So you've invested in security tools. Antivirus is installed. Devices are encrypted. You have someone internally who is responsible for IT. But if I asked you how quickly you would know if a device was compromised, and who would respond, could you answer with confidence? Most of the businesses I speak to daily can’t, and that’s a problem.
Cyber attacks don't usually succeed because businesses have no security. They succeed because of the little things: vulnerabilities go unnoticed, devices fall behind on updates, alerts aren't reviewed quickly enough, and threats aren't detected until they've already spread.
And when it comes to endpoint protection, those blind spots are often hiding in plain sight. Each laptop, desktop, tablet and mobile phone is essentially a front door keyhole to any modern business. They connect your people to customers, suppliers, applications and data. But they also represent one of the largest attack surfaces cyber criminals can target.
In my role as Solution Lead for Cyber Security at Babble, I spend a lot of time helping organisations understand where they're exposed and what practical steps they can take to improve their security posture. One theme appears consistently: most businesses aren't lacking security tools; they're lacking visibility into whether those tools are working, whether risks are being addressed and whether threats would actually be detected before damage is done.
In this article, I'll explain why endpoints remain one of the most targeted attack surfaces, how attackers move through environments once a device is compromised, why traditional antivirus is no longer enough, and what good endpoint protection looks like in 2026. More importantly, I'll show you the practical measures and metrics that help you understand whether your organisation is in fact becoming more secure.
Cyber security is a numbers game. That's why endpoints continue to be one of the most targeted attack surfaces.
Businesses have never had more devices. Every laptop, desktop, tablet, and mobile phone (both personal and company-owned) creates another potential pathway into your organisation. The move towards hybrid working has only accelerated this trend. Employees work from home, customer sites, trains, airports and coffee shops. Devices travel constantly between corporate and personal environments.
That’s great for business, but not so great from a security perspective, because it creates complexity. All attackers need is one vulnerable device to gain entry. A single unpatched laptop. A contractor's unmanaged device. An employee using an outdated browser.
This is where many SMBs face a particular challenge: security standards often evolve inconsistently over time. New devices are introduced as people join the business. Teams adopt different ways of working to keep pace. Contractors require temporary access that doesn’t get revoked when the work is done.
Collectively, these decisions can create a fragmented security posture where visibility becomes increasingly difficult. Which is precisely what adversaries are banking on.
Known vulnerabilities remain open for far longer than they should. I’m not talking about sophisticated zero-day exploits, but common exposures or weak links that can be secured. The problem is that many organisations struggle to deploy those fixes consistently.
Common examples include:
For companies with extensive cyber security resources, this is easy enough to mitigate. But that isn’t necessarily the case for SMBs with tight budgets and stretched IT teams. They're supporting users, delivering projects, maintaining infrastructure and, quite often, keeping the lights on with limited resources. So security updates can quickly become tomorrow's problem. Unfortunately, attackers don't wait.
What's making this even more challenging is the rise of artificial intelligence. AI is accelerating the speed at which vulnerabilities can be identified, analysed and exploited. Anthropic has recently demonstrated just how quickly large numbers of vulnerabilities could potentially be discovered and weaponised at scale.
The window between identifying vulnerabilities and exploiting them is shrinking. That means patching is no longer just good housekeeping. It's becoming a critical operational discipline.
My advice is always the same: start with what you know. If you're aware of vulnerabilities that need addressing, prioritise them. Tightening the screws on known weaknesses remains one of the fastest and most effective ways to reduce risk.
A compromised device isn’t an isolated incident. Cyber criminals typically view an endpoint as a starting point, not the final destination.
Once they've gained access to a device, their next objective is often lateral movement. In cyber security terms, lateral movement describes how an attacker moves from one part of your environment to another after gaining an initial foothold.
Let’s say an attacker compromises someone (‘Paul’s’) laptop.
Their next move might be to:
The goal is simple: gain more access, increase impact and make detection more difficult as quickly as possible.
I often compare it to someone breaking into a house: if they've managed to get through the front door, your priority isn't just identifying where they entered. It's preventing them from moving through the rest of the property.
The same principle applies here. The faster you can detect where an attacker entered and isolate the affected device, the more effectively you can contain the threat. That's why speed matters so much: the longer an attacker remains inside your environment, the greater the opportunity for damage.
It’s still quite common for businesses to assume antivirus equals protection. And for a long time, that was a reasonable assumption. Traditional antivirus solutions were built around signatures. They maintained lists of known malicious software and blocked threats that matched recognised patterns.
That worked well when attacks relied heavily on malware. But they’ve adapted to the times. Today, we're seeing a significant increase in behaviour-based attacks and malware-free attacks. Neither of them requires malicious software to be installed on a device. Instead, attackers exploit trust, behaviour and identity.
Take phishing as an example. Let’s say Jeff receives what appears to be a legitimate email from his boss, Paul (whose account has been compromised). The request looks genuine, as it has come from his email address and sounds like him. Credentials are entered. Access is granted.
No malware is downloaded. No traditional signature is triggered. Yet the attacker successfully gains access. This is one reason why modern cyber attacks are becoming harder to detect using traditional methods alone.
Attackers increasingly rely on:
That's why modern endpoint detection and response (EDR) platforms have become so important. Rather than focusing solely on known malware, EDR solutions look for suspicious behaviours, unusual activity patterns and any signals indicating a compromised device.
There has been a significant shift over the last few years: we’ve moved from purely defensive security towards proactive threat hunting. The objective is no longer just blocking threats. It's identifying, investigating and containing them before they spread.
Even when organisations invest in modern security tooling, another challenge often emerges: alert fatigue. Earlier, I mentioned how most SMB IT teams are stretched thin. In most cases, a single individual may be responsible for supporting users, maintaining systems, delivering projects and managing cyber security.
Then the alerts start arriving. I’m talking hundreds (if not thousands) of them. With all these alerts pouring in, the question then becomes: how do you determine which alerts are genuine threats and which are simply background noise? And that’s where many organisations struggle. Threats are often detected; they're just not acted upon quickly enough (or at all). Needless to say, detection without response is incomplete protection.
One of the reasons security operations centres (SOCs), managed detection and response (MDR) services and security monitoring teams have become so crucial is because they help organisations bridge this gap. Rather than simply generating alerts, they provide the expertise and operational processes needed to investigate and respond.
In many ways, visibility becomes the real challenge. The issue isn't always that organisations don't have the data. It's that they don't have the time or resources required to do something about it.
At this point, you might be thinking that effective endpoint protection requires the latest tool or a massive security budget. But good endpoint protection is built on consistency. The organisations that perform best typically focus on creating a secure baseline and maintaining it over time.
Here are the non-negotiables:
Modern endpoint detection and response (EDR): Traditional antivirus should now be viewed as a foundation rather than a complete solution. Modern EDR platforms provide behavioural visibility, threat hunting capabilities and containment tools that help security teams move much faster.
Patch and vulnerability management: Known vulnerabilities should not remain open indefinitely. Consistent patching remains one of the most effective ways to reduce exposure and minimise risk.
Device compliance monitoring: Security controls should be applied consistently across all devices. That includes corporate laptops, mobile devices, remote endpoints and any systems connecting to business resources.
Centralised visibility: Security decisions become easier when data is brought together. Platforms such as Microsoft Sentinel help organisations create a single source of truth for security monitoring and incident response.
Active threat detection and response: Threats need to be seen, prioritised and acted upon. The organisations that respond fastest are often the ones that limit damage most effectively. Because ultimately, it's not a matter of if; it's a matter of when.
One of the principles we emphasise through the HIDDEN cyber security framework is that progress should be visible. If you're investing time, effort and resources into cyber security, you should be able to see the improvement.
That starts with measuring the right things.
Here are some metrics that provide valuable insight into endpoint maturity and performance:
If you’re a Microsoft user, Microsoft Secure Score can also provide a useful benchmark. It offers a measurable view of your security posture, highlights gaps and provides recommendations aligned to Microsoft's best practices. Most importantly, it helps turn security into something that can be measured and improved.
And that's becoming increasingly important because, again, speed is now the name of the game.
One of the fastest attacks we've seen involved an adversary breaking into an environment, stealing information and leaving again in just 27 seconds. Ask yourself, could your organisation detect and respond to an incident in 27 seconds? If not, it may be time to revisit your endpoint strategy.
The good news is that endpoint protection doesn't have to be complicated. You don't need to know about every emerging threat, monitor every alert yourself or invest in every new security tool that enters the market. What matters is having confidence that your devices are secure, that threats can be detected quickly and that there's a clear process for responding when something goes wrong.
The challenge many organisations face is that cyber risk evolves faster than they can keep up with. New devices are added. Employees work differently. Attack techniques become more sophisticated. Security policies drift over time. Before long, businesses can find themselves relying on assumptions rather than evidence regarding their security posture.
That's a difficult position to be in. Because endpoint protection isn't just about laptops, phones and tablets. It's about understanding whether threats can be seen, prioritised and acted upon before they spread. It's about knowing where you're exposed, knowing what to fix next and being able to prove that your security is improving over time.
Throughout my work with SMBs, I've found that the organisations making the most progress aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets or the most tools. They're the ones with the clearest visibility into their environment and a structured approach to addressing risk.
If you're not fully confident that you could quickly identify a compromised device, understand where vulnerabilities exist, or know whether threats are being detected and acted upon before they spread, the first practical step is gaining visibility into your endpoint security posture.
Our Cyber Security Snapshot helps businesses like yours:
Because the biggest endpoint security risks are often the ones you can't yet see; hiding in outdated devices, missed patches, unmanaged endpoints and alerts that nobody has time to investigate.