What is Endpoint Monitoring? Definitions, Benefits & Best Practices

Endpoints are a prime target for threat actors. In fact, 68% of the respondents to a Ponenmon study reported experiencing an endpoint attack that successfully compromised data or IT infrastructure. And, with IBM pegging the average cost of a data breach at $4.88 million USD, it’s clear that effective endpoint monitoring and security is a key objective for organizations of all sizes. 

As the stakes for endpoint security increase, so does the complexity. Endpoints are often distributed across multiple regions, running a variety of different operating systems, and used by people who aren’t always tech savvy, let alone cybersecurity experts. 

Getting endpoint security right requires a mix of strategy, organizational buy in, practices, and tools that can be tricky to execute. This article will explore the monitoring aspects of endpoint security, including the basics of what endpoint monitoring is, as well as the key challenges, best practices, and emerging trends in the space.  

What is endpoint monitoring?

Endpoint monitoring is the set of tools and practices that enable centralized data collection and threat detection for network endpoints. 

Endpoints are essentially all the end-user devices we wouldn’t consider network devices, including:

• Laptops
• Workstations
• Printers 
• Smartphones 
• Kiosks 
• And many more IoT and IIoT devices

Endpoint monitoring software allows administrators to capture data such as metrics, logs, running processes, installed programs, events, settings, security information, and even keystrokes from endpoints in a centralized management console. It also typically supports notifications and alerts for key endpoint events (e.g., a potential cyberattack or filesystem change) and reporting capabilities. 

Endpoint monitoring vs. endpoint management

Endpoint monitoring is a subset of endpoint management. Endpoint monitoring focuses on capturing data, organizing it, and alerting, but doesn’t directly make configuration changes or perform device updates.

Endpoint management includes endpoint monitoring and adds capabilities such as configuration, IAM, updates, security policy enforcement, and threat prevention capabilities.

How does endpoint monitoring work?

There are two fundamental approaches to endpoint monitoring:

• Agent-based monitoring: A lightweight application (the agent) runs on network endpoints, captures data, and reports back to a central management system. 
• Agentless monitoring: Network protocols such as SNMP, WMI, and IPMI or REST APIs are used to capture data without installing additional software on the endpoints. 

We’ve explored agent-based vs. agentless monitoring in the past, so we’ll keep it short here. Unless you have a compelling reason NOT to go agent-based, that’s probably your best bet. That’s because agents can typically capture more detail and give you deeper visibility than agentless monitoring. This is particularly true for endpoint monitoring, where detecting malware and malicious behavior is essential. 

Data aggregation and presentation are critical capabilities of endpoint monitoring software. Instead of logging into multiple endpoints, administrators can view essential information in a centralized console or periodic report.  

Real-time alerting is essential to the cybersecurity functions of endpoint monitoring software. Endpoint monitoring alerts are typically based on thresholds, such as “greater than 90% CPU for five minutes,” or more advanced heuristics and AI models that can detect deviations from a baseline. 

Endpoint monitoring software often integrates with other monitoring and management tools, such as a security information and event management (SIEM) platform or network management system (NMS).

Why is endpoint monitoring important?

Effective endpoint monitoring is like a high-performing traffic control center for your network. It makes sense of the chaos and helps you detect minor issues before they become significant problems. 

Fundamentally, endpoint monitoring helps organizations address three high-level use cases:

1. Device monitoring and lifecycle management: Endpoint devices address a variety of business use cases, which means monitoring their health and performance is sound asset management. 
2. Endpoint security and compliance: Endpoint devices are also an attractive target for threat actors looking to breach your network. Therefore, monitoring endpoint devices is an essential part of maintaining a strong security posture and, in some cases, required to maintain compliance.
3. Enhancing end-user experience: Arguably the most important use-case in recent years is around improving the end-user experience. By monitoring endpoint devices, organizations can proactively identify and resolve performance issues, ensuring smooth and uninterrupted use.

Under the umbrella of those use cases, organizations can reap several benefits of endpoint monitoring. In the sections below, we’ll explore each of those. 

Improved network visibility 

Endpoints comprise a large portion of modern IT networks, and endpoint monitoring is essential to holistic network visibility. Endpoint monitoring software enables teams to understand the health and security of the devices their network infrastructure supports. 

Enhanced threat detection and response 

The more dwell time an attacker has post-breach, the more damage they can do. Unfortunately, after a downward trend, the average attacker dwell time (excluding ransomware) recently increased to 13 days. Endpoint monitoring helps IT detect and respond to anomalies that may otherwise fly under the radar. 

With a large chunk of exploits beginning with an endpoint breach, early detection is crucial in reducing dwell time and containing threats. For example, endpoint monitoring software can help detect unauthorized endpoint access attempts that could be indicative of malicious behavior.  

Support compliance and auditing initiatives 

Many regulations and standards (e.g., PCI DSS, GDPR, and HIPAA) require endpoint monitoring under certain circumstances. Endpoint monitoring software helps teams stay compliant and pass their internal and external audits. 

Common endpoint monitoring challenges

Endpoint monitoring is important, but it isn’t always simple.

Let’s take a look at five common endpoint monitoring challenges and how organizations can address them. 

Device, network, and tool diversity 

Finding a reliable endpoint monitoring solution that works on both Windows and macOS can be a challenge.

Additionally, corporate IT teams and MSPs no longer deal with legacy “castle and moat” style networks with clear, predictable perimeters. Remote work and cloud computing further complicate monitoring and control. Finally, BYOD makes it even harder to implement consistent security controls and configurations. 

Because all these unique security challenges exist, there are all sorts of mobile device management (MDM), endpoint detection and response (EDR), antivirus, and data loss prevention (DLP) solutions available that aim to solve them. This leads to an environment where IT may be using multiple different monitoring dashboards and losing true visibility across their endpoints. Additionally, the issue compounds as the network’s number of endpoints and tools increases. At scale, it can quickly become a recipe for security incidents popping up in a blind spot.

Organizations can address this challenge by implementing monitoring and management solutions that provide them with end-to-end visibility and control across all the devices in their networks. While there typically won’t be a single platform that addresses all of an organization’s use cases, limiting the tool sprawl by selecting solutions with broad coverage and the right capabilities can go a long way. 

Social engineering and cyber attacks

For threat actors, endpoints are entry points. For IT, endpoints are among the most challenging systems to lock down because non-technical staff often need them to complete business-critical tasks. For example, you probably can’t restrict your road-warrior sales rockstar from accessing the Internet on the go.

For embedded systems, the settings the vendor exposes may restrict your ability to harden the device (shout out to all the admins who have wasted a day trying to disable TLS 1.0 on a smart IoT device).

Specific threats facing endpoints today include:

• Social engineering: Phishing, vishing, whaling, business email compromise, and many more social engineering techniques put endpoints like laptops, workstations, and smartphones at risk. 
• Malware: While it’s possible to lock down smartphones and workstations reasonably well with the right security tooling, all it takes is one miss for malware such as ransomware to compromise a machine. BYOD makes this problem even trickier to solve. 
• Unpatched vulnerabilities: Whether they are zero-days or not, unpatched vulnerabilities create a significant risk. This is especially true in the IoT world where estimates suggest 99% of exploit attempts use known CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures).
• Supply chain attacks: In some cases, threat actors are able to compromise endpoints before they ever make it to you. These supply chain attacks can occur with both software and hardware products and organizations need to be diligent when vetting their vendors and partners. 

There’s no silver bullet for these endpoint monitoring challenges as cybersecurity is a constant game of cat and mouse. However, security awareness training and endpoint management software can meaningfully reduce risk. 

End users 

To be clear, we’re not blaming end users here. The simple fact is the human element of IT introduces risk that is challenging to predict and preempt. Endpoint devices are the systems where humans typically have the most access and control, which increases the risk of human error and susceptibility to social engineering.

Enforcing the principle of least privilege, security awareness training to make employees into “human firewalls,” and security tooling to detect and contain the issues that slip through the cracks can help organizations stay ahead of the curve. 

Alert fatigue 

If everything is a high-priority alert, nothing is a high-priority alert. Endpoint monitoring software alerts and notifications should be tuned to provide a reasonable signal-to-noise ratio. Additionally, it is essential that alerts generated using heuristics and AI/ML minimize false positives. Otherwise, you increase the risk of alert fatigue, the desensitization or overwhelm that occurs when IT pros receive an excessive number of alerts, leading to missed or ignored important notifications.

Compliance risk

While there are certainly compliance benefits for endpoint monitoring, there are also risks to consider. Capturing and analyzing data is a crucial aspect of endpoint monitoring. Some endpoint monitoring tools even include a keylogger. 

Organizations must ensure that their monitoring doesn’t violate data compliance or residency laws. Regulations like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) restrict how personal data can be collected and stored, creating compliance risks.

5 strategic endpoint monitoring best practices

Tools and tactics alone aren’t enough to implement effective endpoint monitoring and management at scale. Strategy is essential.

With that in mind, here are five strategic best practices for endpoint monitoring.

1. Get buy-in from leadership

Endpoint monitoring and management needs to cover the entire organization to be effective. Getting buy-in from the C-suite will reduce the risk of organizational silos or resource issues derailing your initiative. 

2. Correct security posture issues quickly

Endpoint monitoring can uncover many security posture issues such as unnecessarily exposed network services or USB ports. Make sure to address those posture issues before they become exploits.

3. Don’t alert unless it really matters

Alert fatigue is real. A new endpoint monitoring initiative is likely to lead to many more alerts for your team. Make sure your alerts are actionable. If they aren’t, they should probably remain a log entry that isn’t cluttering your engineers’ inboxes.

4. Take a defense-in-depth approach

Don’t just focus on endpoints. Infrastructure security matters too. Make sure that your endpoint monitoring strategy is well-aligned with your broader cybersecurity initiatives and your teams practice continuous security.

5. Patch regularly

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. While threat detection is great, mitigating a risk before an attacker can even try to exploit it is better. Regularly patch your endpoints to eliminate low-hanging fruit attackers may use to breach your network. 

The future of endpoint monitoring

As we’ve seen, the current state of endpoint monitoring and management is complex; for some organizations, it may even feel chaotic. Fortunately, several emerging trends in the space can help organizations mitigate risk despite the complexity. 

Signature-based algorithms are rapidly being replaced or supplemented by AI/ML-powered solutions to improve threat detection accuracy and adaptability. This can help organizations detect and resolve issues that may have gone undetected previously. 

Additionally, extended detection and response (XDR) solutions that cover a wide range of devices and applications are helping organizations solve the tool sprawl and blindspot challenges that exist today. 
As these solutions mature, they’ll help organizations address the endpoint monitoring challenges of today. If you enjoyed this post and would like to learn more about networking, SaaS management, or cybersecurity, check out the other articles in our Frankly IT blog.