Broadcom (Symantec) vs. McAfee: Comparing endpoint protection software

Endpoint production tools secure entry points and endpoints to prevent cyberattacks from occurring. Which one will be right for you?

For organizations with precious digital assets, taking proper protection and security measures is necessary. Protecting endpoints could make the difference between thriving as an enterprise and suffering from debilitating data loss caused by cyberattacks. That’s why tons of organizations entrust endpoint protection software to keep their networks secure across each of their platform devices.

Endpoint Protection Software

Endpoint protection is essential as it protects networks from security threats occurring within vulnerable endpoints. These endpoint protection software tools work by securing the entry points and endpoints on your network’s devices so that cybersecurity attacks cannot take place. In addition, they can detect and block malicious activity and resolve issues before they have the time to cause severe damage to your network. These software products can be extremely valuable for organizations with many devices and endpoints.

Read on to learn more about the Broadcom (Symantec) and McAfee endpoint protection products and how they can help enforce the security of your organizational network.

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Broadcom (Symantec) vs. McAfee: Which is better at finding and determining security threats?

Compromised network security can be a nightmare for organizations, but endpoint protection software minimizes the chances of malicious activity occurring on endpoint devices by locating and identifying security threats.

Broadcom is a cloud-based service that helps secure networks by protecting their devices from suspicious activity through machine learning and behavioral analytics. It can find threads by searching through all endpoint activity within a network in real-time. Any suspicious activity is exposed as an anomaly or outlier when compared to the network’s baseline activity. It also uses several other detection methods, including lateral movement, breach detection, suspicious power shell executions and command and control beaconing. In addition, forensic examination of process memory allows the tool to detect any memory-resident outliers, keeping your endpoints secure.

McAfee also uses machine learning to detect security threats in endpoint devices. They provide local and cloud-based detection features to analyze threats that may be designed to avoid detection.

The software conducts intelligence-guided investigations continuously to monitor and gather necessary data for detecting threats. This data and information is then made available to users for real-time search and inspection and historical search. And a special feature of the McAfee MVISION EDR is their McAfee MVISION Insights, which can identify threats before they hit your endpoints. This is done by proactively utilizing context on new outside threats in investigations.

Broadcom (Symantec) vs. McAfee: Which is better at endpoint device management?

Next, let’s take a closer look at how these products manage endpoint devices and provide this information and insights for their users.

Broadcom protects and manages endpoint devices with continuous recording of their system activity, supporting complete endpoint visibility. Users can customize their detection and alert features by whitelisting specific incidents if determined to be regular activity within their organization. Quick filters can also help users narrow their investigation results and easily visualize the data they need. In addition, users can add modules for more visibility and correlation of their network and email data so that all of their device activities are accounted for. Their service can also be used on endpoints without their agent installed through their cloud-based portal, which collects data from endpoints without impacting the end-user experience.

McAfee presents users with a flexible data display. Threat notifications are presented via their dashboards or email alerts, and they automatically offer ERD insights and information on important threats and guidance for avoiding attacks. The tool can plug into security operations workflows and share data and updates through security platforms, so your entire team can be on the same page. In addition, their endpoint detection and response product can be utilized as a SaaS application available on site or in the cloud to provide ongoing device maintenance through their centralized security management platform.

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Broadcom (Symantec) vs. McAfee: Which has a better response to cybersecurity threats?

It is one thing to identify security threats and visualize your endpoint data, but from there, you must take proper action to protect your endpoints from malicious activity. Let’s discuss these tools’ approaches for endpoint security threat response.

After determining the presence of security threats within an endpoint device, Broadcom can respond in several ways. First, their tool can manage threats through their “playbooks” that automate the security investigation workflows. These playbooks can also be accessed and customized by users who wish to create their automated workflows. The Broadcom system can automatically submit suspicious files for sandbox analysis, leverage statistical data to find anomalous IP addresses, and identify domains and IP addresses associated with data exfiltration. Finally, the tool can perform rapid remediation of all affected endpoints with blacklisting, file deletion and endpoint quarantine. Users can also easily use their system to repair multiple endpoints with their powerful eraser capabilities.

McAfee’s EDR tool protects networks by performing fast investigations on potential security breaches. From there, it provides information to users about the threats and guides them with suggestions of appropriate ways to mitigate the issues. Users can utilize methods to manage threats such as containing them by killing a process, performing endpoint quarantining on impacted devices, and file deletion. These actions can be taken upon either a single endpoint or responses can be easily scaled and applied to the entire network.

The Final Decision

To determine whether Broadcom or McAfee’s product would be best for you, you should consider the differences between the two systems. For example, McAfee’s response tools can let users perform automatic actions on affected endpoints, taking a hands-off approach to cybersecurity threat management. However, Broadcom’s customizable detection and alert features may be better for your organization if it often experiences activity that could appear malicious but is normal and safe for its processes. By considering the features that your organization would benefit from the most, you can effectively determine the best option for your endpoint security needs.