Kaspersky, Symantec, Cylance and ESET tops for endpoint protection

Kaspersky Lab has taken out the top award in Gartner's 2017 Peer Insights Customer Choice Awards for EndPoint Protection Platforms, with Symantec, Cylance and ESET also receiving awards.

The Customer Choice Awards are a ranking of vendors by end-user professionals. The awards take into account both the number of reviews – which must be at least 50 published reviews –  and the overall user ratings.

Kaspersky Lab took Platinum distinction in the awards for its Endpoint Security Cloud and Endpoint Security for Business offerings, with Symantec's Endpoint Protection garnering the vendor Gold distinction.

Cylance won Silver on the back of its Protect product, while ESET was awarded bronze distinction for its Endpoint Security

Webroot, CrowdStrike, Malwarebytes, Carbon Black, Trend Micro, Sophos and Microsoft all received honorable mentions.

Ken Davis, Gartner executive vice president of products and services, says "In interpreting reviews, it's difficult for IT professionals to balance the number of reviews for a company versus a company's overall rating.

"The Gartner Peer Insights Customer Choice Awards are designed to help end users navigate these issues to make better purchase decisions," Davis says.

Gartner says endpoint protection is an integrated solution which includes anti-malware, personal firewall, port and device control capabilities.

"Beyond fighting malware, modern EPP products are expanding to include data protection features, such as disk and file encryption, data loss prevention and device control," the analyst firm notes.

It says buyers of endpoint protection should investigate the quality of protection capabilities, the depth and breadth of features and ease of adminstration.

He says Gartner works hard to ensure all reviews are submitted by an IT professional or business user who has had experience purchasing, implementing and/or using the enterprise solutions they are reviewing and are free from conflicts of interest.