Does that also apply to things like Symantec Endpoint Protection, which has many additional modules like SONAR - is that mostly marketing and loud yelling?
Most endpoint protection systems typically use a combination of looking at known hashes or bad things and active process monitoring to identify new bad things. They're not perfect, and have varying levels of success. It is better than nothing.
I can't speak to Symantec, but I've worked for companies that provide endpoint protection and watched a live demo of novel "malware" getting caught escalating privileges.
