Endpoint detection and response (EDR) combines real-time monitoring, data collection, and advanced correlation to address suspicious activity at hosts and endpoints, enabling security teams to rapidly identify and correlate events with manual and automated response options.
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In-depth definition of endpoint detection and response (EDR)
Endpoint detection and response (EDR) is a cybersecurity technology designed to help protect the devices, data, and platforms within your organization, also known as endpoints or access points. Examples of these include IoT devices in manufacturing environments and office computer hardware. Constantly monitoring for indications of suspicious activity, EDR’s purpose is to help you visualize and address risk, taking quick action to detect and prevent threats from occurring.
Understanding EDR security: advantages and capabilities
The core functionalities of EDR solutions include:
- Advanced threat detection: Using AI and machine learning, EDR tools can identify unusual behaviour that may signal a threat
- Automated response: EDR can automatically isolate compromised endpoints, preventing the spread of malware
- Detailed forensics: EDR security provides deep insights into how an attack unfolded, aiding in remediation efforts
With ransomware and malware threats becoming more frequent and aggressive, having an endpoint detection and response system in place to help pinpoint and investigate them is integral to organizations of all shapes and sizes. EDR records all the activities and events that occur on your endpoints. Some vendors may also extend this service to any workloads connected to your network.
These records, or event logs, can then be used to uncover incidents that may otherwise remain undetected. Real-time monitoring detects threats much faster, enabling preventative response actions before they can spread beyond the user endpoint.
How EDR fits into the broader cybersecurity landscape with XDR
The proactive capabilities of EDR solutions enable your organization and security operations center (SOC) team to stay ahead of threat actors, all while helping to reduce strain on employees and available resources. The technology provides a deeper understanding of endpoint activity and quickly clamps down on threats by analyzing real-time security event data. EDR security’s effectiveness can be amplified by leveraging extended detection and response (XDR), a newer, more powerful technology that helps you take even greater control of risk by consolidating data from multiple security layers to circumvent threats.
Endpoint detection and response functions on a single-vector basis—in other words, with data compartmentalized rather than consolidated. While EDR remains an important and helpful technology, it is inherently siloed and more limited in what it can achieve, yet the threat landscape is continuing to evolve. To stay ahead of threat actors, your organization needs to be able to streamline security event data flows, expand risk visibility, and more proactively respond to threats. With the advancements provided by XDR, security teams can now go beyond a single vector to include additional security layers such as those of email, networks, and cloud workloads.
In summary, endpoint detection and response is important when it comes to mitigating risk in a secure environment, but building a strong and proactive risk management strategy means considering your additional security layers in order to build a strong risk management strategy. Countering all types of threats—including zero-day and AI-based vulnerabilities—means converging your security insights and automating response actions. Therefore, EDR isn't the be-all and end-all for your detection and response strategy—but it does take on a new, essential role in feeding and fuelling XDR.
How EDR works
EDR solutions help to mitigate threat campaigns by continuously scanning for suspicious behavior, then alerting your SOC team to any possible threats that need to be addressed. It allows you to monitor endpoint, server, and host access points constantly, while perpetually searching for anything that could be a threat.
Key functions of EDR solutions
Endpoint detection and response capabilities comprise several important elements. These include:
- Data collection and analysis processes
- Threat hunting and detection
- Behavioral analysis and real-time monitoring
- Automated risk response measures
- Security event alerts and notifications
Data collection and analysis processes
Endpoint detection and response solutions leverage powerful sensors to collect and analyze various data points from all your endpoints. These include security alerts, performance insights, network connection and process execution details, configuration and registry settings and/or changes, information on user access and other behaviors, and file and data activity. This data is analyzed to pick up patterns, identify suspicious behaviors, and isolate potential threats.
Specific examples of useful information EDR can provide your SOC team include:
- User accounts that have logged in, either directly or through remote access
- Any changes made to ASP keys, executables, and other usage of administrative tools
- A list of process executions
- Records of file creation, including .ZIP and .RAR files
- Usage of removable media, such as USB drives
- All local and external addresses that have connected to the host
Threat detection and monitoring capabilities
Your SOC team has an important job to do. On top of ensuring your endpoints, network, and overall operations remain stable and secure, they must monitor for any possible threats or issues that occur over time. With endpoint detection and response, they receive real-time alerts about possible issues that may arise over time. This may include unexpected endpoint activity or potential attempts to infect your endpoints with malware or ransomware. Because cybersecurity threats continue to evolve—and threat actors are leveraging everything from AI to zero-day vulnerabilities—your SOC team needs the right tools to protect your organization.
With EDR, your security technology can detect and track the movement of potential threats in the environment. Once detected, these issues can be delegated to your SOC team for further investigation. Because EDR security solutions can monitor endpoints, servers, and workloads, these response measures are essential for providing a secure platform for your business.
Proactive, automated incident response and remediation mechanisms
EDR gives you complete oversight of your endpoint’s security-related processes. This expanded coverage allows your SOC team to focus on issues in real time and observe any commands or processes that may be in use on your endpoints.
Endpoint detection and response promotes more proactive defense by enabling threat hunters to search for red flags that may appear on your network and within various endpoints. Your SOC analysts are alerted to the most urgent threats, ensuring prompt remediation without them getting lost in a sea of other pings. Threat investigation and incident response measures are also automated to help you streamline your security operations.
Because EDR is handling the heavy lifting, your SOC team can focus on taking response actions against any issues that arise as quickly as possible. This leads to accelerated remediation, which means less time for potential risks to cause problems—and enables the ability to identify and handle threats before they lead to a full-on breach.
Integration with other security solutions
EDR can integrate with security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) and security information and event management (SIEM) systems. It can also connect to threat intelligence feeds to receive real-time insights on the latest threats. These integrations are useful for leveraging dedicated playbooks linked to other cybersecurity solutions, identifying and remediating new cyber risks, and further strengthening your security operations.
Most EDR systems are delivered through cloud-based solutions. This is an important element, as cloud integration ensures no adverse impact on endpoints. If a threat is detected or if an endpoint is taken down, cloud-based EDR systems can operate as normal, as your security environment maintains the same level of complete monitoring and protection from potential risks. Additionally, a cloud-based EDR system ensures your real-time monitoring and other important security aspects can never be bogged down by issues that arise across various endpoints.
The importance of EDR in cybersecurity
In bolstering the effectiveness of XDR and enabling proactive risk management, EDR continues to give your organization an edge against threat actors by addressing key SOC team challenges. Key benefits of EDR security solutions include the following:
Data breach prevention
If traditional point products and prevention systems fail, organizations without a proactive security strategy may encounter instances where threat actors gain internal access without SOC team knowledge, often through malware and/or ransomware. Without technology in place to monitor the environment continuously, they may be able to even come and go as they please. EDR helps you avoid data breach risks by providing real-time monitoring to help weed out any issues that might otherwise slip through your preventive measures. Any threats that are spotted are quickly identified—and rectified—before they can cause damage to your organization.
Improved incident response times
Acting on threats quickly is just as important as identifying them. Without actionable intelligence, they can’t be managed, which could leave the door open for threat actors to pinch sensitive data. EDR empowers your SOC team with a full set of tools that might not have been previously available to them. Combine real-time monitoring systems with newly collected data insights to help pinpoint where threats came from, how they gained access to the system, and even what kinds of systems might have been affected.
Additionally, remediation that takes too long can prove to be costly, and not just in terms of budget. Data security is also jeopardized if there is a delay. With EDR, your endpoint infrastructure will be monitored on a 24/7 basis, equipping your security team with proactive insights and enabling them to expedite the process.
Alert fatigue reduction
Security alerts are a critical component of cyber threat management. While they offer up-to-the-minute visibility over what's occurring within your environment, they can also create alert fatigue, which can negatively affect key performance indicators like mean time to respond (MTTR) and mean time to detect (MTTD). When several alarms sound at regular intervals, analysts might spend most of their time investigating false positives, causing some security incidents to fall by the wayside.
In addition, when it comes to day-to-day monitoring, analysts will ultimately be sifting through multiple alerts meant to help mitigate cyber risk. Over time, this can lead to burnout as security teams struggle to stay on top of what can often be an overwhelming number of alerts to respond to.
EDR is ideal for helping to reduce alert fatigue, prioritize risk, and simplify security operations. With continuous monitoring and endpoint data collection—plus customized, automated responses—the technology can help reduce stress on analysts, bypass staffing and resource constraint risks, and boost the efficiency of SOC teams.
Scalability and performance optimization
Nothing slows down security teams more than needing to switch solutions due to unforeseen limitations. This can be a time and cost-intensive measure, potentially even requiring security framework overhauls. EDR avoids such complications by adapting to the needs of organizations, from small businesses to global enterprise operations. This enhanced flexibility—paired with the ability to interface with SIEM, SOAR, threat intelligence, and XDR—ensures that the technology can adapt to your operations as they grow and change over time, such as when growing your employee and subsequent connected device count. This helps to avoid unwanted disruption while continuing to stay ahead of threat actors and achieving cost, time, and resource savings.
Real-world examples of EDR effectiveness
- Financial institution Tribanco leveraged the continuous monitoring and prioritized vulnerability remediation capabilities of EDR; they reduced their cyber risk score from 73 to 40 while improving resilience and cost-effectiveness
- Sligro Food Group, a prominent grocery and wholesale operator in the Netherlands, uses EDR’s 24/7 threat monitoring and a single-platform setup to increase vigilance and transform their threat management
- With EDR, Weatherford Independent School District (ISD) receives actionable data insights to help secure their endpoints—and, by extension, over 1,200 staff and 8,200 students
- CloudHesive, an Amazon Premier Partner and Amazon Managed Services Partner who has launched over 600 customers to the cloud, uses XDR on top of EDR to help secure cloud workloads and stay ahead of evolving threats
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