Endpoint security is one of the most mature markets in cybersecurity. While many organizations are now looking to enhance their security operations with endpoint detection and response (EDR) or extended detection and response (XDR) solutions to allow for better threat and incident investigation, securing the endpoint starts with a strong endpoint protection platform, and that was the focus of this Forrester Wave™ evaluation.

This year’s endpoint security Wave process (which included reference customer interviews, executive briefings, and endpoint security vendor demos) identified these key trends currently driving the endpoint security market:

• Increasing focus on prevention. Security analysts need to understand how a threat made it to the endpoint to attempt execution, but the analyst’s work is much easier when they’re not constantly recovering from an attack. In previous years, focus had been put on detection and response, deprioritizing prevention, believing that was the best way to respond to incidents. By providing strong protection at the endpoint from the broadest range of attack methods and variety of vectors, endpoint security solutions provide a crucial line of cyber defense that helps determine if analysts should focus their time solely on investigation or split it between investigation and recovery.
• Toolsets extending to increase endpoint protection. Forrester has written about today’s cybersecurity staffing challenges and the resulting consolidation of security products that protect the endpoint, once again a key consideration for buyers. Including functions such as vulnerability and patch remediation or secure configuration management into endpoint security solutions reduces the number of tools needed to maintain a proper endpoint security posture. As a result, security and risk pros can shift focus to other parts of the organization. These capabilities in endpoint security solutions are not meant to replace full-service solutions in these areas but rather are to augment the existing capabilities and provide more security functions for the endpoints.
• Endpoint protection simplifying the transition to EDR or XDR. Threats still need investigation, and not all attacks are prevented, so endpoint security solutions that allow buyers to easily migrate to an endpoint-centric security analytics platform without reconfiguration or changing the endpoints should be prioritized over others that require broad environment changes. When EDR or XDR solutions are utilized with endpoint protection platforms that have more coverage across different attack vectors, incident correlation is simplified and mean time to resolution can be shortened.

I encourage Forrester clients to read The Forrester Wave™: Endpoint Security, Q4 2023. If you are interested in talking about endpoint security providers, or the people and processes supporting them, please schedule an inquiry with me.