Commissioned by Micro Focus
Published July 2021
Executive Summary
Employees engage with enterprise data through a myriad of endpoints—laptops, smartphones, and tablets. They create enterprise data, store it, share it, access it, and make modifications to it. An endpoint is a facilitator of productive work and the gateway to the intellectual property storehouse of the organization. Many work processes in the modern organization have been designed based on the availability and capabilities of endpoints.
Endpoints are also a risk and threat vector. Lost or stolen devices result in loss of capability to work—and data breaches. Ransomware attacks lock data and documents from usage, rendering devices useless and unique data inaccessible. Data responsive to eDiscovery requirements and internal investigations is scattered across network servers, cloud services, and endpoint devices, and while the first two are generally easy to search, securing physical access to a custodian’s endpoint device is a more difficult and expensive proposition. Safeguarding the endpoint as an enabler of productive work and protecting the data stored on endpoints are critical considerations in enterprise IT strategy.
This white paper reviews the differential capabilities of two solution categories that deliver protections for endpoints and employees: policy-based enterprise endpoint backup solutions, and enterprise file sync and share services. One overarching emphasis of both solution categories is meeting compliance requirements for enterprise data, and a second is the ability to safeguard productivity when a device is lost, stolen, compromised, or otherwise destroyed. Although these areas of emphasis are the same, there are significant differences in the efficacy of each solution category in meeting the associated requirements.
