EDR vs MDR vs XDR : The concept & Use cases.

What is Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)?

Endpoint detection and response (EDR) platforms are solutions that monitor endpoints (computers on the network, not the network itself) for suspicious activity. EDR solutions focus on end-user devices – laptops, desktops, and mobile devices. EDR solutions provide visibility and monitoring for suspicious activity like malware and cyberattacks on those end-user devices.

Why is EDR Important?

Every device that connects to a network is a potential attack vector for cyber threats, and each of those connections is a potential entry point to your data. With the rise of BYOD (bring your own devices), mobile attacks and sophisticated hacking techniques have only increased your risk of data breaches.

EDR solutions help protect those points of entry into your network by monitoring your endpoints for many modern threats that anti-virus software is unable to detect.

EDR solutions can help monitor and protect against Advanced Persistent Threats (APT), which often use malware-free hacking techniques and security vulnerabilities to gain access to a network. Older anti-virus software is able to detect malware only when there is a matching signature, and is unable to determine that an attacker has access to a computer just by monitoring their activity.

EDR to MDR

EDR is able to record and store queries, behaviors, and events on the endpoints, allowing the security teams to detect and investigate suspicious activities. In this regard, the IT team is able to go beyond just indicators of compromise and achieve high visibility into the nitty-gritty that’s going on. Once an attack is discovered, customers want to know what the root cause was and how it spread – EDR is a useful tool for this.

EDR also enables the IT team to answer and resolve issues faster. Imagine if the team wants to know how many devices in the organization are using a particular piece of vulnerable software, or have accessed a bad domain.

However, as organizations expand their security technology stash, a bigger team and more technical skills are needed. Unfortunately, the market doesn’t produce security professionals as fast as the changing IT landscape demands them. Managed Detection and Response (MDR) has emerged to fill this cybersecurity skills gap.

MDR to boost existing security

Firstly, by nature, MDR is offered by security providers to augment an organization’s existing security infrastructures and address threats that can bypass traditional controls. Modern-day threats such as network attacks, targeted attacks, cryptominers, fileless malware, and remote access tools are designed to be difficult to detect and circumvent many types of security technology.

This is because many organizations’ primary focus is to secure the perimeters that are to know where threats enter and exit an organization’s network. However, less attention is often being paid to the lateral movements of threats once they find their way into the system.

While EDR supplements the traditional anti-virus software, it does not replace it entirely. It works together with the anti-virus and blocks known threat indicators. Traditional security controls are not equipped to handle these types of secret threats, especially those that need continuous detection and response.

How do MDR and EDR work together?

Some EDR offerings can feature advanced technologies such as machine learning and behavioral analysis, while also integrating other technologies. Because of the complexity of EDR technology, some in-house IT teams don’t have the skills or the time to maximize EDR, leaving many functions and capabilities unused.

MDR then comes in to bridge the skills and resource gap in deploying complex EDR solutions. When used together, EDR provides the powerful tools for comprehensive security implementation, which MDR can tap into for detection, analysis, and response.

XDR: The Next Big Thing in Threat Detection and Response?

If you haven’t heard about it yet, there has been a ground swell of activity over the past 12-18 months with security vendors rallying around a new theme: XDR. There have been different interpretations of what the “X” in XDR stands for, but the general concept is built on the success of the endpoint detection and response (EDR) model, now extending that model to aggregate and correlate telemetry from additional security controls, adding network, cloud, email, and more. 

The past has delivered successive sets of tools that do solve unique problems.

• The rise of Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) — endpoints are in many cases the first line of defense or first line of breakdown.
• The rise of Network Traffic Analysis (NTA / NDR) besides NGFW– packets have a wealth of insight imbedded in both their header and content
• The rise of Cloud Application Security Brokers (CASB) — a new way to protect SaaS applications like Office365, which can not be protected with traditional firewalls.
• The SIEM — the backbone of security operations teams; logs have a lot of value for sure

Each of these tools has helped, but that said it is difficult to use so many tools and they add to operational inefficiencies. While most teams are depending on multiple, independent tools, Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) research shows that 66% of respondents believe that effectiveness is limited with this approach because it is based on multiple independent point tools. ESG further notes that “…with 76% of companies claiming that threat detection and response is more difficult today than it was two years ago, current detection and response tools aren’t keeping up. While endpoint detection and response solutions have helped many organizations identify and respond to attacks they believe would have otherwise been missed, many organizations say that they are still falling further behind, lacking the ability to keep up with the volume of modern attacks. A new approach is needed.”

So what is XDR? And how does it help? Extend the data you ingest further, ensuring you have pervasive visibility:

• Visibility into endpoints, networks, and SaaS applications like Office365, and cloud infrastructure like AWS/Azure VPC
• Threat intelligence – yes, necessary stuff to fold into your analysis
• Application, host including geolocation, and user information – yes, we need that now too
•  Vulnerability scanning results and NGFW logs — yes of course, the more inputs the better

XDR to mean anywhere (X) detection (D) and response (R). there are three key issues. First, you need to collect security data from anywhere – pervasive visibility. And you need to be able to detect and correlate security events from these data – on premises, in public clouds, with service providers and even see into SaaS applications like Office365 and G-Suite. Third, you need to be capable of responding to threats detected or hunting potential threats very quickly and automatically to minimize the damage. 

" Some data and facts has been taken from different sources"