With advanced threats lurking on your network, it’s not a matter of if but when you will experience a breach. EDR solutions can help prevent security breaches by detecting and investigating threats that traditional firewalls and antivirus may miss.
EDR uses software agents to gather data from endpoints and send it to a centralized location where it is analyzed. This allows for a deeper and wide view of your cybersecurity posture, making it easier to spot suspicious activity.
Real-time Detection and Response
The streamlined detection and response capabilities of EDR security systems make it easier to fight the largest threats. They collect a wide range of telemetry data from each endpoint, which gives security teams a complete picture of the activity on the network.
The centralized nature of this data also makes it easier for analysts to spot patterns, speeding up the time it takes to respond to suspicious or malicious activity. This increases team efficiency and reduces the risk of a costly and damaging breach.
Detection of Malware
Unlike traditional antivirus and firewalls that use signature detection, EDR solutions can detect unknown threats. They do this by using behavior analysis capabilities powered by AI.
These algorithms help identify suspicious activities based on the context of endpoint activity, perimeter telemetry and file and data activity. These systems also provide forensic information about an infected file and its lifecycle so businesses can roll back the affected system to its pre-infected state. This prevents loss and minimizes the impact of attacks. Additionally, they can preserve the collected data to support investigations and proactive threat hunting.
Detection of Insider Threats
Malicious insiders include disgruntled current or former employees looking for financial gain, vengeance, or stealing company IP and data. They may work alone or with a cybercriminal group, foreign government agency or other hostile third party.
EDR solutions can detect the movement of sensitive data to an unauthorized destination and alert the security team. They also provide visibility that allows them to track activity such as process creation, registry modifications and network connections at the endpoint. This allows the security team to respond before an attack can do significant damage.
Detection of Exploits
The telemetry data collected by EDR security solutions can reveal how threats have evaded other defenses, including signature-based antivirus software. This information can help security teams investigate and respond quickly, buying them time to contain a breach before it escalates.
But since security teams are often overwhelmed with alerts, a priority system is needed to reduce false positives and speed up investigation times. Some EDR systems can also automatically triage suspicious events and apply advanced machine learning to flag potential attacks. This can also assist in uncovering stealthy threats that may otherwise go undetected.
Detection of Spyware
The security team needs visibility to prevent attacks and breaches from taking hold. A simple EDR solution monitors endpoints for suspicious activity – process creation, driver loading, memory and disk access, network connections and more.
It also looks for unknown threats using forensics and correlated telemetry data. These capabilities reduce the time it takes to detect and contain a threat, limiting the damage malicious actors can cause. This is a significant advantage over antivirus software. The average cybersecurity breach took 207 days to discover. It took another 73 days to contain it fully.
Detection of Rootkits
Unlike traditional antivirus software that only detects known threats, EDR solutions are designed to spot behaviors that may indicate a cyberattack.
This enables security professionals to quickly and accurately investigate and respond to incidents or threats. It also allows them to contain and reduce the damage caused by attacks. Like the black box in a plane crash, an EDR solution can help investigators determine what factors contributed to a breach and prevent similar incidents in the future.
Detection of Trojans
EDR enables security teams to act on threat detection alerts before attacks escalate. It also helps them proactively hunt, investigate, and counter threats that traditional antivirus software might miss.
Regarding EDR, the most important feature is the quality of the product and its ability to help the team detect and respond to attacks. The solution should be easy to set up and run with minimal configuration, and its detection capability should be backed by verifiable product efficacy. It should also provide useful alert ranking and data visualization to reduce the expertise required to investigate.
Detection of Backdoors
Backdoors are one of the most difficult cyberattacks to detect and handle. Bad actors can use these entry points to access your systems and steal confidential information.
The right EDR security solution can use correlated telemetry data to map environment context with endpoint processes and activities for visibility and better threat detection capabilities. It also helps you isolate attacks and respond faster to minimize damage. The forensic information collected by the solution can help you prevent similar attacks in the future. Think of it as a “black box” for your endpoints.
Detection of Phishing Attacks
A cybercriminal who gains access to your network through a phishing attack can do extensive damage and steal confidential information before being detected. EDR can detect these attacks and alert your team in real-time.
Security teams receive countless alerts daily, many of which are false positives. EDR can help weed out these false positives with data aggregation and contextual analysis.
The centralized nature of EDR enables security analysts to see threats in their entirety across dozens, hundreds or thousands of endpoints. This visibility allows for quicker investigation and response to incidents.
Detection of Social Engineering Attacks
With EDR, you can get a full view of activities at your endpoints from a security perspective. This helps your team observe commands an attacker runs, what files they modify or access, and more.
Unlike antivirus software that detects known threats, EDRs can actively detect unknown threats using behavior analysis capabilities. These can help your team establish a baseline of normal activity and flag anomalies as suspicious. They can also leverage correlated telemetry data to map environment context with endpoint processes and activities for visibility.
