1 How to use the Buyer's Compass

This KuppingerCole Buyer’s Compass on Endpoint Protection provides information about

• Use Cases
• Functional Selection Criteria
• Non-functional Selection Criteria
• Technical Prerequisites
• Organizational Prerequisites
• Questions to ask the vendors

By focusing on the most important aspects of product selection during and RFI/RFP cycle, end-user organizations can more efficiently select the subset of available products to evaluate, based on the experience of KuppingerCole from our research and advisory services.

This document is not a complete guideline for selecting vendors but should provide an excellent starting point to streamline the decision-making process.

How to use it:

• Identify your primary use cases
• Review the functional selection criteria – their weight might be based on the matrix of these use cases and the functional selection criteria
• Review the non-functional selection criteria
• Request information and rate the vendors on these criteria
• Ask additional questions of the vendors, as defined
• Define a shortlist of vendors based on the results and continue with the vendor selection process, with more detailed RFIs and PoCs
• Ensure that the technical and organizational prerequisites are in place.

Note: This Buyer’s Compass addresses malware detection and prevention of compromise on the endpoint. A complete anti-malware architecture must include network layer defenses as well, such as content-aware perimeter firewalls, web application firewalls, and email gateway scanners. There are additional considerations and questions that are involved in preparing procurement processes for these different types of solutions.

There are related documents available from KuppingerCole. KuppingerCole Advisory Services can provide further support in the vendor selection processes.

2 Market segments defined

This document analyzes the Endpoint Protection market segment. Most anti-malware products provide capabilities to protect against the many types of an ...

3 Top 5 Use Cases

The top 5 use cases for ransomware protection are listed in table a.

4 Top 20 Selection Criteria - functional

When looking at products in detail - for instance, during an RFI or RFP - there frequently are hundreds of different criteria to be evaluated. However ...

5 Top 10 Selection Criteria - non-functional

Aside from the functional selection criteria listed above, there are a number of non-functional criteria to take into account when deciding on and End ...

6 Use Cases / Selection Criteria Matrix

Having identified the most important use cases and selection criteria for vendors in Endpoint Protection, this section provides a matrix that maps use ...

KuppingerCole Advisory Services can support you with adapting criteria to your specific requirements and further services around selecting the appropr ...

7 Top 5 Prerequesites - technical

Malware detection and prevention are topics that cannot be seen as isolated from other areas of IT Security. Thus, there are some technical prerequisi ...

8 Top 10 Prerequesites - organizational

Success in Endpoint Protection solution rollout depends not only on the technology selected. There are also various organizational prerequisites. The ...

9 Top 10 Questions to ask the vendors

Aside from asking for specific features, there are some more questions that are worth asking vendors. The following questions help in understanding th ...

10 Related Research

Leadership Brief: Defending against ransomware – 70336
Buyer’s Compass Ransomware Protection - 72599
Leadership Compass: Enterprise Endpoint Security: Anti-Malware Solutions - 71172
When Are We Finally Going to Do Something About Ransomware?