Technology advancements and the rapid shift to remote and hybrid work have left businesses reliant on a rising number of remote endpoints to sustain daily operations. Vulnerable to cyber-attacks, robust endpoint security has become a must-have to keep your business’ data secure, and safeguard against breaches that can result in financial loss, downtime, and devastating reputational damage with the potential to impact brand perception and business relationships.
Alongside this growth in endpoints and resultant rising cyber risk, there has been a significant increase in the volume and complexity of online threats. In 2022 cyber-attacks on corporate networks increased by 38% per week from the previous year, with many targeting collaboration tools that contain a vast amount of sensitive data and are critical to support hybrid workforces.
Today cyber-attacks occur every 39 seconds and large companies aren’t the only ones at risk – with less security resources and lower cyber defences SMBs have become an attractive target for hackers. Now it’s more critical than ever to strengthen your business’ online security, including endpoint protection.
In this article, we’re looking at two options on the market to help you evaluate which is a better investment for your business. We’re putting our endpoint security of choice (and industry-leading solution) CrowdStrike up against a popular choice for SMBs: Webroot.
Before we dive into the comparison, let’s establish a clear understanding of the basics.
What are endpoints?
Endpoints are physical network-connected devices that can often be used remotely. Your business’ endpoints may include laptops, mobiles, tablets, digital printers, point of sale (POS) systems, and more.
As they sometimes exist outside the firewall, endpoints can be exploited by hackers to enter the network, putting your assets, sensitive data, and intellectual property at risk.
What is endpoint security?
Comprehensive endpoint protection software safeguards your endpoints against breaches on and off-site. This technology provides full endpoint visibility through a centralised management platform to defend your business against threats such as malware (including ransomware), zero-day attacks that exploit unpatched software vulnerabilities, credential theft, and more.
Webroot vs CrowdStrike
To start, let’s get an overview of each solution’s features to see how they stack up.
Webroot
Webroot’s products are targeted towards individuals, home computers, and endpoint security for small businesses. This solution is an attractive option for SMBs looking to access endpoint security at a very low price point.
Webroot’s features include:
- Cloud-based architecture
- User-friendly management
- Lightweight deployment for fast scans, and minimal impact on user productivity
- Contextual threat intelligence using AI and machine learning
- Signature-based detection
CrowdStrike
CrowdStrike is an industry-leading security solution that provides advanced and full spectrum protection to safeguard your business online. This highly scalable software supports businesses of all sizes, from SMBs to large enterprises. It’s widely regarded as the best in the business.
CrowdStrike’s features include:
- Cloud-based architecture
- Light-weight agent architecture that has minimal impact on user productivity and device speed
- Real-time visibility
- Endpoint detection and response (EDR) and XDR
- Next-Gen Antivirus (NGAV)
- Firewall integration
- Proactive threat hunting
- AI-powered Threat Analysis
At first glance both solutions offer cloud-based software and light-weight deployment to ensure end-user devices aren’t impacted – however, that’s where the similarities end.
Webroot’s user-friendly management may make it a better solution for individuals or small businesses who aren’t partnered with an MSP to deploy endpoint protection on their own.
Pro tip: Working with an MSP delivers a range of benefits for your business from providing valuable support and advice to managing your software and hardware needs, and strengthening your cyber defences. Learn more about how a partnership can benefit your business, and questions you should ask potential MSPs here.
CrowdStrike stands out with a suite of advanced features that significantly strengthen your business’ cyber resilience in the ever-changing online landscape. Let’s take a closer look at some of their industry-leading offerings, including:
- Endpoint Detection Response (EDR) and Extended Detection Response (XDR)
EDR provides full visibility across all endpoints and workloads, providing real-time protection, threat identification, and response.
Alongside this, CrowdStrike offers XDR to advance the capabilities of their best-in-breed EDR, with the ability to detect highly sophisticated threats. This is delivered through streamlined and consolidated data ingestion and analysis across endpoints that enable rapid threat identification and mitigation.
- Next Gen Antivirus (NGAV)
Combining AI, machine learning, behavioural detection and more, NGAV defends your business against both known and unknown threats in comparison with legacy antivirus that only detects known threats due to an outdated signature-based approach. NGAV ensures faster discovery and elimination, which is critical to mitigate costly damage and defend your business operations.
- Firewall integration
CrowdStrike’s unified platform includes firewall integration alongside fast deployment so your team can be protected within minutes.
- Proactive threat hunting
This feature is critical to investigate and identify cyber threats not detected by initial endpoint security defences – which can otherwise remain in your network for months.
The risk posed by these threats includes:
- Data collection
- Login credential theft
- Finding and gathering confidential material
This feature proactively investigates unusual or suspicious behaviour to protect your business.
Choosing the best endpoint protection for your business
Overall, your endpoint protection choice should be informed by your business needs which will vary significantly depending on:
- The size of your team
- Your business operations
- The number of endpoints connected to your network
- Your budget
For SMBs that require advanced protection and scalability for future growth, we recommend CrowdStrike.
How Ever Nimble can help
As cyber threats continue to rise, it’s critical to equip your business with an endpoint security solution and safeguard your online operations. At Ever Nimble we’re one of CrowdStrike’s leading Perth partners, with significant experience implementing and managing this solution for SMBs.
We bundle our support and services, including CrowdStrike’s advanced endpoint protection, to ensure your business can access cost-effective solutions and strengthen your security posture.
Get in touch with us here to learn how we can help your business, or learn more about how this industry-leading solution can strengthen your cyber defences here.
