What is Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)?

As a managed service provider (MSP), the risk of cybersecurity attacks should always be foremost on your mind, especially if you have remote workers. To cybercriminals, every computer on your network represents a potential gateway to valuable business data.

Finding the right solutions to combat these potential attacks is essential, especially since threat actors and techniques constantly evolve. This is where endpoint detection and response solution systems come into play.

This article describes the features of an EDR solution and the roles they play in your environment.

NOTE  To understand the differences between EDR and antivirus solutions, refer to Protecting endpoints with Datto Antivirus (AV) and Achieving complete endpoint security with antivirus and Datto EDR.

Endpoint detection and response is a layered, integrated endpoint security solution that continuously monitors end-user devices and collects endpoint data with a rule-based automated response. At Gartner, Anton Chuvakin suggested "EDR" as a term to describe emerging security systems that can detect and investigate suspicious activities on endpoints and hosts.

EDR platforms use software agents to record and remotely store system-level behaviors of endpoints. These behaviors are continuously analyzed by the platform to detect suspicious activity and provide various response and remediation options.

Leveraging EDR can help your security team quickly detect, investigate, report, and respond to malware, ransomware threats, and malicious activity that may have bypassed traditional security solutions.

It is important to know that not all EDR tools work the same way or offer you the same spectrum of abilities. Some EDR tools perform more detection and analysis, whereas others focus more on response capabilities. Some systems will vary in how fast they collect data and deal with threats. Overall, all endpoint detection and response solutions have the same purpose: to provide you with continuous proactive monitoring and analysis to identify and quickly respond to threats.

A robust endpoint security system is imperative as remote work becomes more common. When you deploy an effective endpoint threat detection solution, you can protect your remote workers and business from a wider array of threats.

Endpoint detection goes beyond reactive detection-based defense. Instead, it provides you with multiple benefits that improve your ability to manage risks and threats. These benefits include improved visibility, rapid investigations, and remediation automation.

Improved visibility

EDR platforms continuously collect and analyze data and report that information to a single centralized system. As a result, your IT security team has complete visibility into the state of the environment's endpoints.

Rapid investigations

EDR automates data collection and processing and can perform certain response activities. These rapid investigations make it easier for your security team to gain context regarding a potential security incident.

Remediation automation

The mitigation or removal of security threats without manual intervention is valuable because it helps you respond to malicious activity in real time, reducing response delays and the potential damage caused by cyber attacks. EDR platforms can isolate infected or compromised endpoints, terminate malicious processes, remove malicious files, or block suspicious network traffic, preventing the spread of threats and minimizing the impact on business operations. This proactive and automated approach saves time and resources, taking the load off your security team and allowing them to focus on the most significant parts of the incident requiring their attention.

Endpoint detection and response solutions should be able to provide you with the support necessary to secure your environment from cyber threats. For your security team to stop these threats, your endpoint detection and response system should have the following key features:

Incident triage flow

Your endpoint security tools should be able to automatically triage potentially malicious or suspicious events, allowing your security team to prioritize which threat to investigate. Automatic triage can help prevent alert fatigue, which often occurs when analysts are responsible for investigating every alert.

Contextual threat hunting

Not all security threats or incidents are detected or blocked by an organization's security system. To ensure all possible malicious activity is analyzed and dealt with, your endpoint detection and response system should support your security team with contextual threat-hunting capabilities.

Contextual threat hunting is the process of proactively searching for potential security threats or risks within your network. This approach involves investigating the underlying context of various actions and events to identify patterns or indicators of compromise. An EDR solution empowers you to conduct contextual threat hunting by providing deep insight into endpoint actions and user behavior, ultimately leading to the timely detection and mitigation of potential threats.

Data aggregation and enrichment

When differentiating between false positives and actual threats, context is vital. Your EDR system should use as much data as possible in its decisions about potential threats. Once the threat is identified, a security analyst should be able to take remediation steps rapidly.

Endpoint security is always an essential part of any organization's cybersecurity strategy. Although network-based defenses are great at blocking many cyberattacks, some will surely slip through the cracks, bypassing these defenses and causing significant consequences for your organizations.

When you deploy an endpoint detection and response solution, you enable your customers to implement an in-depth defense system that quickly and accurately detects and responds to threat activity.