White paper offers advice in endpoint protection

The need for proper endpoint protection increases with the number of incidents of lost or stolen data, but just because an individual vendor is offering and endpoint protection solution doesn't mean it's the right vendor for a given business. A new white paper written by Bloor Research and sponsored by GuardianEdge outlines the best practices for choosing the right endpoint protection solution.

April 21, 2008

Courtesy of eChannelLine.com

"There's a real need for endpoint data protection, and it's something that's grown in recent years. It's grown really based on a couple of factors. If you look at the reason why people need to protect data on endpoint, it usually falls into three distinct categories," said Andy Kicklighter, director of product marketing at GuardianEdge. Those categories are compliance with business regulations, compliance with government regulations and the need to protect intellectual property, he said. It's those three things that are driving organizations of all sizes to protect data on their endpoint devices, which Kicklighter noted is one of the largest places where corporate data is lost.

The white paper covers why endpoint data protection is important and then examines a solution to the problem, with a focus on how to choose the right vendor to work with, Kicklighter explained.

In choosing the most appropriate vendor to work with, there are various things that need to be considered, including making sure the deployment works, whether end-user operation and interface is ideal and if encryption is certified at the appropriate level, he said. It's important to choose a vendor with a good track record and a substantial customer base, he added.

"You need to look at vendors who've solved these kinds of problems that your organization is going to have and have a track record in doing it," Kicklighter said.

Organizations are putting endpoint data protection at the top of their priority lists for 2008 and 2009, so the adoption of solutions will continue to increase, which opens up opportunities for vendors and their channel partners.

"It's getting to the point that any sizable organization where employees are going to have any contact with customer data ... or if they're even in an ordinary organization and have employee information or financial information or have a Web site with credit numbers coming in, they have to make sure this data is properly protected, and it's going up to the top of the list," Kicklighter said.

When organizations do decide on an vendor's solution, they also have to decide how best to roll it out -- and where to start. Most of them start with protecting laptops, with USB keys and removable storage being the next focus area.

"Then you start to look at where data might be leaking off of those kinds of platforms," Kicklighter said.