Update seems to be the hardest word as enterprises struggle to maintain endpoints

The average enterprise now manages approximately 135,000 endpoint devices. But in spite of large budgets spent on endpoint protection, an average of 48 percent of devices -- or 64,800 per enterprise -- are at risk because they are no longer detected by the organization's IT department or because operating systems have become outdated.

A new study conducted by the Ponemon Institute for Adaptiva also finds 63 percent of respondents find that the lack of visibility into endpoints is the most significant barrier to achieving a strong security posture.

Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, 61 percent of respondents say distribution points have increased in the last two years, and the average endpoint has as many as seven agents installed for remote management, further adding to management complexity.

Updates present a problem too as 62 percent of respondents say new OS and application versions are the most difficult to maintain across all endpoints, followed by patches and security updates at 59 percent, and network settings and connectivity issues at 50 percent.

Lack of resources is an issue too, 66 percent of respondents say that their organizations don’t have sufficient resources to minimize endpoint risk. Consequently, respondents say they could only stop 52 percent of attacks with their current technologies and expertise.

Among respondents 54 percent had an average of five attacks on their organizations in the last year, at an average annual cost of $1.8 million.

"The world has been changing at unprecedented rates in the last two years, yet there haven't been any significant innovations in the endpoint management space for over a decade, since the advent of cloud computing," says Deepak Kumar, founder and CEO of Adaptiva. "Unfortunately, most organizations are running uphill with endpoint management tools that weren’t designed for today's distributed, decentralized, and digital-first world. IT needs tools that provide organizations with total and complete visibility over their endpoints, with real-time and continuous delivery of content to keep them healthy, patched, and secure. This won't be achieved by the dominant endpoint management solutions in the market today, which still rely on bloated centralized infrastructure, in the cloud and on-prem."

You can get the full Managing Risks and Costs at the Edge report on the Adaptiva site. There's an infographic summary of the findings below.

Image credit: Violin/depositphotos.com