The Metaphor – How to keep your plumber from stealing your wine.
By David Scott, Managing Member at Avid Communications
Imagine you could buy a home security system that not only protected you from thieves breaking in while you’re away, but also protected you from people you’ve invited into your home. For example, the plumber helping himself to a bottle of your prized wine collection from the cellar next to the downstairs bathroom where he was working.
That kind of security system would be able to distinguish between allowed behavior (e.g. shutting off the water supply and removing the toilet) and disallowed behavior (e.g. your plumber boosting a bottle of wine), and it would apply across all activity occurring in your home. You would definitely feel well protected… and perhaps a bit creeped out.
Now imagine being able to protect your business information systems in the same way.
That’s what Avid’s Endpoint Protection does. Each account starts with its own profile based on a detailed understanding of how the business operates, and that profile is refined every single day as our Security Operations Center evaluates activities and modifies the profile to truly fit the customer.
Let’s take the metaphor a bit further. Imagine if the system caught the plumber stealing your wine, snapped a picture for proof, and played an audio alarm, causing the plumber to get nervous and put the wine back where he’d found it. But what if the cleaning staff moved the bottle of wine in the process of cleaning the shelves? You don’t want the maid going to jail for that. The system grades this as a “suspicious” threat because it knows that the bottle was moved by your cleaning person and sends an alert. You can then define this behavior as “safe”. Next time, the system allows the behavior without any alert… but only for the cleaning staff. And only if the bottle of wine is moved to the same place.
Hit the ground running with Avid’s Playbook
You might be wondering if it would take a long time to figure out all the possible scenarios of activity in your home to be able to configure the system. Not if the system came with a comprehensive set of “playbook” rules developed through use in thousands of homes. And the alarm system intelligence improves as your security company receives alerts and acts on them in real time by adding exceptions or additional rules to the playbook. All based on their expertise and the activity going on at your house on a daily basis.
I suppose we’ve tortured this metaphor long enough to make this point: Avid’s Endpoint Protection provides this kind of incredibly smart and customizable security for your business. And the automated actions our system takes will stop the questionable behavior while it’s happening. For example, before ransomware encrypts your files.
If our Endpoint Protection sees computer behavior that is different than normal, it takes action and stops the process from executing. Rather than putting a user completely out of commission, our system moves them to a higher security level where all actions are given greater scrutiny for a period of time.
Significant Jump in Security for Businesses
Avid’s Endpoint Protection is an enormous jump in security and sophistication than other solutions provided to small and medium businesses. Avid has invested in the necessary resources (systems and people) to finally offer an affordable and sophisticated security solution to meet the increasing security needs of businesses.
Avid’s Endpoint Protection stops supply-chain attacks (like the recent SolarWinds situation) and zero-day threats (malicious software that has yet to hit the radar screen of anti-virus companies).
After the home system sees and stops the plumber from stealing the wine, it may put the home in “high security” mode for the rest of the day. This means that you’re alerted to everything the plumber does, including if he shuts off the water. It takes this kind of security intelligence to be successful in the threat landscape we find ourselves dealing with today.
Want to learn more? Give us a call.
