EDR is a new security category coined by Gartner analyst Anton Chuvakin in 2013. The technology monitors endpoint devices and provides IT and security teams visibility into the attack surface.
The goal is to provide real-time alerts to help your organization detect threats and contains them at the network level. An automated response is critical to this process, with pre-configured rules that recognize incoming data and trigger automated remediation actions, such as quarantining an endpoint or blocking processes.
Response
There is no doubt that detecting and containing threats after they have breached your perimeter is essential to any organization’s security posture. Advanced threats are stealthy and can easily slip past your defenses without notice, often morphing from benign to malicious before they can be contained or eliminated.
Endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems have developed from their forensics-based beginnings to include capabilities that assist you in keeping a watch on anything from malware, ransomware, and other fileless threats to clever attackers to achieve this. A good EDR solution will alert you when a threat has been detected and give you the tools to triage, investigate, and remediate it before it becomes a full-blown attack.
The ability to be installed anywhere in your network, from on-premise to the cloud, is one of the most crucial features of any EDR system. It allows you to deploy EDR across your entire infrastructure and scale it up or down as needed.
Knowing how EDR security works are the first step to securing your organization and its associated data. The best EDR solutions will sync up with your existing security and IT systems, allowing you to detect and contain the most sophisticated attacks, including ransomware and other malware. The best EDR solutions will even help you recover and restore files and registry settings if ransomware has compromised.
Threat Detection
When a threat breaches your perimeter defenses, it is vital to detect it so you can contain and neutralize it before it causes any real damage. It is where endpoint detection and response (EDR) comes in.
EDR is a security solution that combines data and behavioral analysis to help organizations guard against emerging threats and active attacks, such as malware and ransomware. It is also used to prevent attacks from spreading across the network.
The key to effective EDR is the collection of essential data from endpoints and enriching that data with context so that analysis can identify signs of an attack. This data can then be used to triage, investigate, and remediate incidents before they become breached.
To get the most out of EDR, you need a solution that can work seamlessly with your existing technology and security processes. It will remove friction between validation, investigation and threat response so you can focus your resources on what matters most — responding to attacks fast and effectively.
Traditional SIEMs and log-based approaches often need to be more siloed to combine data across the enterprise. They are also limited in their ability to identify evasive threats that cross between different security silos, slowing down your team’s time to respond and resulting in missed critical events.
Containment
Endpoint detection and response is a cybersecurity technology that monitors and analyzes suspicious activity on endpoint devices. This data is then used for threat hunting and to develop a quick response to threats.
EDR now includes a variety of technologies that can help security teams find and respond to cyber threats. While some tools focus on detecting and blocking malware, others are designed to give security teams a better understanding of what makes an attacker tick.
Some EDR solutions also contain malware so that it cannot spread further into your network. It is essential with ransomware, which can take control of an entire system and hold it, hostage.
Containment is an essential part of any effective EDR solution. Without this, an infected system could spread to other systems and cause significant damage.
Analytics
Business analytics is a critical part of any company’s cybersecurity strategy. They help security teams understand their network and protect against cyberattacks like ransomware. These solutions provide visibility into endpoint activity and a way to analyze and respond to threats in real-time.
Data analytics can be broadly categorized into descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Descriptive analytics describes current and historical conditions; diagnostic analytics assesses why something has happened; predictive analytics uses historical information to predict what will happen in the future, and prescriptive analytics provides recommendations for action.
For example, healthcare organizations use analytics to monitor patient behavior for potentially life-threatening disease or condition indications. Banks and credit card firms examine withdrawal and spending habits to stop fraud and identity theft.
In addition, analytics can be used to optimize marketing campaigns. They can also be used to detect fraud, detect zero-day vulnerabilities and identify advanced persistent threats.
EDR technology pairs comprehensive visibility across all endpoints with IOAs and applies behavioral analytics that automatically analyzes billions of real-time events to detect suspicious activity traces.
Advanced EDR tools can offer response features to investigate live system memory, gather artifacts from suspected endpoints, and combine historical and current situational data to create a comprehensive picture during an incident. They can also automate remediation, allowing security teams to stop compromised processes and isolate or disable accounts.
