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Endpoint Management Overview
In today’s digital landscape, every computer, server, and laptop connected to your network—known as an “endpoint”—represents a potential entry point for cyberthreats. Endpoint Management is the fundamental process of monitoring and protecting these devices, ensuring they are secure, up-to-date, and compliant with your organization’s policies.
Myrmex, through the Brontes agent, simplifies and automates this critical task. Brontes acts as your device management coordinator, providing centralized visibility and control over all endpoints in your environment. It not only knows which devices you have but also understands the security status of each one.
Why is Endpoint Management Crucial?
Risk Reduction: Outdated or misconfigured devices are easy targets. Brontes helps identify and remediate these vulnerabilities.
Compliance: Many regulations require devices to be in a specific security state. Brontes assists in maintaining and proving this compliance.
Operational Efficiency: Automating endpoint management frees your IT team to focus on more strategic tasks, reducing manual effort and errors.
Visibility: Having an accurate, real-time inventory of all your devices is the first step in any effective security strategy.
With Myrmex and Brontes, managing your endpoints transforms from a complex and fragmented task into a cohesive, intelligent, and proactive process, protecting the foundation of your digital infrastructure.
Device Inventory and Status
For any effective IT security and management strategy, accurate knowledge about assets is the starting point. Myrmex, through the Brontes agent, provides comprehensive and real-time Device Inventory and Status, delivering the critical visibility that technicians and managers need.
What is Device Inventory with Brontes?
More than just a simple list, Brontes’ inventory is a dynamic and detailed database of all endpoints under your management. It automatically collects a vast range of information, including:
Identification: Hostname, IP address, MAC address, operating system (Windows, Linux, macOS) and version.
Hardware: Model, manufacturer, processor, RAM memory, storage.
Software: Installed applications, security software versions (antivirus, EDR), applied patches.
Network: Network interface configurations, active connections.
How Brontes Collects and Maintains Status?
The Platform collects the tunnel communication status with the agent installed on the endpoint, when there are communication problems through the tunnel with the agent installed on the endpoint. The endpoint status is changed by the platform in the database. The Brontes Agent is responsible for internally querying the endpoint status within the platform.
Benefits for Technicians:
Optimized Troubleshooting: Quickly access detailed hardware and software information to diagnose and resolve problems more efficiently.
Patch and Update: Identify which devices need specific patches or software updates, ensuring your infrastructure is secure against known vulnerabilities.
Deployment Planning: Have accurate data to plan the deployment of new software or systems, verifying compatibility and requirements.
Technical Auditing: Verify specific configurations, application versions, and service status on any device.
Benefits for Managers:
Asset Visibility: Get a clear and consolidated view of all organizational IT assets, essential for asset management and strategic planning.
Risk Assessment: Quickly identify outdated devices, those without security software, or with inadequate configurations, enabling more accurate risk assessment and action prioritization.
Compliance and Auditing: Have access to auditable data about device configuration and security status, facilitating compliance demonstration with internal and external regulations.
Cost Optimization: Avoid unnecessary expenses on licenses or hardware by having an accurate inventory of what is actually in use.
With Myrmex’s Device Inventory and Status, technicians gain powerful tools for daily operations, while managers obtain the intelligence necessary for strategic decisions and to ensure the health and security of the company’s technological environment.
Agent Management and Lifecycle
The effectiveness of endpoint management by Myrmex depends directly on the health and operability of the Brontes agent installed on each device. For technicians, Myrmex offers robust control over Agent Management and its Lifecycle, ensuring that data collection and policy execution are continuous and reliable.
The Brontes Agent: Myrmex’s Eye and Arm on the Endpoint
The Brontes agent is lightweight and optimized software, designed to operate with minimal impact on device performance. It is the component that resides on the endpoint, responsible for:
- Collecting inventory and status data
- Reporting security telemetry
- Receiving and applying configurations and policies
- Acting as an execution point for commands orchestrated by Centurion (via Perseus, if necessary)
Agent Lifecycle: From Deployment to Deactivation
Myrmex simplifies all phases of the Brontes agent lifecycle:
Deployment
Initial Installation: Myrmex offers flexible methods for installing the Brontes agent, including manual installers, scripts for mass deployment via GPO (Group Policy Object), SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager), or other software management tools.
Registration and Authorization: After installation, the agent automatically registers with the Myrmex platform. Centurion orchestrates the authorization process, ensuring that only legitimate and approved agents can communicate and send data.
Health and Status Monitoring
Continuous Visibility: The Myrmex platform provides a centralized dashboard where technicians can monitor the connection status of each Brontes agent (online/offline), its version, and the last time it communicated.
Diagnostics: Agent health metrics, such as CPU, memory, and disk usage, are reported, enabling proactive identification of agents with performance or communication issues.
Alerts: Alert configurations can be defined to notify technicians about offline, outdated, or anomalously behaving agents.
Updates
Centralized Management: Brontes agent updates are managed centrally by the Myrmex platform. Centurion can orchestrate the deployment of new agent versions in a controlled manner, allowing phased rollouts or targeting specific device groups.
Silent Updates: Updates are designed to be silent and automatic, minimizing disruption to the end user and ensuring all agents are always running the latest and most secure version.
Uninstallation and Deactivation
Controlled Removal: When a device is deactivated or removed from management, Myrmex allows for remote and controlled uninstallation of the Brontes agent, ensuring complete cleanup and removal of associated data from the platform.
License Management: Proper agent deactivation assists in license management, freeing them for new deployments.
Benefits for Technicians:
Automation: Reduces the manual workload associated with installing, updating, and monitoring agents across hundreds or thousands of devices.
Reliability: Ensures that the data collection and policy execution foundation is always functional and up-to-date.
Quick Diagnostics: Monitoring and diagnostic tools enable rapid identification and resolution of agent issues, minimizing gaps in security coverage.
Security: Ensures that only authorized agents are operating and communicating with the platform, maintaining system integrity.
The management of the Brontes agent lifecycle by Myrmex is an essential capability that empowers technicians, ensuring efficient, secure, and scalable endpoint management.
Infrastructure and Health Monitoring
In addition to providing detailed inventory and managing agent lifecycles, Myrmex, through the Brontes agent, extends its capabilities to Continuous Infrastructure and Device Health Monitoring. For technicians, this means having a proactive and granular view of endpoint performance and stability, enabling early problem detection and resource optimization.
What is Monitored?
Brontes collects a vast range of performance and health metrics directly from endpoints, transforming them into actionable data for the Myrmex platform. This includes:
Resource Utilization: CPU usage levels, RAM memory, disk space, and disk I/O.
Network Performance: Network traffic (input/output), latency, connectivity status.
Service and Process Status: Monitoring the execution of critical system services and specific processes, identifying failures or anomalous behaviors.
System Events: Collection of operating system event logs (Windows Event Logs, Syslog on Linux/macOS) to identify errors, warnings, and security events.
Hardware Health: Information about component health such as hard drives (via S.M.A.R.T.), CPU temperature, battery status on laptops.
How Does Monitoring Work?
The Brontes agent collects these metrics at configurable intervals and sends them securely to the Myrmex platform. Centurion, with its orchestration and AI capabilities, processes this data, correlates it, and presents it in intuitive dashboards and configurable alerts. This allows technicians to visualize trends, identify usage spikes, performance bottlenecks, or service failures in real-time.
Benefits for Technicians:
Proactive Problem Detection: Identify performance issues or hardware/software failures before they affect end users, enabling preventive interventions.
Accelerated Diagnostics: Have immediate access to historical and real-time data about system performance, facilitating root cause identification of problems.
Resource Optimization: Analyze resource usage to optimize hardware and software allocation, ensuring devices are operating at maximum efficiency.
Capacity Planning: Use trend data to predict future resource needs and plan hardware upgrades or acquisitions.
Anomaly Identification: Detect unusual behaviors that may indicate a security problem (e.g., excessive CPU usage by an unknown process, elevated network traffic).
Post-Remediation Health Verification: After applying a patch or resolving an incident, monitor the device to confirm that health and performance have been restored.
Myrmex’s Infrastructure and Health Monitoring, powered by Brontes, transforms reactive problem management into a proactive, data-driven approach, essential for maintaining the stability and security of any IT environment.
Device Configuration and Policies
Standardization and consistent application of security and operational configurations are pillars for maintaining the integrity and compliance of any IT environment. Myrmex, through the Brontes agent, empowers technicians with robust tools for Device Configuration and Policy Application, ensuring that each endpoint is aligned with the organization’s security standards and best practices.
What are Configurations and Policies in the Myrmex Context?
In Myrmex, configurations and policies refer to sets of rules and parameters that define the desired behavior of a device. This can include:
Security Policies: Firewall rules, antivirus/EDR configurations, password policies, disk encryption settings, USB device access restrictions.
Operational Configurations: Installation or uninstallation of specific software, network configurations, system service management, modifications to Windows registry or Linux configuration files.
Compliance: Parameters that ensure adherence to internal standards or external regulations (e.g., LGPD, ISO 27001).
How Does Brontes Apply and Ensure Policy Compliance?
Policy application with Brontes is a centralized process orchestrated by Centurion, ensuring consistency and scalability:
Centralized Definition: Technicians define desired policies on the Myrmex platform. These policies can be based on predefined templates or created from scratch, with granularity to serve different device groups or users.
Intelligent Deployment: Centurion orchestrates the deployment of these policies to Brontes agents on endpoints. Policies can be applied to specific device groups (e.g., all Linux servers, all sales laptops), ensuring that only relevant devices receive the configurations.
Application and Verification: The Brontes agent on the endpoint receives the policy and applies it locally. After application, Brontes continuously verifies that the device remains compliant with the policy. If a configuration is manually changed or by another process, Brontes detects “configuration drift” and reports non-compliance to the Myrmex platform.
Remediation and Reporting: The Myrmex platform provides detailed reports on each device’s compliance status. In cases of non-compliance, Centurion can orchestrate automatic remediation actions (if configured) or alert technicians for manual intervention.
Benefits for Technicians:
Standardization and Consistency: Ensures all devices are configured uniformly, reducing complexity and the risk of manual errors.
Reduced Attack Surface: By consistently applying strict security policies, the organization’s attack surface is significantly reduced.
Automation and Efficiency: Automates configuration application at scale, freeing team time for more complex and strategic tasks.
Assured Compliance: Facilitates maintaining compliance with internal standards and external regulations, providing auditable evidence of policy application.
Centralized Control: Enables managing and auditing security configurations of all devices from a single panel.
Rapid Threat Response: In case of new threats, security policies can be quickly deployed to all vulnerable devices, minimizing exposure.
With Myrmex’s Device Configuration and Policy capabilities, technicians gain unprecedented control over the endpoint environment, transforming security management into a proactive, automated, and highly effective process.
Supported Devices: Windows, Linux, macOS
The ability to manage and protect a diversified IT environment is crucial for modern security. Myrmex, through the Brontes agent, was designed with a flexible and robust architecture to offer comprehensive support for the most prevalent operating systems in the corporate landscape: Windows, Linux, and macOS. This ensures that your organization can maintain a unified security posture, regardless of the platform used on your endpoints.
Comprehensive Operating System Coverage:
Microsoft Windows:
Workstations: Support for the most recent and widely used versions, such as Windows 10 and Windows 11, ensuring management of corporate desktops and laptops.
Servers: Compatibility with major Windows Server editions (including versions like 2016, 2019, 2022), enabling monitoring and management of critical servers in your datacenter or cloud environment.
Functionalities: Registry management, services, processes, event logs, local group policies, and Windows-specific file system operations.
Linux:
Popular Distributions: Support for a vast range of Linux distributions, including but not limited to Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and CentOS. This covers everything from application and database servers to developer workstations.
Functionalities: Process management, services (systemd, SysVinit), system logs (syslog, journald), file permissions, and network configurations in Linux environments.
Apple macOS:
Recent Versions: Compatibility with the latest macOS versions, ensuring that Apple devices used by designers, developers, and executives are under the same security and management policy.
Functionalities: Process monitoring, services, system logs, and macOS-specific security configurations.
Despite the inherent differences of each operating system, the Brontes agent maintains functional consistency across all supported platforms. This means that inventory capabilities, health monitoring, agent management, and policy application are delivered in a unified manner, simplifying operations for technicians.
Centurion’s orchestration ensures that regardless of the endpoint’s operating system, management and security actions are applied effectively and data is collected and presented in a standardized manner on the Myrmex platform.
Benefits for Technicians:
Unified Visibility: Manage all your endpoints from a single panel, eliminating the need for OS-specific tools.
Simplified Operations: Reduce operational complexity by applying policies and monitoring the health of heterogeneous devices with a consistent set of tools.
Comprehensive Coverage: Ensure no device falls outside your security and management strategy, regardless of the operating system it runs.
Resource Optimization: Maximize your team’s efficiency, allowing them to focus on a single management platform instead of mastering multiple solutions.
With Brontes’ multi-platform support, Myrmex offers a truly comprehensive solution for endpoint management, adapting to the diversity of your IT environment. 
