How many devices are using your Wi-Fi network at any given time? If the answer is an ‘I don’t know’ or ‘it varies,’ you’re not alone. As mobile devices become ubiquitous, organizations are left with more devices on their network than just their provided workstations. For organizations whose workstations have multiple users, like libraries and schools, the list of devices and users grows even wider.
Each device on your Wi-Fi is an “endpoint” of your network. Endpoints are the easiest entryway to your network, and are possible points of access for hackers. Providing security for your endpoints presents its own unique set of challenges. Rather than employing network-focused solutions, each endpoint must be shored up with appropriate software, a potential nightmare for your IT department. The following fixes, software and organizational decisions take off some of the load, and keep your workstations, tablets, mobile devices and other endpoints well maintained and free of malware and other threats.
Set clear guidelines
Knowing who is on your network and what kinds of programs they are using is a key way of mitigating risk to your organization. Limiting your network capabilities to a preset number of devices, including workstations whose security setup and configuration are known to your IT department, keep things simple. In comparison, an open network means devices that may be more susceptible to issues, or potential bad actors. Pairing down on endpoints can be as simple as creating a Wi-Fi password.
Make endpoints a part of a larger plan
Once you have established which devices are on your network, make enhancing their security a part of an all-encompassing, robust strategy. Each device should have local security software, including anti-virus and anti-malware applications. Preferably, both local and network firewalls should be in place.
As both a method of maintaining security and keeping configurations simple for your IT department, reboot-restore technology like Faronics Deep Freeze may be effective. Deep Freeze allows organizations with multiple users on each workstation to keep a consistent number of programs running each time a workstation is rebooted. Doing so keeps security issues like zero-day threats at bay and allows for simple configurations that are easy to manage. Solutions like Deep Freeze mean that your workstations won’t be the endpoints that your organization has to worry about.
Stick to a schedule
To get your endpoint security working as efficiently and effectively as possible, updating consistently is a must. Hackers are constantly finding new vulnerabilities to take advantage of that out of date software will do little to prevent. Security software companies make regular adjustments to their products to address emerging threats. By not updating, you open the door to hackers pulling valuable data, with endpoints as an entryway.
One of the easiest ways to ensure that your security programs don’t have any easily exploitable issues is to automate regularly schedule updates. Doing this will allow your IT department to focus on other issues.
In addition to updating regularly, your endpoints should be patched regularly to ensure maximum safety. Much like updating, this task is extremely repetitive and time-consuming, potentially holding back IT and preventing them from doing their jobs efficiently. Automating patching whenever possible will fix this problem. Faronics Deep Freeze and other reboot-to-restore solutions allow you to automatically patch during a reboot, and then set the updated version as the new configuration across multiple workstations. The result is a simple, elegant way to keep workstations up to date and is able to block the most modern threats.
Self healing
Despite your best efforts sometimes security breaches at your endpoints occur. Self healing technology can be a part of the solution. Self healing, similar to reboot-to-restore, keeps risks down consistently by bringing them back to a preset configuration when presented with an attack. This software is helpful for larger organizations or ones with an overburdened IT department because it allows for endpoints to challenge threats without any additional work from IT. This increases the overall efficiency of your organization and helps to prevent downtime.
Self healing programs can work as part of an overall strategy of automating as much of your organization’s endpoint maintenance as possible, allowing your IT team to focus their time more productively on specific, real-time issues.
More and more often, organizations have a seemingly endless number of endpoints. Keeping configurations consistent isn’t just a matter of good housekeeping, it also helps ensure the security of your entire network. From reboot-to-restore solutions like Deep Freeze, to anti-virus programs, Faronics has the software you need to protect endpoints and keep the maintenance process as simple as possible, so that your organization’s IT department can focus on reducing tickets and tackling major problems. To see what Faronics can do for your organization, get in touch today.
