Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Security - 2012

Addendum - Information about the 2013 report is at http://kensek.blogspot.com/2014/02/gartner-magic-quadrant-for-endpoint.html

Gartner has released their 2012 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Security, ID:G00239869.  Five performers are in the leaders quadrant.  Their approximate order in the 2012 report:  Symantec, McAfee, Sophos, Kaspersky, and Trend Micro.  Microsoft, who has built up a large endpoint market share in the last couple of years with their free consumer endpoint product, was the only company in the Challenger portion of the grid for the 2012 Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection.  Congrats to these five companies.  Analysts for the report - Peter Firstbrook, John Girard, and Neil MacDonald.

Always interesting goings on with firms in the world of security, even those in the leaders portion of the magic quadrant. Symantec replaced CEO Enrique Salem with Tom Bennett in July.

Companies in  the 2011 leaders portion of the quadrant were  Symantec, McAfee, Sophos, Trend Micro, and Kaspersky. http://kensek.blogspot.com/2012/02/gartner-magic-quadrant-for-endpoint.html

Always interesting goings on with firms in the world of security.  Palo Alto Networks "finally" went public  in 2012 and had a nice first few days pop in their stock price. More traditional firewall companies started releasing Next Generation Firewalls (NGFW's).  Trend Micro was named a leader in the email content security arena by Forrester. Symantec replaced CEO Enrique Salem with Tom Bennett in July. Kaspersky and Trend switched spots as Kaspersky continues their mission to surpass Trend Micro in everything end point.   Symantec, you may want to appear in those AV-comparatives.org security tests, now ;). Once Kaspersky passes Trend Micro.....

Beyond Trust was the overall lowest in the quadrant with respect to ability to execute.  They purchased eEye in the first half of 2012.  One of the cautions raised by Gartner about Check Point (in the visionary portion of the quadrant) was Check Point's dependence on Kaspersky Lab's engine and signature updates continues to challenge enterprise buyers to differentiate it from Kaspersky Lab (note, ck – not a technological weakness, just a differentiator weakness).

There is a combination of seventeen companies in this report.  The minimum functionality   to appear:

• Detection and cleaning of malware (for example, viruses, spyware, rootkits, Trojans, worms), a personal firewall, and HIPS for servers and PCs
• Centralized management, configuration and reporting capabilities for all products evaluated in this research, sufficient to support companies of at least 5,000 geographically dispersed endpoints
• Global service and support organizations to support products

A good read for people is “Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes: How Gartner Evaluates Vendors Within a Market” http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=154752   Sometimes a  leader isn’t the best solution for a particular customer.  Despite that, there are many presentations where the vendor uses being in the leaders portion   as a reason to buy from that particular vendor. 

The   Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Security 2012 is available from Gartner.  Some of the vendors license rights to provide it to customers, as well.