Network detection and response (NDR) uses a combination of advanced cybersecurity technologies and methodologies to identify anomalies and respond to threats that other security measures can miss.
Table of Contents
Definition of NDR
Network detection and response (NDR) is a type of cybersecurity solution designed to help protect network infrastructure against known and unknown threats. It leverages machine learning (ML), active monitoring, behavioral analytics, and other integrated capabilities and technologies to help organizations identify, isolate, and mitigate network-associated risks. Originally known as network traffic analysis (NTA), NDR has since evolved into a multi-faceted network security capability with expanded proactive functions.
Why is NDR needed?
Security operations center (SOC) teams are under intense pressure to protect their organizations against cyber threats. As operations continue to explore remote and hybrid deployment options, threats evolve and proliferate while the network becomes increasingly borderless. NDR provides you with expanded visibility and insight into your network environment, helping you stay proactively secure.
NDR provides continuous monitoring and analysis of network traffic using deep packet inspection, behavioral analytics, and machine learning (ML). It detects anomalies and identifies potential threats, integrating with threat intelligence sources for maximum effectiveness. By combining real-time monitoring with automated response and mitigation, NDR makes it possible for SOC teams to proactively defend against sophisticated cyber threats and minimize the potential impact of security incidents.
What challenges does NDR solve for SOC teams?
Alert overload, false alarms, and unprioritized risk
SOCs are often overwhelmed by alerts, leading to false alarms and missed attacks. Even with that surge, they might not have the data needed to fully understand incidents or risks. If there’s too much noise and too little accurate, precise, actionable information, it’s difficult to pin down and prevent threats.
NDR addresses these struggles by monitoring your network traffic and device behaviors. Any activity around an unmanaged device can be detected, analyzed, and determined to be anomalous, even if the device itself is dark. In addition, the correlation abilities of NDR sift through patterns and connect the dots, helping you more precisely differentiate between legitimate potential threats and harmless activity. Spot unmanaged assets on the network. Detect and correlate what would otherwise be low-confidence “weak signal” alerts lacking sufficient context. Then, lock in on threats and root out attackers.
Unmanaged, unprotected assets and AI integrations
Networks are often home to large numbers of unmanaged assets—in other words, devices that don’t have security agents installed, or whose security settings are misconfigured or out of date. By some estimates, unmanaged assets can outnumber managed assets two to one. These are hard to patch and are rarely, if ever, scanned for vulnerabilities.
Some unmanaged assets may not even be scannable. With older devices in particular, manufacturers can be slow to issue security updates, or they may no longer receive them at all, otherwise known as an end-of-support period. For IT teams to upgrade the security of these assets, they may first need to redeploy them or add licenses first, requiring efforts and costs that aren’t easy to justify, even if those devices represent a security liability.
For all these reasons, cybercriminals are drawn to unmanaged devices. They provide excellent hiding places. Attackers can use completely legitimate, authorized tools to move around the network between unmanaged devices without attracting attention, lying low for days, weeks, or even months. At the same time, cybercriminals that get access to your network could also start to use your own artificial intelligence (AI) agents and model subscriptions for their own benefit.
Endpoint detection and response solutions (EDR), identity threat detection and response (ITDR) and cyber risk exposure management aren’t designed to find threats lurking in unmanaged assets or see inside network traffic. NDR fulfils this role, exposing and correlating even subtle anomalies caused by threats that might otherwise go unnoticed. Spot unmanaged assets on the network, detect and correlate what would otherwise be low-confidence “weak signal” alerts lacking sufficient context, then lock in on threats and root out attackers.
Limited visibility, correlation, and attack path tracing
You can’t protect what you can’t see. Attackers are using encryption to hide their footprints. Gaining visibility into the decrypted network stream is essential to prevent network incidents. NDR gives SOC teams more visibility into what’s happening in the network by extracting network metadata from all traffic, suspicious or otherwise. Some solutions can even analyze encrypted network traffic to help accurately and quickly identify risks.
This metadata is correlated with potential threats, enabling you to visualize the footprint of an attack and close any exposure gaps. See the entire attack chain, identify root causes, and determine the full scope of an incident throughout your entire security stack. NDR also provides a way to uncover latent vulnerabilities. Outputs of third-party scanning tools can be met with expert security knowledge so that potential weaknesses are patched preemptively.
When consolidating your data lake and cybersecurity solutions through a single cybersecurity platform, insights from NDR can be leveraged even faster and more effectively, particularly in tandem with AI-powered automation. This helps your team free up workloads, accelerate detection, reduce costs and false positives, and stay ahead of adversaries. NDR solutions that can correlate data from multiple layers have a much greater chance of isolating real threats, triggering meaningful alerts that SOC teams can trust need to be addressed.
What are the components of an NDR solution?
The most proactive NDR solutions incorporate powerful components and functionalities, including:
- Modeling network traffic so that anomalies stand out and detection occurs on a behavioral basis rather than by looking for specific signatures; this requires ML and advanced analytics
- Delivering a consistently low false-positive rate once the solution has been properly tuned, ensuring SOC teams can trust the results they receive
- The capacity to aggregate and correlate alerts into “structured incidents,” making it easier for you to prioritize risk and investigate threats
- The ability to contain or block threats with automated responses, streamlining security operations
- The ability to scale as networks expand and more devices connect to and interact with them
- Built-in continuous improvement
Support for zero-trust approaches
Zero trust is today’s best framework for limiting access to corporate assets and resources, helping organizations protect against breaches and attacks. A 2024 ESG report revealed that more than two-thirds of organizations are implementing zero-trust policies.* To stay ahead of an attacker’s every move, operationalizing zero trust in tandem with capabilities such as network detection and response is key. This empowers your team with a comprehensive understanding of networked assets, user behavior, and data flows, helping you surface and proactively manage risk.
Inline NDR vs. out-of-band NDR
Inline NDR sensors enhance security operations by, as the term implies, being situated within the flow of network traffic, unlike more traditional NDR approaches. Inline NDR can decrypt, analyze, and automatically respond to suspicious behavior. This hands-on, real-time approach to network protection is the ideal option, providing SOC teams with the tools, speed, and efficiency needed to proactively secure their environments.
Out-of-band NDR is less involved, with sensors implemented outside of network traffic. This approach is more passive, discreetly collecting network traffic and checking for risks. Out-of-band NDR was initially suitable for more sensitive environments, such as those with strict compliance needs or performance impact concerns. However, as a more isolated and siloed approach, it has been rendered obsolete by some inline NDR solutions.
What are the benefits of NDR solutions?
Seamless integration and interoperability
NDR can integrate into environments and interface with pre-existing network security setups including firewalls, EDR, XDR, and security information and event management (SIEM) systems. Leveraging dedicated playbooks, managed services, and vendor support helps your SOC team ensure a seamless integration. This paves the way for improved data correlation and risk visibility.
Rapid incident response and risk prioritization
NDR enables you to act faster than adversaries, proactively managing known and unknown network risks with greater speed and precision. Automated workflows help SOC teams organize and prioritize security alerts, alleviating fatigue and confusion while freeing up resources. Contextualized, consolidated security event insights enable them to respond faster, addressing vulnerabilities before any damage can be done.
Reduction of false positives
By enforcing rigorous access controls and monitoring network assets, behaviors, and data flows, NDR helps SOC teams detect and prevent unauthorized lateral movements and privilege escalations. Fewer false positives means being able to focus on what needs the most urgent attention.
Alignment with zero trust
NDR implementation helps organizations adopt zero-trust security, tightly controlling sensitive data, asset, and network access. By constantly monitoring user behavior and device activity, NDR makes it easier to spot risky actions and enforce strict access rules, making breaches and unauthorized access less likely.
Scalability and adaptation to the latest threats
NDR enables SOC teams to continuously streamline and optimize their operations, scaling with them while reducing strain. Detailed network risk insights present opportunities to anticipate and adapt to the latest threats. This is crucial given that technologies—and the network landscape itself—are changing constantly. Keeping pace is not enough.
How do NDR solutions work with AI?
Threat actors are actively abusing the power of AI, making cybercrime easier, faster, and more dangerous. At the same time, AI itself can help to significantly strengthen your protection. Leveraging it for threat intelligence, asset profile management, attack path prediction, and remediation guidance—including through AI-powered NDR, EDR, and XDR—can help you operate and innovate securely.
AI and ML are at the heart of NDR, transforming how SOC teams manage risk and protect network environments. These technologies enable organizations to shift from reactive to proactive security, bolstering real-time protection while adapting to changing environments, behaviors, and attack methods.
Automated response workflows and consolidated security data lakes empower SOC teams to act faster than attackers, addressing risks and mitigating threats before they escalate. Seamless interoperability with XDR, EDR, SIEM, and SOAR solutions can also ensure that your network security is never siloed or disconnected. Instead, it can be managed holistically across every layer of your environment.
Where can I get help with network detection and response (NDR)?
Having the right NDR solution is the key, but it needs to be able to predict the entire attack chain, identify root causes and the full scope of incidents, and proactively apply cross-layered detection and response. Trend Vision One™ XDR for Networks provides this and the insight into network and cross-layered threats, ensuring you are compliant with regulations and free from blind spots.
Once you have the bird’s-eye view, you can then achieve continuous, resilient defense with native inline actions, automated playbooks, and/or integrated third-party responses by applying threat response actions across security layers.
*Source: Grady, J. (2024, February 14). Trends in Zero Trust: Strategies and practices remain fragmented, but many are seeing success. TechTarget. https://www.techtarget.com/esg-global/survey-results/trends-in-zero-trust-strategies-and-practices-remain-fragmented-but-many-are-seeing-success/
Joe Lee is Vice President of Product Management at Trend Micro, where he leads global strategy and product development for enterprise email and network security solutions.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's)
What is NDR in security?
Network detection and response (NDR) is a cybersecurity solution that monitors network traffic to identify, prevent, and respond to cyberattacks.
Is NDR better than EDR?
Neither is ‘better.’ Endpoint detection and response (EDR) protects endpoints like computers and phones. Network detection and response (NDR) safeguards whole networks.
What does NDR mean in security?
NDR stands for network detection and response. NDR is a cybersecurity solution that monitors network traffic to flag abnormalities and detect possible cyber threats.
What is an example of network detection and response?
Examples of network detection and response (NDR) tools include malware detection software, insider threat detection systems, and phishing detection tools.
What is the purpose of NDR?
The purpose of network detection and response (NDR) is to identify, detect, and respond to potential cyberattacks and other cyber threats in IT networks.
What is the difference between firewall and network detection and response?
Firewalls are border defenses that stop bad actors from accessing IT systems without authorization. Network detection and response catches threats that slip past the firewall.
What is network threat detection?
Network threat detection is a cybersecurity process that monitors network traffic to identify and detect cyberattacks and cyber threats in real time.
What are the four types of network security?
The four main types of network security are firewalls, virtual private networks (VPNs), intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS), and access and authorization controls.
What are the top 5 cybersecurity risks?
The top 5 current cybersecurity risks are ransomware and malware attacks, phishing schemes, data breaches, insider threats, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
What is NDR used for?
NDR (network detection and response) is a cybersecurity solution that’s used to identify, prevent, and proactively respond to potential cyber threats in network traffic.
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