How do you measure the effectiveness of your EDR strategy and tools?

1 EDR objectives and outcomes

In order to measure the effectiveness of your EDR strategy and tools, you must first define your security and business objectives and how they align with your EDR capabilities. Common objectives and outcomes of EDR are reducing the dwell time of attackers on a network, increasing visibility and coverage of endpoints, improving accuracy and speed of threat detection and response, enhancing collaboration and coordination of security teams, minimizing disruption and damage caused by incidents, and demonstrating compliance and accountability to stakeholders.

2 EDR key performance indicators

Once you have established your EDR objectives and outcomes, you need to identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you measure your progress and success. These KPIs should be quantifiable and specific metrics that reflect your EDR performance and impact. For example, you can measure the number and percentage of endpoints with EDR agents installed and active, the number and percentage of alerts generated, triaged, and escalated by EDR tools, or the mean time to detect (MTTD), mean time to respond (MTTR), and mean time to resolve (MTTR) incidents. Additionally, you can look at the number and percentage of incidents contained, eradicated, and recovered by EDR tools, or the number and percentage of false positives, false negatives, and true positives by EDR tools. Finally, you can measure the number and percentage of incidents that resulted in data breaches, system outages, or financial losses.

3 EDR data collection and analysis

To track and report your EDR KPIs, you need to have a reliable and consistent data collection and analysis process. You need to ensure that your EDR tools are configured to collect and store the relevant data from your endpoints, such as logs, events, alerts, actions, and outcomes. You also need to have a centralized and secure database or dashboard that aggregates and displays your EDR data in a meaningful and actionable way. You should use data visualization and analytics tools to generate charts, graphs, tables, and reports that show your EDR trends, patterns, and insights.

4 EDR benchmarking and testing

In order to evaluate your EDR effectiveness, you need to compare your performance and impact against a baseline or standard. Internal benchmarking can be used to assess your EDR strengths and weaknesses by comparing performance across different time periods, endpoints, or incidents. Additionally, external benchmarking can be used to compare your performance and impact against industry best practices, peer organizations, or regulatory requirements. Testing is also a great way to evaluate your EDR detection and response capabilities; you can conduct simulated or real-world attacks on your endpoints.

5 EDR feedback and improvement

To maximize the effectiveness of your EDR, you should review and analyze your results and outcomes regularly. Identifying any gaps, issues, or opportunities for improvement is key. You should also solicit feedback from your security team, management, customers, and partners on your EDR strategy and tools. Utilize root cause analysis to uncover the underlying causes of EDR failures or inefficiencies. Document and share the best practices and lessons learned from EDR incidents and develop action plans to address any gaps or issues. Finally, continuously monitor and measure the effectiveness of your EDR action plans.