The harsh realities of endpoint management

88 percent of IT professionals acknowledge the importance of endpoint management, yet 30 percent don’t know how many they have.

LogMeIn released findings of a new global report revealing current market trends and business threats driving the need for IT professionals to make endpoint management a priority.

The global survey, which polled 1,000 IT professionals across North America and Europe found that while 88 percent of IT respondents acknowledge the importance of endpoint management, nearly one third don’t know how many endpoints they manage.

Data from the survey also showed that although IT professionals consider endpoint management a priority and evolving workplace trends demand it, only 52 percent are proactively addressing security concerns before a breach occurs. As a result, despite understanding the security risks associated with managing multiple devices, IT professionals could be doing much more to manage and protect all endpoints from cyber-attacks.

The report provides insights into the gaps IT professionals are leaving in their security programs, including:

IT teams are faced with multiple security risks, but still don’t focus on proactive measures.
According to the survey, 58 percent of IT professionals consider malware as their top security concern, followed by ransomware at 48 percent, while 40 percent rank cloud security breaches as a top concern. Despite this, only 52 percent of IT professionals take measures to proactively address security concerns before a breach occurs.

Lack of endpoint management leaves significant holes in a security strategy.
Shockingly, 30 percent of IT professionals do not know how many endpoint devices exist within their organization. Those who do report an average of 750 endpoints including servers, employee computers and mobile devices. Though 71 percent of IT professionals claim they are actively addressing security on hardware, 44 percent are not actively addressing security on software and 52 percent are not addressing it on mobile devices.

Endpoint management goes beyond anti-malware.
A majority of companies are not using solutions that can address these risks. Only 26 percent of IT professionals surveyed reported investing in automated monitoring and alerts, only 17 percent invest in anti-malware on mobile devices and 14 percent invest in third party patch management. The lack of these important security measures are leaving their companies open to potential cyber-attacks.