The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP) report is a vital tool in helping IT managers understand the market space and key solution providers.
According to Gartner, “40% of organizations said they already use a single vendor for several of these functions, or are actively consolidating products. In particular, mobile data protection is the leading complement to EPP, and purchasing decisions for the two products are increasingly made together”
Intel Security (formerly McAfee) continues its leadership position in Gartner’s 2014 Endpoint Protection Platform Magic Quadrant report and is placed furthest on the Completeness of Vision axis. The McAfee Complete Endpoint Protection suites add defense in depth against the full threat spectrum from zero-day exploits to hacker attacks, protecting Windows, Macs, and Linux systems, as well as mobile devices such as iPhone, iPad, and Android smartphones and The endpoint protection platform provides security capabilities to protect workstations, smartphones and tablets. Security and risk management leaders of endpoint protection should investigate malware detection effectiveness, performance impact on the host machines and administrative overhead.
Strategic Planning Assumption
By 2019, EPP and EDR capabilities will have merged into a single offering, eliminating the need to buy best-of-breed products for all but the most specialized environments.
Market Definition/Description
The enterprise endpoint protection platform (EPP) is an integrated solution that has the following capabilities:
- Anti-malware
- Personal firewall
- Port and device control
EPP solutions will also often include:
- Vulnerability assessment
- Application control (see Note 1) and application sandboxing
- Enterprise mobility management (EMM)
- Memory protection
- Endpoint detection and response (EDR) technology (see “Market Guide for Endpoint Detection and Response Solutions” )
- Data protection such as full disk and file encryption
- Endpoint data loss prevention (DLP)
These products and features are typically centrally managed and ideally integrated by shared policies. Not all products in this analysis provide the same collection of features. Here, we focus primarily on anti-malware effectiveness and performance, management capability, protection for Windows and non-Windows platforms (such as VMware, Macintosh, Linux, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint), application control, vulnerability assessment, and emerging detection and response capabilities. See the Completeness of Vision section for more information. 1
DLP, EMM and vulnerability assessment are also evaluated in their own Magic Quadrant analyses (see the Gartner Recommended Reading section). In the longer term, portions of these markets will be subsumed by the EPP market, just as the personal firewall, host intrusion prevention, device control and anti-spyware markets have been subsumed by the EPP market. EPP suites are a logical place for the convergence of these functions. Organizations continue the trend of using a single vendor for several EPP functions, or are actively consolidating products. In particular, mobile data protection remains the leading complement to EPP, and purchasing decisions for the two products are increasingly made together. For most organizations, selecting a mobile data protection system from their incumbent EPP vendors will meet their requirements. Application control and the features of vulnerability analysis are also rapidly integrating into EPP suites. Currently, EMM is largely a separate purchase for more demanding large enterprise buyers; however, small and midsize businesses (SMBs) are likely to be satisfied with their EPP vendor’s EMM capabilities.
The total EPP revenue of the Magic Quadrant participants at year-end 2016 was slightly over $3.29 billion, up 2.8% over the previous year. EPP suites continue to grow in functionality. Consequently, some EPP revenue is inflow from other markets. Gartner anticipates that growth will continue to be in the low single digits in 2017.
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