From AV to EPP to EDR and now XDR , these changing technologies reflect an ever present truth. Cyber threat actors are always on the hunt , and cyber defenders on the other hand play a cat-and-mouse game with the cyber criminals. Today, organisations must begin to balance the risk of having their workloads hosted in multiple environments with the productivity that Cloud Service Providers (CPFs) offer. With such complexities in the remote networks , the bad actors are increasing exponentially. The security technologies of the past were not built to cope up with today’s fast moving threatscape.
Organisations are looking for a new, more holistic approach to detention and response, one that fringes the traditional endpoints and expands to protect the ever-growing attack surface , including networks and cloud. Fortunately, these are just some of the problems XDR was designed to solve. It is also referred to as “Cross-Layered” or “Any Data Source” detection and response.
XDR solutions make decisions on data based on a variety of sources. They take action across any organisation’s entire stack, including email, network, identity , and beyond and optimise threat detection , investigation , response and hunting in real-time.
How does XDR Work?
XDR solutions bring a proactive approach to threat detection and response. It delivers visibility across all data including endpoint, network and cloud data , while applying analytics and automation to address today’s increasingly sophisticated threats.
A simple step-by-step approach about how XDR actually works :
👉 Step 1 : Consume : Ingest and normalise volumes of data from endpoints, cloud workloads, identify, email, network traffic and beyond
👉Step 2 : Detect : Analyse and correlate data to automated detection of skulk threats with advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning (ML)
👉Step 3: Respond : Prioritise threat data by severity so that threat hunters can quickly analyse and triage new events , and automate investigation and response activities
With XDR, security teams can :
✅Identify hidden threats proactively at a rapid speed
✅Track threats across any source or location within the organisation
✅Increase the productivity of the people operating the technology
✅Get more out of their security investments
✅Conclude investigations more effectively
From a business perspective, XDR platforms enable organisations to prevent successful cyber threats as well as simplify and strengthen the security processes.
This, in turn, lets them better serve their users and accelerate digital transformation initiatives . Because when users, data, network and applications are protected then companies can focus on strategic priorities.
The Top Benefits of XDR Security
XDR coordinates and extends the value of soiled security tools, unifying and streamlining security analysis, investigation and remediation. As a result, XDR provides the following benefits :
End-to End orchestration and Response : The entire threat surface is what XDR focuses on . This means organisations can detect threats easier. Improved detention and response time is one the reasons why XDR is now gaining more popularity.
Consolidated Threat Visibility : XDR delivers granular visibility by working across multiple layers, collecting and correlating data from email, endpoints, servers , cloud workloads and networks.
A User Interface that is Centralised : This is another major benefit of XDR solutions. Threat data is centralised and visible on one dashboard. Teams can analyse the threats and then decide how they should respond.
Lowers Costs & Increases Productivity : Organisations that use XDR solutions often find they can maximise their resources to have a greater productivity as it consolidates endpoint security policy management and monitoring. In return , it lessens the overall costing of the ownership and increases SOC efficiency. One of the best things about XDR solutions is they can be used to simplify security tools.
Hassle-free Detections and Investigation : Analytics is what becomes easy when using the XDR solutions. This is because of the automated analytic features that XDR solutions provide . You will enjoy being able to easily identify and prioritise threats.
Root out Adversaries without disrupting Users : XDR solutions help in stopping attacks while avoiding users or system downtime.
Recommendations : Provide analysts with prescriptive recommendations to further an investigation through additional queries as well as offer relevant response actions that would most effectively improve the containment or remediation of a detected risk or threat.
Hunting : Provide a common query capability across a data repository containing multi-vendor sensor telemetry in search of suspicious threat behaviours, allowing threat hunters to locate and take action based on recommendations.
What to look for in an XDR solution?
Some of the key features to look for in an XDR solution are as follows :
Machine Based Correlation and detection : It is done to reduce the number of false positives and also to facilitate timely analysis of large data sets.
Pre- built Models : To integrate threat intelligence as well as automating detection and response without the need for human help like software engineers to carry out programming or create rules.
Production Integration : Rather than inquiring about the replacement of security incident and event management (SIEM) solutions , security orchestration and response (SOAR) technologies , and case management tools , an XDR solution should integrate with them to allow organisations to maximise the value of their investment.
Integrations and Security validation : When security validation and XDR solution work together, security teams have greater awareness of how well their security stack is performing, where the actual vulnerabilities lie, and what actions to address performance gaps.
How does XDR differ from other security technologies ?
The cybersecurity landscape is flooded with acronyms and security solutions , making it difficult to determine how a particular solution stands out from the rest. While XDR may have similar goals as EDR, MDR, and SIEM solutions , it achieves these objectives in very different ways.
XDR vs. EDR
Endpoint detection and response (EDR) and XDR solutions are both designed to provide integrated security visibility. However , they do so at different scopes.
EDR solutions, as their name suggests, are focussed on their endpoints. EDR , on the other hand , collects information from various sources on the endpoints, analyses it, and provides it to security analytics for threat detection and response. EDR solutions can also respond automatically to certain threats based on predefined playbooks.
XDR solutions work at a larger scale than EDR security solutions. XDR collects data from targeted sources all across the organisation’s IT infrastructure, analyses it , and provides it to analysts. Like EDR, XDR provides support for threat response within the tool rather than requiring a standalone solution.
XDR vs. MDR
Managed detection and response (MDR) and XDR are both designed to enhance an organisation’s threat detection and response capabilities. However, they do so in different ways.
MDR involves engaging a third-party provider for threat detection and response capabilities. This external partner is responsible for identifying and responding to security incidents within an organisation’s IT environment. By engaging external experts, an organisation can scale and enhance its threat detection and response capabilities.
XDR improves threat detection and response using technology rather than additional manpower. By centralising threat visibility and management, XDR eliminates inefficient context switching, automatically collects and analyses data, and provides analysts with the context required to make threat determinations. Automation further improves efficiency by eliminating manual processes and speeding and scaling threat response.
XDR vs. SIEM
Integrated security visibility and data analytics are essential to rapid threat detection and scalable incident response. XDR and security information and event management (SIEM) solutions both provide this capability but do so in different ways.
SIEM solutions achieve centralised visibility and management by integrating with an organisation’s various security solutions, such as EDR tools. These tools can be configured to send the security data that they collect and generate to the SIEM, which normalises, aggregates, and analyses it. Based on the context provided by multiple sources of security intelligence, SIEM solutions can more accurately differentiate between true threats to the organisation and false positive alerts.
XDR solutions take a more hands-on approach to collecting the data that they aggregate, analyse, and alert on. Instead of relying on other solutions to collect data and transmit it to them, XDR tools collect their own security data from various sources. This provides them with the same visibility and capabilities as SIEM solutions but makes them easier to configure and more robust since they are not reliant on integration with other solutions within an organisation’s cyber security infrastructure.
What are some XDR mistakes to avoid?
XDR is a powerful security strategy—but to realise 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.
Conclusion
A comprehensive XDR platform requires a vendor that can deliver a product portfolio and a partner ecosystem with breadth, depth, and market maturity to seamlessly and meaningfully interconnect and correlate detections from alerts across multiple threat vectors.
