Cyber threats are always seeking new opportunities to compromise your network and steal sensitive data. When you have multiple remote endpoints across your organization, protecting and securing them is of vital importance. With the rising complexity of IT environments and the shift to remote/hybrid work, robust endpoint protection has become essential.
However, manual endpoint remediation can be a time-consuming task and prone to human error. Automated remediation, on the other hand, provides consistent monitoring and protection, allowing you to address issues quickly and maintain secure endpoints.
With that in mind, let’s look at automated endpoint remediation, why it matters, and how to select the right endpoint remediation tool for your business.
What is Endpoint Remediation?
Endpoint remediation is the process of identifying and addressing security gaps, vulnerabilities, and failures to comply with security requirements on endpoint devices. This is essential for quickly fixing issues, as well as maintaining organizational security and IT compliance.
These issues typically include vulnerabilities, malware, outdated software, and misconfigured devices. With a capable automated remediation tool, many issues can be addressed automatically through policy-driven actions. If an endpoint remediation tool isn’t automated, it will once it identifies a threat, provide solutions that IT teams can implement to address and resolve the issue quickly.
Manual vs. Automated Endpoint Remediation
While endpoint remediation has several important elements and variations, the biggest difference is whether the tool uses manual or automated remediation.
Manual endpoint remediation can detect issues and vulnerabilities, but IT teams must assess and address the threats manually. This is a slower process, as it requires that agents take the time to investigate the issue and manually remediate it. However, it also has an element of human judgement and flexibility that automated remediation may lack.
Automated endpoint remediation, on the other hand, is a swift, scalable, and efficient process. Automated tools continuously monitor many endpoints in parallel, providing near real-time detection and automated response. These tools can also automatically address detected problems, such as by installing patch updates if they detect outdated systems or removing detected malware.
While manual endpoint remediation may have more flexibility with the human element, it’s also more prone to human error and can be a drain on time and resources. Automated remediation, on the other hand, has significantly better response times and can scale to meet your company’s growth.
Automated Endpoint Remediation: Compliance & Cost Impact
So, let’s look at automated endpoint remediation, its advantages, and its impact. Automated remediation tools can enhance overall endpoint security and minimize risks by providing real-time detection and response, which leads to several benefits. These include:
Quicker threat mitigation: One of the biggest benefits of automated endpoint remediation is the speed and efficiency it brings to threat detection and mitigation. Automated tools can constantly scan endpoints and networks to identify threats and address them or alert IT teams, leading to a much faster response.
Reduced downtime: The ability to quickly and automatically address issues can significantly reduce downtime. Not only do automated endpoint remediation tools address potential problems before they can cause downtime, but they can also keep endpoints protected and running smoothly to prevent future problems that could cause downtime.
Improved scaling: When your company grows, you add several new endpoints that will require detection and management. If you use manual endpoint remediation, this often requires hiring and training additional IT agents to keep up with the increased demand. With an automated solution, however, scaling is far easier, as the remediation tool can connect to the new endpoints and provide the same detection and remediation functionality with ease.
Time and resource savings: Automated endpoint remediation can lead to significant savings in time and resources. Automatically detecting and addressing potential issues saves IT agents time that would otherwise be spent manually searching for and fixing vulnerabilities and other problems. This frees them up for more critical tasks, so companies can address problems quickly and better utilize their IT resources.
Improved IT compliance: Automated remediation helps sustain patch levels and configuration baselines that align with common frameworks and regulatory requirements.
3 Stages of Automated Endpoint Remediation
Automated endpoint remediation consists of three key steps:
1. Detection: Identifying Potential Threats on Endpoints
The first step is to detect potential threats. This is typically via an endpoint monitoring tool noticing suspicious activity or an outdated application, but can also include regular security scans or end-users reporting issues.
2. Analysis: Understanding the Nature and Severity of Threats
Once an issue or threat is identified, its severity is assessed. For instance, if it’s a new vulnerability impacting a business-critical process or jeopardizing sensitive data, then it’s a high-priority threat that must be addressed as quickly as possible. However, if it’s a minor issue that only causes an inconvenience, it can be a lower priority.
3. Response/Remediation: Automatically Fixing Detected Issues
After identifying and assessing the threat, the automated remediation tool can remediate it. This can take several forms, depending on the issue in question, including installing patches (or rolling back patches, if one is the cause), removing malicious files, changing configurations, or even restoring from backups. Automated remediation tools can be programmed to carry out these fixes as needed, although more severe problems may still require manual input and confirmation.
Selecting the Right Endpoint Remediation Tool for Security
Given the importance of cybersecurity and quickly remediating any issues or potential threats, it’s vital to find an endpoint remediation tool that can support your network. However, not all remediation tools are made the same, so you’ll want to shop around for a solution that meets all your organization’s needs.
Consider the following when looking at endpoint remediation tools:
Automated threat detection: A good remediation tool should be able to identify a wide variety of threats and vulnerabilities, including suspicious behavior that could indicate an unknown threat.
Scalability: When you add new endpoints, your endpoint remediation tool should be able to manage them without extra hassle. A scalable solution can keep up with your business’s growth, which is essential for companies on the rise.
Flexible automation controls: The tool should support approval workflows, maintenance windows, and granular scoping to avoid unintended changes.
Integrations: A good automated endpoint remediation tool should be able to seamlessly connect to all your endpoints and the applications they use for full protection and coverage. Make sure you use a tool that can integrate properly with your network, devices, and apps; otherwise, you’ll risk leaving blind spots in your security.
A trusted vendor: When looking at your options, be sure to consider the vendor, its reputation, and the support it offers. Finding a reliable vendor with a strong track record will help ensure you’re getting a reliable tool with active support.
A good automated endpoint remediation tool can reduce IT overhead and minimize disruptions while protecting your network, and can scale as needed to meet your growing needs. Settling for less can leave your network vulnerable.
Automating Endpoint Remediation with Splashtop: Proactive Alerts & Real-Time Fixes
When you’re looking for a solution with powerful automated endpoint remediation, you can’t do much better than Splashtop AEM (Autonomous Endpoint Management). Splashtop AEM seamlessly automates endpoint remediation with continuous monitoring, real-time alerts, and fixes via Smart Actions, keeping endpoints and networks safe.
Splashtop AEM also integrates with top-tier EDR platforms, including Bitdefender GravityZone and CrowdStrike Falcon, further improving threat detection and response. As Splashtop AEM works across multiple operating systems and devices, it’s easy to connect and manage each of your endpoints from a single screen.
Splashtop AEM gives IT teams the tools and technology they need to monitor endpoints, proactively address issues, and reduce their workloads. This includes:
Automated patching for OS, third-party, and custom apps.
AI-powered CVE-based vulnerability insights.
Enforceable, customizable policy frameworks.
Inventory tracking and managing across all endpoints
Alerts and remediation to automatically resolve issues before they become problems.
Background actions to access tools like task managers and device managers without interrupting users.
Ready to experience Splashtop AEM for yourself? Get started today with a free trial.
