By IBM From CIO

Protect against high-profile, low-risk threats—the sharks—and the really dangerous ones with IBM Endpoint Manager

Shark Week is really a genius idea.

Shark Week is an annual event on The Discovery Channel of nothing but shark-related programming, real and fictional. It began in 1988 and is insanely popular, which is why it is the longest-running cable programming event in history. That popularity comes from our collective fascination with and fear of “The Great Hunters of the Deep.” It’s like the movie Jaws, minus the great storytelling.

There is no particular reason for humans to fear sharks. An average of 10 people per year are killed by sharks, that’s 1/1000th of the number killed by freshwater snails, which can cause a deadly disease called schistosomiasis. Despite this no one is doing a Snail Week.

This is why Shark Week is such a genius idea: It is selling a danger there is little risk of ever encountering. Same thing happens with a lot of computer security programs. They play off the idea that you might be hit by something like Flame or Stuxnet or whatever the big thing in the news is at that moment. While super viruses like those can be a risk, they are unlikely to be ones you ever have to deal with.

Each organization has its own unique network, developed to meet its specific needs and because of that each one faces a unique set of threats. IBM’s QRadar Security Intelligence Platform lets organizations figure out what threats to focus on out-of-the-box. Its vulnerability scans prioritize patches so you don’t have to spend time installing every patch in the world. Using a single architecture for analyzing log, flow, vulnerability, user and asset data, it gives near real-time correlation and behavioral anomaly detection which separates the high-risk threats from the shark attacks. It also offers full visibility into network, application and user activity.

In addition to that there are also a number of modules which can tailor your protection even more. One is the IBM Security QRadar Vulnerability Manager which proactively discovers network device and application security vulnerabilities, adds context and supports the prioritization of remediation and mitigation activities. Through IBM Endpoint Manager, QRadar has access to in-depth vulnerability information on endpoints on and off the network. In addition QRadar users can filter out existing vulnerabilities that have already been remediated by IBM Endpoint Manager, allowing them to focus on vulnerabilities that do not have patches

QRadar users can assign any high-risk vulnerabilities found to IBM Endpoint Manager for immediate remediation; this reduces risk of initial exploit and exploit propagation, thereby improving security and productivity.

And while compliance reports aren’t a threat to anything but your work time, QRadar also provides automated regulatory compliance with collection, correlation and reporting capabilities.

IBM Endpoint Manager delivers a one-of-a-kind Unified Endpoint Management solution that provides real time visibility and control over all endpoints: a platform that scales across any device, at any location, and at any time. It performs in the smallest environments—with just 10s of users—to enterprise scale environments, with one management server for up to 250,000 endpoints. And it provides the critical capabilities of patch, lifecycle, software asset, power, server, mobile device and security management to all of your devices—so you can find and fix problems in minutes.

So if you’re tired of worrying over shark attacksclick herefor more information.

For more on this story go to: http://www.cio.com/article/2599655/endpoint-protection/don-t-be-distracted-by-the-sharks-look-for-the-snails.html

IMAGE: deadshirt.net