Security
Operations

EDR is software designed to help organizations identify, stop or prevent, and react to threats or attacks that manifest through endpoint devices (mobile, laptops, desktops, tablets, etc.) that have bypassed other defenses. Like other endpoint security software, EDR is deployed by installing agents on endpoints and can be managed through locally deployed software (on premise) or via a cloud-based portal (software as a service).

EDR solutions can detect threats that are designed to evade regular antivirus software. They’re ideal for companies that have a remote workforce or that have a critical need to constantly protect and monitor distributed endpoints. According to Gartner, more than 50% of enterprises will replace legacy security software with EDR solutions and endpoint protection platforms (EPP) by the end of 2023.

The majority of EDR offerings that are being sold in the market today can only ingest logs and security events from the devices that their software agents have been deployed on. This means the EDR platform’s ability to detect, protect-stop, and respond to attacks and threats across the entire network is limited to endpoints. This results in partial security monitoring, detection, and response and can leave other areas of the IT network open to attack.

MDR is an advanced managed security service that includes 24/7 monitoring, alerting, and threat or attack response support provided by highly trained, experienced, and certified security operations center (SOC) staff.  These resources typically leverage a security information and event management (SIEM) platform that ingests and correlates log files from various IT devices across the network, including mission critical applications and 3rd party cloud environments. The SIEM enables the security operations team to discern between what is a real threat and what is not (a false positive). This is accomplished by integrating third party threat intelligence and feeds (from the industry and federal agencies) into the SIEM, where the indicators of compromise (validated threat and attack intelligence) is combined and compared to the log files being generated from within the client’s environment. The underlying hardware, SIEM and ticketing software, and operational processes and procedures are outsourced (at a fraction of the cost of building this capability internally) and is typically maintained by a managed security services provider (MSSP), like Symphona Technology.

Advanced MSPs like Symphona Technology go beyond basic monitoring, alerting, reporting and response services and can provide advanced threat research, forensic analysis, proactive threat hunting, customized reporting, analytics, intelligence, and incident analysis and response support to help remove risk from the client’s environment or to recover from an attack or breach.

XDR is a term developed by analysts such as Gartner and vendors within the industry to describe SaaS-based threat detection and incident response platforms that leverage analytics and automation to detect, hunt, and validate current and future threats across your network and systems. XDR is often a vendor-specific platform that integrates numerous security software platforms and services and that brings all of those components together under a single solution.

These XDR solutions take you beyond just EDR and other typical detective controls by providing a full view of threats across your organization. They use a combination of automation and machine learning to provide security teams with reliable, context-rich alerts.