An EDR (endpoint detection and response) system is a cybersecurity solution that helps detect, investigate, and respond to advanced threats and targeted attacks in a network. EDR tools provide continuous monitoring and data collection from endpoints like laptops, servers, and mobile devices across an environment. EDR capabilities include:
Detecting Attacks and Threats
EDR tools use behavioral analysis and machine learning to quickly identify malicious activity that evades traditional signature-based security tools. This allows an EDR to detect advanced persistent threats (APTs), zero-day exploits, malware, ransomware, and other attacks.
EDR agents installed on endpoints monitor system activity, events, network connections, memory, registry changes, and file activity. This data is analyzed using threat intelligence, behavioral patterns, and anomaly detection to detect threats.
Alerts are generated to security teams for investigation whenever suspicious or malicious activity is identified on an endpoint. Analysts can quickly assess the scope and impact of security incidents.
Investigating and Responding to Incidents
EDR tools provide complete visibility into endpoint activity before, during, and after an attack. When a threat is detected, EDRs allow security teams to perform forensic analysis to determine root cause and scope.
Key EDR investigation capabilities include:
– Centralized visibility – Security teams gain a unified view of all endpoint activity, alerts, and events across the environment through the EDR management console.
– Historical data access – EDRs store rich historical data gathered from endpoints, often for up to 12 months. Teams can reconstruct attack timelines by “rewinding the tape” to see how breaches occurred.
– Search and hunt – Powerful search tools let analysts hunt across the environment for signs of compromise. Threat hunting can uncover advanced attackers not detected by automated analytics.
– Incident response workflows – EDRs have built-in playbooks, workflows, and automation to streamline investigation and guide response. This reduces dwell time.
When responding to threats, EDRs enable containments like isolating infected endpoints, shutting down processes, quarantining files, and rolling back changes the attacker made. This helps neutralize attacks and prevent lateral movement.
Continuous Endpoint Monitoring
EDR tools provide continuous monitoring, unlike periodic network scans. The EDR agent persists on the endpoint to capture and record system activity 24/7.
This always-on approach is critical for detecting sophisticated, stealthy attacks that happen over time. EDRs also provide visibility into encrypted traffic, since they monitor at the endpoint level.
Key endpoint telemetry gathered by EDRs includes:
– Processes, process trees, and process execution
– File system activity
– Registry changes
– Network connections
– DLL, driver, and module loads
– Authentication events
– Memory analysis for signs of malware
EDR agents are lightweight and optimized for performance. Endpoint data is efficiently streamed to the cloud-based or on-prem EDR platform for analysis and storage.
Threat Intelligence
EDR platforms ingest threat intelligence feeds that contain IOCs (indicators of compromise) and TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures) used by threat actors.
This allows the EDR to cross-match endpoint activity against known malicious IP addresses, domains, file hashes, command and control servers, malware signatures, and attacker behaviors.
Threat intelligence enhances detection accuracy and reduces false positives for security teams.
Behavior-Based Detection
Unlike traditional antivirus, EDRs do not rely on static signature-based detection alone. EDRs emphasize behavior-based analytics that spot anomalous activity indicative of malware, lateral movement, command and control, data exfiltration, and other malicious behaviors.
Machine learning models are trained on large datasets of malicious and benign activity. These AI/ML models accurately discern threats based on rare or suspicious behaviors, without needing signatures.
Behavior analytics provide early detection of zero-day exploits, advanced malware, ransomware, insider misuse, and other modern attacks.
Automated Response and Containment
Many EDR platforms allow admins to define playbooks and policies so that basic response and containment actions are performed automatically.
For instance, admins can specify that any endpoint with a high-risk alert should be instantly isolated from the network. Other examples of automated response include terminating processes, quarantining files, remediating registry and system changes, running scans, and collecting memory snapshots or forensic artifacts.
Automating initial response steps via an EDR helps neutralize threats faster. Human security analysts can focus on in-depth investigation and strategic decisions.
Third-Party Integration
EDRs integrate with existing security infrastructure through open APIs and cloud connectors. This improves an organization’s detection, investigation, and response capabilities.
Common integrations include:
– SIEM – Bidirectional integration with a SIEM (security information and event management) solution enhances alerting, reporting, and analytics. The SIEM ingests alerts from the EDR.
– Firewalls and NGFWs – EDRs can automatically isolate compromised endpoints by integrating with next-gen firewalls, routers, and switches. This prevents lateral movement.
– IT Ticketing/SOAR – Integration with IT service management and security orchestration tools improves ticket creation, assignment, response workflow, and reporting.
– Threat Intelligence – Connecting to threat intel platforms gives the EDR real-time access to IOCs and adversary behaviors.
– Sandboxing – Integrating with a malware analysis sandbox provides deeper inspection of suspicious files detected by the EDR.
– Encryption – Some EDRs can integrate with data encryption tools to selectively encrypt sensitive files when threats such as ransomware are detected.
Benefits of EDR Systems
Here are some of the top benefits provided by EDR tools:
Faster Threat Detection
EDRs use continuous endpoint monitoring, behavior analysis, and threat intelligence to quickly detect advanced threats like zerodays, malware, ransomware, insider misuse, and account compromise.
Threats are identified in real-time rather than relying on periodic scans. Machine learning significantly improves detection accuracy over traditional, signature-based antivirus.
Accelerated Incident Response
Security teams can investigate and remediate security incidents much faster with an EDR. Key capabilities like centralized visibility, search, forensic tools, and automated response slash incident response times.
The goal is to shrink the “breakout time” – the critical window between an attack’s start and when it is contained. EDRs help organizations rapidly scope, triage, and neutralize threats.
Enhanced Visibility
EDRs provide unparalleled visibility into endpoint activity across an organization’s workstations, servers, and mobile devices. Analysts gain a unified view of the environment with detailed historical records to reconstruct security incidents.
Visibility is enhanced even across encrypted traffic since EDRs monitor at the endpoint level, below the encryption layer.
Improved Threat Hunting
The powerful search, pivot, and analytics capabilities of EDRs supercharge threat hunting to uncover stealthy attacks that evade automated detection.
Experienced analysts can proactively hunt for suspicious activity across endpoints that point to advanced adversaries, insider threats, policy violations, and more.
Endpoint Forensics and Remediation
EDRs make it easy to perform remote forensic analysis of compromised endpoints. Analysts can drill down into detailed records of malicious process activity, file changes, registry modifications, memory artifacts, lateral movement, command and control actions, and more.
Forensic evidence can be used to definitively root cause threats. EDRs also allow remote remediation of endpoints via actions like terminating processes, quarantining files, or rolling back system changes made by an attacker.
Compliance Benefits
The endpoint visibility and monitoring capabilities of EDRs help organizations comply with regulations like PCI DSS, HIPAA, GLBA, and SOX that require security controls for endpoint devices and audit logging.
Simplified Deployment and Management
EDR tools are designed for fast, non-disruptive deployment across endpoint infrastructure. The lightweight agent can be rapidly rolled out to thousands of endpoints with minimal impact on systems or users.
Centralized management consoles give security teams easy administration, monitoring, reporting, and analytics across the EDR deployment. Most EDR platforms offer both cloud-based or on-premises deployment.
Key Capabilities of EDR Tools
Here is an overview of the core capabilities provided within EDR solutions:
Endpoint Visibility and Monitoring
– Continuous and comprehensive visibility into endpoint activity across managed Windows, macOS, and Linux systems.
– Agents persist on endpoints to monitor events, changes, traffic, behaviors, and more. This allows both real-time protection and historical analysis.
– Agents are non-disruptive, resilient, and tamper-proof.
– Full visibility across encrypted traffic since monitoring occurs on the endpoint itself.
Threat Detection
– Behavioral analytics, machine learning, and AI to detect IOCs, anomalies, malicious behaviors, and advanced threats.
– Correlation of endpoint events with threat intelligence feeds containing IOCs and TTPs.
– Signature-less and heuristic-based detection models for both known and unknown threats.
– Detection of ransomware, zero-day exploits, APTs, fileless attacks, lateral movement, data exfiltration, and more.
Alerting and Notification
– Real-time alerting of security analysts to priority threats and suspicious activities requiring investigation.
– Flexible notification channels like email, mobile, SMS, and integrations with IT service management tools.
– Customizable prioritization and risk scoring of alerts based on severity, endpoint context, and other factors.
Investigation and Forensics
– Graphical representations of process execution chains and timelines to visualize attack progression.
– Search, pivot, and drill-down analysis across endpoints during investigations.
– Tools to reconstruct incidents via historical data to determine root cause.
– Forensic capture of memory, files, registry, network connections, and system artifacts.
Threat Response
– Built-in response actions like isolating endpoints, terminating processes, quarantining files, stopping network connections, remediating changes, and gathering forensic evidence.
– Automated response and containment capabilities driven by policies and playbooks.
– Orchestration of response workflows across security infrastructure.
Threat Hunting
– Proactive threat hunting tools to manually search across endpoints and discover hard-to-detect intrusions.
– Hunting queries based on IOCs, behaviors, heuristics, and custom parameters tuned by analysts.
– Identify dormant threats, malicious insiders, zero-days, credential misuse, insecure configurations, lateral movement, data staging, and other risks.
Incident Management
– Integration with SIEM, SOAR, and IT ticketing systems for enhanced workflow, case management, collaboration, and reporting.
– Playbooks and automation to standardize investigation and response processes across the security team.
Deploying EDR Tools
Here are best practices for an effective EDR deployment:
Establish Requirements and Use Cases
– Document specific use cases, requirements, and success criteria for the EDR tool upfront. Align with business risk priorities, compliance needs, attack scenarios, and resources.
– Determine required integrations with other security tools to maximize detection, investigation, and response capabilities.
Select the Right EDR Vendor
– Evaluate EDR solutions from vendors like CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Microsoft, Cisco, Carbon Black, Cybereason, and others.
– Assess detection accuracy, endpoint coverage, platform capabilities, automation features, customer support, total cost of ownership.
– Choose a vendor that aligns with organizational requirements and resources. On-prem vs cloud EDR is also a consideration.
Plan Deployment Strategy
– Define policies for which devices will have EDR agents – servers, endpoints, mobile, OT, etc.
– Take a phased approach to rollout devices in batches to minimize disruption. Prioritize high-risk endpoints first.
– Ensure integration with directory services, VPNs, proxies for device discovery and automated deployment.
Configure Policies and Custom Detection
– Enable key detection policies right away – malware, ransomware, lateral movement, etc.
– Tune policies and build custom detections tailored to organization’s assets, vulnerabilities, and threats.
Establish Incident Response Processes
– Update incident response playbooks to leverage EDR capabilities like containment, remediation, and forensic evidence collection.
– Assign responsibilities across security team for monitoring, hunting, investigation, and response.
– Implement automation through playbooks and policies to accelerate response time.
Choosing an EDR Vendor
There are over 30 major EDR vendors on the market as of 2023. Some key criteria to evaluate include:
Detection Accuracy and Coverage
– The vendor’s detection rate across common threats like malware, ransomware, lateral movement, command and control, etc.
– Ability to detect advanced threats specific to organization – tailored analytics and behavioral models.
– Platform support for organization’s endpoint ecosystem – Windows, macOS, Linux, servers, user devices.
Investigation and Response Capabilities
– Tools for threat hunting, alert investigation, and root cause analysis.
– Built-in response actions like containment, remediation, forensic evidence collection.
– Level of workflow automation, orchestration, and case management.
Threat Intelligence
– Quality and quantity of IOCs and adversary behaviors contained in threat intel feeds.
– Ability to ingest and correlate custom threat intelligence sources.
Deployment and Management
– Agent performance impact on endpoints.
– Ease and speed of deployment, upgrades, maintenance.
– Centralized visibility and control across endpoints.
Scalability and Reliability
– Ability to support organization’s size – both number of endpoints and daily data volume.
– Uptime and reliability track record for cloud services or on-prem components.
Interoperability and Openness
– Breadth of APIs and integrations with IT and security infrastructure.
– Open standards vs proprietary data formats and tools.
Customer Support and Services
– Quality and responsiveness of vendor technical support.
– Value-added services like incident response retainer or MDR (managed detection and response).
Total Cost of Ownership
– Licensing model – per-endpoint, annually, multi-year.
– Additional costs – deployment services, training, maintenance, cloud storage fees.
– Overall 5-year cost for required capacity.
Top EDR Vendor Comparison
| Vendor | Notable Features |
|---|---|
| CrowdStrike | Strong cloud-native platform, Falcon X threat intelligence, crowdsourced telemetry, automated response |
| SentinelOne | Storyline visual investigations, deep learning detection, petabyte-scale cloud analytics |
| Microsoft | Tight integration with Microsoft 365 stack, behavioral analytics, automated MDR service |
| VMware Carbon Black | Unfiltered endpoint visibility, threat graph analytics, managed threat hunting service |
| Cybereason | MalOp detection, proprietary graph analytics, prebuilt prevention policies |
| Cisco Secure Endpoint | Extended Detection and Response (XDR), SecureX cloud platform, Talos threat intelligence |
Conclusion
Endpoint detection and response solutions deliver indispensable capabilities for modern security teams dealing with advanced threats, accelerated attacks, and expanded remote workforces.
Core capabilities like behavioral analytics, continuous endpoint visibility, centralized search and investigation, automated response, and threat hunting help organizations quickly detect, understand, and neutralize threats.
Leading EDR tools also provide tight integrations for enhanced detection, compliance reporting, collaboration, and overall security efficacy across IT environments.
Organizations should evaluate business requirements, internal resources, use cases, and vendor offerings to determine the right EDR platform for their needs. With the right solution, EDRs significantly improve endpoint security and incident response compared to traditional antivirus and firewalls.