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Endpoint Security: Protecting Every Device

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If your organisation is still relying solely on antivirus software to protect its devices, you’re not alone — but it’s worth knowing that the threat landscape has moved on significantly. A recent analysis from Big News Network highlights what many IT professionals have been saying for a while: traditional antivirus is no longer sufficient on its own to protect the devices your people use every day.

That’s not a criticism of antivirus — it still plays a role. But it was designed for a different era, when threats were mostly known viruses that could be matched against a library of signatures. Today’s attacks are far more sophisticated, and understanding why matters if you want to make smart decisions about protecting your organisation.

What’s Changed?

Modern threats don’t always look like viruses. Attackers now commonly use techniques like:

• Fileless malware — malicious code that runs entirely in memory and never touches the hard drive, making signature-based detection largely ineffective
• Ransomware-as-a-service — readily available toolkits that allow less technically skilled attackers to launch damaging campaigns
• Credential theft and phishing — gaining access through stolen logins rather than exploiting software vulnerabilities
• Living-off-the-land attacks — misusing legitimate system tools (like PowerShell) to carry out malicious activity without triggering traditional alerts

These approaches are specifically designed to slip past conventional antivirus tools. And with more staff working remotely and accessing systems across a wider range of devices, the number of potential entry points has grown considerably.

What Does Modern Endpoint Protection Look Like?

The current standard for serious endpoint protection is something called Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) — and increasingly, Extended Detection and Response (XDR), which ties endpoint data together with network, email, and identity signals for a fuller picture.

Rather than simply blocking known threats, EDR tools continuously monitor device behaviour, looking for unusual patterns that might indicate something is wrong — even if that something has never been seen before. When a threat is detected, these platforms can automatically contain it, isolate the affected device, and give your IT team the forensic detail they need to understand what happened and how to respond.

For organisations in regulated sectors — law, health, government, and NGOs — this level of visibility isn’t just good practice. It can be essential for meeting your obligations under the Privacy Act 2020, particularly around notifiable breach requirements.

How We Deliver This: Huntress

This is exactly the gap our managed endpoint protection offering is built to close. At Resolve we deliver EDR through Huntress — a platform built specifically for organisations our clients’ size, backed by a 24/7 Security Operations Centre staffed by real human threat analysts. When something suspicious happens on one of your devices, it isn’t just an automated alert landing in a queue: an analyst reviews it, confirms whether it’s a genuine threat, and if it is, the affected device can be isolated within minutes — whether that’s 2pm on a Tuesday or 2am on a Sunday.

Huntress also goes beyond the devices themselves, with managed detection for Microsoft 365 identities and security awareness training for your staff — directly addressing the credential theft and phishing techniques described above. We’ve written about it before: why we chose Huntress, how the 24/7 SOC works, and what it looks like in your day-to-day. More than half of our clients have already made the move, and the feedback so far has been exactly what we hoped: quiet, until it matters. If you’re still deciding, let us know — our account management team will be in touch ahead of 1 August to talk through what it means for your organisation.

A Practical Starting Point

You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. A good first step is to audit what’s currently running on your devices and assess whether it provides behavioural monitoring, not just signature matching. From there, you can look at layering in EDR capabilities — often through platforms you may already be partly using, like Microsoft 365.

Getting endpoint security right takes more than installing software — it takes ongoing monitoring, regular reviews, and someone keeping an eye on alerts when they matter most. If you’d like to talk through where your organisation currently stands — or see what Huntress would look like for your team — we’re always happy to help.

Jessica Falconer
Director, Resolve Technology
When she’s not wrangling IT strategies, Jessica can be found wrangling labradoodles, teenagers, and parishioners — not necessarily in that order.