What is Extended Detection and Response (XDR)?

• Threat hunting: Although it’s likely that threats already exist in any given network, many security teams struggle to find the time to do proactive threat hunting. XDR’s telemetry and automation capabilities allow much of this work to be done automatically, significantly lightening the load on security teams and allowing them to carry out threat hunting alongside their other tasks, intervening only when necessary.
• Triage: One of a security team’s most important functions is to prioritize or triage alerts and quickly respond to the most crucial ones. XDR helps sift through the noise by using powerful analytics to correlate thousands of alerts into a small number of high-priority ones. 
• Investigation: XDR’s extensive data collection, superior visibility, and automated analysis allow security teams to quickly and easily establish where a threat originated, how it spread, and what other users or devices might be affected. This is crucial to both removing the threat and hardening the network against future threats.
  

XDR is a powerful security strategy, but to realize its full benefits, it’s important to choose a solution that makes the most of its capabilities. When choosing a platform, look out for the following problems:

• Lack of integration: XDR is only effective when it is fully integrated within the IT environment. Complex integrations that require work to maintain could take time away from your IT teams and make your XDR solution less effective.
• Insufficient automation: Automation is one of the most powerful capabilities of XDR, so an effective platform needs to be able to adapt to current conditions and carry out a targeted response that goes beyond simply blocking traffic to the affected device. 
• Operational complexity: A useful XDR solution needs to be cohesive and accessible to security and IT teams; otherwise, the time your team gains by implementing it will be offset by the time and effort put into learning it and setting it up.
  

Detection and response technology employs real-time, continuous monitoring of systems to detect and investigate potential threats. A detection and response system then uses automation to contain and remove those threats.

There are a number of different types of detection and response solutions today, including:

• EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response): EDR monitors and responds to threats on endpoints. It was the first type of detection and response system, and compared to earlier security technologies, it allows better visibility and a faster response to threats. It also boasts improved malware detection that allows it to catch more sophisticated threats, such as fileless malware. However, its scope is limited to the endpoint and workload security, which makes it difficult to correlate threats across a complex environment.
• NDR (Network Detection and Response): NDR scans for threats within the network and deploys a response when it detects a threat. This type of detection and response focuses on the internal network, allowing security teams to see threats that have breached the perimeter.  NDR should use a combination of technologies including NTA, IDPS, Network Sandboxing with both unsupervised and supervised machine learning to distinguish between malicious and benign activity beyond the endpoint.
• MDR (Managed Detection and Response): MDR is run as an outsourced service, where outside professionals perform detection and response on an organization’s systems, often with the use of EDR and NDR tools. This can be a good option for organizations that do not have the in-house expertise or resources to operationalize detection and response tools. Unlike other outsourced security services, such as MSSPs (managed security service providers), MDR services are focused on detecting and responding to the latest threats detected on endpoints, workloads, and within the network. 

EDR was the first technology to approach security from the standpoint of behavioral analysis and investigation, allowing security teams to quickly detect suspicious behavior even if it did not resemble previous known attacks. Instead of relying on definition-based detection methods, EDR uses machine learning and behavioral analysis to detect zero-day threats before they can damage the network—a major step forward. However, the amount of data collected by EDR and its complexity often defies an organization’s attempts to analyze it, and its sole focus on endpoint protection can leave teams with a blinkered view of activity across systems.

XDR extends the capabilities of EDR across all the security layers in the environment— loads, devices, users and networks.

Rather than the single point of view that EDR provides, XDR enables telemetry and behavioral analysis across multiple security layers, allowing security teams to see the big picture. 

Bad actors don’t limit their attacks to a single security layer, and security teams can’t afford to limit their view to one layer, either. EDR gives security professionals visibility into endpoints that might be compromised, but this isn’t enough when an attack has moved across the network and into other systems by the time the security team is aware of it. This is where XDR comes in. By providing a holistic view of activity across the system that avoids visibility gaps, XDR allows security teams to understand where a threat comes from and how it’s spreading across the environment—in order to eliminate it. In other words, XDR offers greater analysis and correlation capabilities and a holistic point of view.