Forrest Endpoint Securities Suites Report Names Leaders In Securities Solutions
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Trend Micro, Sophos, Symantec lead the pack for threat prevention and detection.
It’s no secret CISOs face an overwhelming amount of threats requiring a comprehensive security solution to sufficiently protect a corporate system. To help business decision makers pick the right solution for their company, Forrester creates reports providing third-party recommendations. The Forrester Wave™: Endpoint Security Suites, Q4 2016 report highlights and compares 15 providers and found Trend Micro, Sophos, and Symantec lead the pack for threat prevention and detection.
As the study author’s write, “Security budgets have risen significantly in the past few years, with endpoint security budgets commanding, on average, 10 percent of the overall IT security budget in 2016. Despite the available budget for new investments, security pros struggle to find the right tools to protect the expanding attack surface posed by employee devices.”
For vendors, this provides a ripe opportunity to rise to fill this need with the appropriate products and services. Endpoint security suite need to address three core needs to attract buyers: prevention of malware execution; detection of malicious activity post-execution; and remediation and containment of malicious activity and potential vulnerabilities.
The report also found security professionals are searching for a balance of threat prevention and detection as they see endpoint security suite vendors as a way to address their top challenges, trusting them to act as strategic partners, advising them on top endpoint security decisions. Further, threat analysis and automatic containment capabilities are key differentiators, as traditional approaches to endpoint security become less effective and outdated. Thus, leaders will be determined by their improve threat detection accuracy and automatic containment measures.
The fifteen vendors evaluated in the study included: Bromium, Carbon Black, Crowdstrike, Cylance, ESET, IBM, Intel Security, Invincea, Kaspersky Lab, Landesk, Palo Alto Networks, SentinelOne, Sophos, Symantec, and Trend Micro. Inclusion criteria stated vendors had to have an endpoint security suite that can prevent, detect, and remediate endpoint threats; an enterprise market presence; and a high level of interest from enterprise buyers. There were also a number of endpoint security vendors that were not included in the evaluation.
According to the results, Trend Micro topped the charts. The report stated, “Trend Micro offers one of the most technically capable products on the market,” and “Trend Micro’s customers gave the product one of the highest scores for threat protection effectiveness of all the suites evaluated in this Forrester Wave, as well as a lower-than-average detriment to endpoint user experience.”
Sophos also performed well, delivering the most enterprise-friendly SaaS endpoint security. “Sophos offers a tightly integrated suite of endpoint security capabilities, with a good balance of advanced threat prevention, detection, and automatic remediation. Buyers will appreciate its intuitive administrative interface along with the flexibility and scale required for most enterprise deployments, both large and small. Sophos is also one of the few endpoint security suite vendors in this Forrester Wave to offer a full-featured suite either on-premises or through a SaaS-based service.”
Symantec offers the most complete endpoint security suite on the market, and the Forrester Wave asserted, “Symantec’s deep bench of endpoint security technologies spans a range of prevention, detection, and remediation capabilities. Almost every possible attack surface is covered when buyers utilize the full extent of this portfolio.”
To round out the top five, Kaspersky Lab meets most enterprise requirements in a tightly integrated package, while Intel Security’s scalability makes it especially suited for very large enterprises.