Avecto
Endpoint Privilege Management Experts

An exponential increase in cyber espionage and incidents involving data integrity attacks and data breaches over the last few years has led to an unprecedented demand for dynamic enterprise security solutions. As businesses continue to embrace digitization and adopt practices like BYOD, the enterprise network security perimeter is slowly fading. In light of these events, the big questions that strike the mind include: “Are businesses secure from cyber threats and security breaches? Are all the applications and operating systems updated with security patches?”

A silver bullet to these issues is endpoint security. Deploying an endpoint security system allows enterprises to safeguard all of their devices like PCs and laptops, block malware, and secure IT infrastructure. UK-based Avecto, a global security software firm, has created a comprehensive endpoint security solution for removal of default administrator privileges from all users and processes. “Most of the malware out there require elevated privileges in order to cause a significant level of damage. And, eliminating the admin rights will protect data from malicious misuse,” says Paul Kenyon, co-founder and co-CEO, Avecto. “Our solution provides organizations the ability to remove the elevated privileges, thereby protecting applications against different types of attacks.” The key differentiating factor that makes Avecto’s solution unique is its proactive nature and the ability to drive compliance, prevent attacks, and operate more efficiently.

Avecto’s scalable endpoint security solution comprises three distinct modules— privilege management, application control, and Trusted Application Protection (TAP), which collectively enable enterprises to defend against unknown advanced threats. Privilege management allows organizations to remove admin rights by assigning privileges to individual applications, tasks, and scripts rather than users. This flexible approach enables companies to be productive without compromising security.

Meanwhile, application control enables users to have complete control of their software environment and apply policies like application whitelisting to manage trusted applications. And lastly, Trusted Application Protection (TAP) is a new feature in Defendpoint v5.0— designed to neuter the common attack techniques that plague organizations today. It provides an out-of-the-box config to protect trusted applications and prevent them from being used to exploit commonly abused native applications such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Adobe Reader and the common web browsers— preventing them from being used to launch malware payloads or exploit commonly abused native applications such as PowerShell. “What truly makes us leaders in our space is, we provide a simple product that is easy to implement, configure, and manage while offering users all of the functionalities they could possibly need to protect their systems against malware,” states Kenyon.

Highlighting Avecto’s value proposition is their success story with CEB, a best practice insight and technology company headquartered in Virginia. CEB found it arduous to manage admin rights for over 4,000 endpoints across 54 offices globally and approached Avecto seeking a seamless solution that would enable them to take control of admin rights across their global IT environments. Implementing Avecto’s simple proactive technology, the client was able to achieve improved end-user visibility and identify and handle security implications more competently.

Founded in 2008 with a vision to stop cyber-attacks without hindering employee productivity, the company has grown tremendously in the last decade and, today protects over eight million endpoints at some of the world’s largest brands. “We want to become the go-to solution for endpoint security,” mentions Kenyon. In the days to come, Avecto is working on releasing the Linux and UNIX versions of its software solution. This summer, Bomgar, a leader in identity and access management solutions for privileged users, acquired Avecto. The combined solution enables global organizations of all sizes to fully implement the principle of least privilege and defend themselves against today’s most prevalent threats.