From the Trenches: 5 Ways Customers are Improving Security with Cisco AMP for Endpoints

Does this sound like a day in your IT security life? Wake up, get coffee, drive to work, and battle an almost constant onslaught of attacks, while playing whack-a-mole with too many alerts.

If so, we get it. You never know where the next attack will come from. And you’re probably on to the fact that traditional anti-virus and “point-in-time” solutions (like firewalls)—alone—are not enough to defend against the new levels of threat sophistication.

You need security solutions that can not only handle a continuous barrage of attacks, but that also detect new and more sophisticated malware variants. Because, ridiculously smart people are working with other ridiculously smart people in organized groups (nation states and hacktivist groups) to create increasingly wicked forms of malware.

These insidious threats call for extra layers of sophisticated protection—beyond just attack prevention. For example, if something malicious manages to penetrate your endpoints, you need deep visibility and control to quickly detect and remediate these attacks.

Many of your peers have chosen Cisco AMP for Endpoints to provide this level of sophisticated protection. But don’t just take our word for it. Thanks to a recent Techvalidate survey, we can tell you exactly what your colleagues in the trenches, fighting the same battle, say about Cisco AMP:

1. 72% of surveyed customers say AMP for Endpoints helps them prevent, detect, and defeat advanced malware

Customers of all sizes weighed in with specific examples regarding how AMP for Endpoints changed their security game. Most notably, AMP helped an IT Director at a medium enterprise hospitality company avoid a large-scale breach. “Recently AMP detected and alerted us to such an attack. Without AMP on this particular hotel computer, we wouldn’t have known that this attack ever occurred. It is possible it stopped thousands of credit card numbers from being stolen.”

2. 84% of surveyed customers reduced threat detection time by 6 hours or more with AMP for Endpoints

Customers also had something to say about the speed by which they detected threats. An IT Administrator at a commercial bank, said “[AMP for Endpoints] helped us pinpoint the source of the threat faster than we ever could have before.” He’s not alone. A Senior IT Architect at a medium enterprise educational company also claimed, “Cisco AMP has improved endpoint visibility by up to 100%, detected 80% more threats than antivirus alone and reduced response times up 4 days.”

3. 74% of surveyed customers have increased visibility into their threat environment with AMP for Endpoints

Overall visibility into the threat landscape scored high, as well. Ten days after displacing Symantec Endpoint Protection, the CISO for a medium enterprise computer software company detected over 500 new vulnerabilities in their environment. They also increased their threat detection by 200% and reduced their incident response time by ten days. All in all, AMP for Endpoints drastically increased their overall security visibility the most in the past 18 months.

4. 86% of surveyed customers improved security effectiveness with AMP for Endpoints

The IT Manager of a German chemical manufacturer revealed how AMP changed the game for her short-staffed security team: “I have a very small team, so deploying AMP for Endpoints had a drastic effect on our security posture. We gained visibility and reduced incident response time by months.” Also, an IT Director at a retail company claimed, “AMP for Endpoints significantly improved our security posture over other endpoint products.”

5. 88% of customers surveyed agreed that deploying AMP for Endpoints alongside other AMP deployments helped their overall security effectiveness

Not only are customers reaping the benefits of pairing AMP for Endpoints with other Cisco solutions, like Firepower Management Center, but they’re deploying it in conjunction with Cisco Umbrella and AMP for Email, as well. In fact, 97% of customers who purchased AMP for Email agreed with the following statement: “Deploying AMP for Endpoints alongside AMP for Email has helped my organization uncover threats faster and improve overall security effectiveness.”

Others are using AMP for Endpoints with the Cisco Web Security Appliances to uncover all web requests that may be malicious (using the Cognitive Threat Analytics feature). The possibilities are endless. And, the best part is the solutions work together seamlessly.

You’ll have to read the whole survey for all the pithy anecdotal tidbits (totally worth your time). The results speak volumes about how AMP for Endpoints, and other Cisco security solutions, can help equip you for battle in this complicated new age.

If you want to learn more about Cisco AMP for Endpoints, visit our webpage. If you’re an AMP for Endpoints customer interested in becoming an AMP expert, this is the place to start.

We’ll leave you with this slightly hyperbolic survey quote from an IT Manager at an energy company, “AMP’s zero-day threat detection lets me sleep at night.” Hey, we see how that could happen.