your current security protocols and update them to the latest endpoint security best practices, tools, and procedures.
• Instruct your employees to report devices they bring to your IT or security teams for security monitoring.
• Tell them not to share passwords or access permissions with anyone else as it could cause unauthorized access.

For remote work, enable them to access the network via endpoints using an advanced VPN. It will help protect against DNS spoofing, man-in-the-middle attacks, etc.

#12. Work with Secure Vendors

Choose secure vendors for your third-party applications carefully as you have no control over the security measures they use. A security compromise on their IT environment can affect your business and customers. So, follow these measures:

• Check the vendor’s background to understand their reputation in the market
• Inspect the type of security measures they use
• Find out how they manage your data

Once you have these answers, select a service provider. In addition, keep tracking their current security and privacy policies. Never take security for granted while working with a third party.

#13. Allowlist/Locklist Apps

Create an allowlist or blacklist for your applications. Don’t let your employees install an app if it’s not relevant to the nature of their job.

Example: Blocklist apps such as Facebook, gaming apps, shopping apps, etc. if a user doesn’t need it for their role.

This limits security risks like zero-day vulnerabilities, data exposure, DDoS attacks, etc. It also helps reduce distractions so your employees can focus on work instead of wasting time on unproductive activities.

#14. Train and Educate Employees

Educate your users on endpoint security best practices so they can help improve the overall security posture of your organization. They can keep their endpoints safe by following security practices to reduce the likelihood of attacks.

• Conduct periodic training and seminars/webinars to keep employees updated with recent changes in endpoint security, cyberattacks, and other industrial news.
• Communicate to them safe password practices, the importance of adhering to security policies, and the dangers of non-compliance with laws and regulations.
• Train them how to spot phishing attacks, CEO fraud, and other security risks

#15. Use Endpoint Security Solutions

Protect your data and endpoints by using endpoint security solutions. These solutions will find and respond to security threats and prevent security incidents like malware, phishing, etc. They will implement cutting-edge endpoint security best practices as well.

Types of endpoint security solutions you can use:

• Antivirus software
• Vulnerability scanning tools
• Endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools
• Intrusion detection/prevention systems (IDS/IPS)
• Encryption tools
• IAM solutions
• Pen testing solutions

Ensure you use endpoint security solutions from a reputed service provider with a good track record and achieve the most out of these tools.

Enhance Endpoint Security Practices with SentinelOne

Secure your endpoints from attacks by using the advanced, powerful security platform – SentinelOne. It offers a variety of security solutions and services to protect your devices and mitigate risks.

Singularity™ Endpoint will help you detect, prevent, and respond to various security risks proactively. You can use this intelligent platform to provide superior visibility into your endpoints across your infrastructure. Singularity™ Endpoint delivers the following endpoint security best practices and features:

• Get extended control of your endpoints by centralizing workflows and data. Understand your attack surfaces and dynamically protect unmanaged endpoints. Reduce false positives and enhance detection efficacy consistently across OSes with an autonomous, combined EPP+EDR solution.
• Find IP-enabled devices in real-time using Singularity Ranger’s network attack surface control solution. Singularity™ Endpoint needs no additional agents, hardware, or network changes.
• Uses static and behavioral detection to neutralize threats. Get the best-in-class EDR and eliminate analyst fatigue by automating responses to suspicious behaviors. You can build further customized automations with one API with 350+ functions.
• Build context in real-time using patented Storyline technology. It gathers and correlates telemetry across your endpoints for holistic context into threats. Help analysts understand the root causes of attacks regardless of skill level. Augment detections with threat intelligence and respond to attacks at enterprise scale with RemoteOps

You can also use other solutions like Singularity™ XDR, Singularity™ Threat Intelligence,  and Singularity™ Vulnerability Management to go beyond your endpoints and secure your entire organization far into the future..

Conclusion

We explored upon multiple endpoint security risks along with trending endpoint security best practices that organizations and users should follow to stay safe and secure from cyber risks and potential threats. Organizations should stay vigilant and follow the above-mentioned endpoint security best practices for endpoint security to protect devices, systems, and data. It will help them and their employees stay safe against attacks like phishing, DDoS, ransomware, data leaks, and so on.

We would recommend endpoint security solutions such as Singularity™ Endpoint to detect and protect endpoints across your IT infrastructure.

Get a demo to know more.

FAQs

1. How to ensure endpoint security?

To ensure endpoint security, apply a multi-tiered security approach. Protect endpoints by using advanced tools and techniques and follow endpoint security best practices.

2. What are the considerations of endpoint security?

Consider methods like multi-factor authentication, real-time detection and monitoring, analyzing user behavior, using endpoint security tools, etc.

3. What are the best practices for endpoint security?

Follow the below practices for endpoint security:

• Identify all endpoints
• Encrypt data
• Use access controls
• Create BYOD/remote work policies
• Use stringer passwords
• Educate users
• Monitor continuously
• Apply updates and patches
• Use endpoint security tools

4. How does SentinelOne help in Endpoint Security?

SentinelOne offers advanced security solutions like Singularity™ Endpoint to secure endpoints from malware, phishing, ransomware, and other threats.