Establishing Security Operations

The endpoint is the confluence of all activity in a network. It’s the place where identities for users and admins authenticate, emails with attachments and links are clicked on, websites are browsed, and vast assortments of applications – each with their own novel, exploitable bugs and vulnerabilities – are running in an infinite number of states, configurations, and patch levels. It’s because of this confluence and chaos that, though attacks on networks can take many forms, they almost always include some sort of endpoint compromise. A lot of security literature today focuses on identity security as the most important mitigating factor to prevent initial compromise, with talk of zero-trust architectures and multi-factor authentication. Though this importance is undeniably true, what isn’t often made as obvious is that the security of the endpoint is required in lockstep, or those efforts are for naught. The endpoint...