Getting an EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) report can provide valuable insights into potential threats and security incidents on your network. EDR tools monitor endpoint activity across an organization to detect and investigate suspicious behavior. They can provide detailed forensic data to help security teams hunt for threats and respond to incidents quickly and effectively.
What is an EDR report?
An EDR report summarizes endpoint security events, alerts, and anomalies over a given period of time. It can include data on:
- Detected threats such as malware, ransomware, and malicious scripts
- Suspicious activities like command and control communications, data exfiltration attempts, and privilege escalation
- Security alerts triggered by unusual endpoint behavior
- Forensic artifacts and process timelines from incident investigations
EDR reports help information security teams understand what threats and risks endpoints are facing over time. Reviewing EDR reports periodically enables organizations to identify vulnerabilities, improve defenses, and respond more effectively to cyberattacks.
What information is included in an EDR report?
While specific EDR solutions differ, EDR reports typically provide details on endpoint security events like:
- Malware detections: Known malware strains identified on endpoints through signature-based detection or machine learning algorithms.
- Anomalous activities: Unusual endpoint behavior that could indicate malicious actions, such as unfamiliar processes, abnormal network connections, suspicious registry or file changes, and more.
- Attempted exploits: Malicious exploitation of software vulnerabilities, often leading to privilege escalation or lateral movement if successful.
- Indicators of compromise (IOCs): Artifacts like file hashes, domain names, and IP addresses associated with known threats.
- Alert severities: The urgency level assigned to security events, such as low, medium, high, or critical.
- Investigation summaries: Overviews of incident response activities taken, including containment, remediation, and recommendations.
Beyond just listings of security events, EDR reports can provide rich contextual data like process trees, timelines, registry modifications, and network connections related to threats. This helps paint a comprehensive picture of what transpired during and after an attack.
How are EDR reports generated?
EDR platforms use a few techniques to generate reports on endpoint activity:
- Continuous recording – EDR agents on endpoints constantly collect detailed system data like running processes, file changes, and network connections.
- Streaming telemetry – Endpoint activity is streamed to the EDR console in real time for rapid detection and visibility.
- Aggregated statistics – Events from endpoints are correlated and aggregated to identify broader security trends.
- Applied analytics – Machine learning and behavioral analysis spot anomalies that human rules may miss.
- Threat intelligence – IOCs, malware profiles, and threat feeds help identify known bad actors.
Much of this data is ephemeral and challenging for security teams to collect manually. EDR tools automate the collection and analysis to provide comprehensive, historical reporting.
What are the key benefits of EDR reports?
There are several advantages to reviewing EDR reports regularly:
- Threat visibility – Quickly identify compromised endpoints and quantify the scope of breaches.
- Faster response – Rich forensic data accelerates incident investigations and containment.
- Improved defenses – Identify weaknesses and blind spots to strengthen endpoint controls.
- Compliance auditing – Provide audit trails of security events to demonstrate due diligence.
- Historical trends – Spot changes over time in the endpoint threat landscape.
Without comprehensive reporting, major security incidents can go undetected. EDR reports help ensure key threats don’t slip through the cracks unnoticed.
What should I look for in an EDR report?
When reviewing an EDR report, focus on these key areas:
- Most prevalent threats – Take note of the top malware strains, anomalous behaviors, exploited vulnerabilities, and threat actors affecting your endpoints.
- Frequent alerts – High numbers of certain alert types may indicate a systemic security gap or detection gap to address.
- Common investigation targets – Endpoints that require frequent incident response may need additional monitoring and hardening.
- Unusual processes – Unknown executables and unexpected child processes may point to undetected threats.
- Geographic anomalies – Activity originating from strange locations can flag compromised endpoints.
Prioritizing the most critical and consistent threats highlighted in EDR reports makes it easier to focus security efforts for maximum impact.
What steps should I take after reviewing an EDR report?
Use any concerning findings from the EDR report to drive the following next steps:
- Investigate threats and incidents requiring immediate response based on severity.
- Research unknown threats to determine necessary containment and mitigation plans.
- Strengthen preventive controls to block newly discovered threat vectors.
- Tune detection rules and analytics to improve coverage of problematic behaviors.
- Address any endpoint configuration weaknesses making devices more susceptible.
- Scan for and eliminate additional IOCs associated with high priority threats.
- Build new IOCs, behavioral profiles, and heuristics based on investigated threats.
- Update protective measures and patch levels to defend against prevalent exploits.
- Isolate, reimage, or replace endpoints suffering persistent infections.
Documenting and executing on findings from EDR reports allows security teams to continuously improve protections and response plans.
How often should I review EDR reports?
Most organizations review EDR reports on a regular cadence, such as:
- Daily – Check for critical threats requiring urgent response.
- Weekly – Identify evolving trends and new security gaps.
- Monthly – Assess long-term patterns and improvements.
- Quarterly – Audit overall effectiveness of security controls.
Daily or weekly reviews are recommended to stay on top of immediate risks, while monthly and quarterly looks provide broader perspectives on what’s working and where maturation is needed. Companies with more resources also have security analysts reviewing reports in real time rather than periodically.
What tools provide EDR reports?
Leading EDR solutions that offer detailed reporting include:
| Tool | Key Report Features |
| CrowdStrike Falcon | Executive overview reports, threat hunting reports, custom query reports |
| SentinelOne | Threat reports, behavioral reports, attack reports |
| Carbon Black Cloud | Threat reports, watchlist alerts reports, application reports |
| Cybereason | Malop reports, behavioral analytics reports, investigation timelines |
| Microsoft Defender for Endpoint | IOC reports, threat analytics reports, device reports |
Choosing an EDR solution that centralizes findings across endpoints and makes them easily accessible through reporting will maximize visibility and response capabilities for security teams.
What alternatives exist to EDR reports?
If utilizing a more limited EDR tool or no EDR at all, alternatives to get visibility on endpoint threats include:
- Antivirus reports – Antivirus still offers protection against known malware strains.
- Firewall and proxy logs – Network security devices can provide visibility on connections.
- Vulnerability scans – Findings from vulnerability assessments illuminate risks.
- Intrusion detection – IDS/IPS alerts on potential network-based attacks.
- File integrity monitoring – Critical file changes indicate possible compromise.
- System and audit logs – Manual log analysis can unearth suspicious activities.
However, these options in isolation provide a much narrower view compared to automated, holistic EDR reporting and analytics. Gaps will exist without endpoint visibility and centralized tracking of threats.
Conclusion
EDR reports provide a detailed look at endpoint security posture over time to identify threats, strengthen defenses, speed response, and satisfy compliance audits. Reviewing EDR reports regularly and acting on the findings allows organizations to make material security improvements. Prioritizing the deployment of a robust EDR tool that centralizes findings into actionable reports provides the visibility IT security teams need to defend endpoints and remediate quickly when incidents occur.