What is Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)?

Your organization’s daily operations depend on connections: to your clients, vendors, staff, and other parties. In our era of the Internet of Things (IoT), this also means that every new piece of hardware connected to your network is another endpoint that needs to be secure.

An endpoint is any device connected to your networks, such as laptops, mobile phones, and computers. It can also be Internet-enabled equipment, such as medical devices, robots, sensors, and other hardware. The more endpoints that are introduced, the bigger the attack surface your organization has – all of which can fall prey to nefarious activities and cyberattacks that exploit vulnerabilities within these endpoints.

How do you protect your organization against such scenarios in an ever-expanding device and employee ecosystem? Endpoint detection and response, or EDR security solutions, as they are better known, might be your best bet.

What Is Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)?

The term “endpoint detection and response” was first coined by Anton Chuvakin in a Gartner 2013 article. EDR security tools perform continuous real-time monitoring of all these connections and have automated response capabilities to respond to any concerns you discover.

EDR tools and platforms help your information security team respond quickly to potential threats. This cybersecurity protocol, sometimes called endpoint threat detection and response (EDTR) solutions, is necessary when you have a rapidly expanding volume of devices to consider.

EDR is not necessarily a new concept, even if it has a relatively new name. For example, if you’re using an antivirus program, have deployed comprehensive security operations with a dedicated team of security analysts, or already installed firewalls to protect against cyber threats such as fileless malware and ransomware, then you’re already using a version of EDR.

EDR solutions are often mentioned in the same breath as managed detection and response (MDR) or extended detection and response (XDR). The primary distinction to note among these terms: MDR is a service provided by security experts, and XDR is a method that combines data across an organization to better address advanced level threats. Regardless, the underlying approach for all three remains the same.

What Is Endpoint Security?

EDR solutions work by monitoring endpoint security, orchestrating data collection through endpoint telemetry, and then recording that data in a central platform for later analysis. This platform may provide an integrated dashboard or software visualization tools for analyzing endpoint activity across all endpoints.

Platforms that analyze and visualize endpoint data source activity are also known as security information event management solutions (SIEMs). Suspicious activities are monitored to triage potential risks or threats so your information security team can evaluate the root cause and decide what endpoint protection platform measures will be adequate to reduce attack vectors.

Endpoint security platforms can monitor and analyze workloads across systems and apps (on-premises or cloud-based). This provides comprehensive coverage of endpoints across the organization. In addition, the threat analysis capabilities of such platforms are often bolstered with machine learning capabilities, using automation for incident response and threat monitoring. This prepares your team to find early-warning signals for more advanced threats.

What Are the Key Components of EDR Security?

The critical components of EDR security are:

• Collection. You’ll need software with EDR capabilities to monitor all endpoint events and record the data for later analysis. You should include all possible endpoints, not just internal ones (including those from client devices and third-party vendors).
• Automated responses. If you already know some specific endpoint cybersecurity risks, such as malware or ransomware, you can use automatic responses to address malicious activity as it happens. Some instances may benefit from a simple alert to your information security stakeholders; others might require something more drastic such as severing the connection.
• Analysis. Finally, the best use of the data collected from continuous monitoring of endpoint detection is to understand what it all means. Analysis and research of endpoint security data will allow you to take action against emerging cyber threats.

Benefits of Adopting EDR Security

EDR security allows you to monitor every part of your organization’s defenses and look at unusual behavioral patterns across apps in your organization. Your security teams would be equipped with detailed insights on which executables run longer than usual or which workloads consume extensive organization resources and compute power.

You could also then integrate data loss prevention solutions with your EDR security so that you can gauge the severity of a potential threat to your critical data assets, and take preventive measures.

EDR security also helps you to distinguish between false positive events and true threat events, which is a godsend (since most security alerts turn out to be false) to boost your overall security posture.

Improve Your Threat Intelligence With RiskOptics

A key element of successful EDR is intelligent, efficient software that handles the automation for you, freeing up your team to work on the advanced threats. The RiskOptics ROAR Platform makes creating automated cybersecurity actions simple – all while offering the complex, in-depth reporting you need to keep your endpoint security at its best.

Request a demo today to understand what a comprehensive endpoint security solution could look like.