Overview

Endpoint security is going through a massive transformation. Whereas traditional antivirus solutions rely on first knowing that a certain piece of malware exists, and then producing a signature or updating a machine learning model to stop it, the next generation of endpoint security is built to predict and prevent both known and unknown threats using big data and analytics, without having to see a malicious file first.

VMware Carbon Black has developed a number of innovations in endpoint data capture and analysis that form the foundation of VMware Carbon Black Cloud platform. The VMware Carbon Black Cloud analyzes attackers’ behavior patterns to detect and stop never-seen-before attacks. Leveraging the power of the cloud, it analyzes more than 500B events per day across millions of global endpoints, helping organizations stay ahead of costly attacks.

The company has solved some very difficult security-related data and analytics problems that make its platform unique and differentiated from the competition both today and for the longer term. A key and unique aspect of this platform is the use of unfiltered endpoint data — or the centralized, unbiased recording of endpoint activity without filtering anything out. Unfiltered data is essentially the digital equivalent of a surveillance camera for an organization’s endpoint. Legacy vendors only collect data when they know something is bad, or when they think something is bad. VMware Carbon Black, however, collects everything without bias, meaning we don’t pre-judge whether an activity is good or bad, because attackers intentionally try to “look normal” in order to hide their attacks.

As a testament to the quality of the product that Carbon Black developed through years of intensive work, the company was acquired in August 2019 by cloud infrastructure giant VMware for $2.1 billion.