Gartner
Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection annual report is not solely a resource to help companies choose security system suppliers, but also an assessment of the overall market to industry players. We believe the 2016 report is quite different from the previous ones, mainly because it demonstrates a new approach to cybersecurity in general and endpoint protection in particular. The report shows that the industry is changing, and expectations of endpoint security products are changing accordingly, which theory is consistent with our vision of the market.
For the first time in many years, Gartner changed the panel of analysts who research the market —probably to give it a fresher look. Achievement unlocked!
As for the report, the most important thing is not a company’s place inside the quadrant itself, but rather Gartner’s researchers’ comments on products’ advantages and drawbacks. We were particularly pleased to see that even Kaspersky Lab’s “cautions” in the latest report are described in a way that makes them sound more like strengths.
Just as in previous reports, we are acknowledged as a Leader, and our position has actually improved since last year. This stability is quite important in the times when the market is shaken to its core.
Why is the market changing?
To date, the market has gone through several stages of development. First came the fundamental lesson that a PC needs to be protected against threats at all times. Then, competition sparked among companies to create an effective and universal security technology. However, that concept proved unrealistic, and the market acknowledged the industry needs a set of interconnected multilevel threat-detection and -mitigation methods. It looks like the time has come to embrace a new breakthrough moment in the industry.
The key reason for this radical change is the growth and development of sophisticated threats. Conventional malware still exists, but it’s easily defeated. Real threats today are complex, multilevel attacks that require analysis of systems rather than simple scanning of files. That’s where behavioral analysis comes into play. Heuristics, primarily machine-learning technologies, steadily becomes the main contributor to threat mitigation: today’s cyberthreats must be detected immediately.
According to our knowledge, consumers nowadays are not be fully satisfied with even the most advanced security solutions. First and foremost, cybercriminals will always find ways to get in. Frequently, mistakes in configuration or lack of timely patching — not flaws in the security products — let them succeed. But in the customer’s view, the product they purchased didn’t deliver. Besides, some of today’s protection solutions have quite unfriendly user interfaces and are in general overcomplicated. Who would readily sign up to hours of tedious setup and tweaking?
Another visible trend is a change in the way human involvement into system management is viewed. Having been an acting operator before, a human becomes an evaluator, physically incapable of making timely decisions as a result of new developments in the world on cyberthreats.
At last, the InfoSec world feels the pressure to change: Security technologies for cloud solutions are becoming more important as enterprise IT infrastructures massively migrate to the cloud.
What’s next?
We believe that Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection report demonstrates that the current market demands innovative approaches to solve the most burning security problems. Many vendors have hopes in machine-learning technologies, which are destined to replace human operators and automate most setup and configuration tasks with the help of smart algorithms. By the way, we believe the companies included in the Leaders and Visionaries quadrants already use such technologies to a certain degree. What Gartner does is motivate the market to convert to these technologies en masse; otherwise the industry won’t keep up with the constant change of the security environment.
It’s no coincidence the 2016 Magic Quadrant includes so many new names. From this fact we can conclude that the market is still waiting to see what is the future of some of the endpoint technologies those vendors offer. Because now, we believe a vendor is assigned to a certain section of the Quadrant based not only on it products but on the latter’s perspectives for the future and an appropriate response to the industry’s current challenges. As for outsiders, now they are those companies that have not evolved in response to the ever-changing reality of cybersecurity.
We believe Kaspersky Lab’s “True Cybersecurity” strategy complies with the demand and the future evolution of the market, thanks largely to our “HuMachine” approach, which will allow us to keep our leadership in the market.
Gartner Disclaimer
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
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