Last updated on May 29, 2025
Since the earliest days of technology, cybersecurity has been a cat-and-mouse game – with hackers and security researchers constantly trying to get ahead of each other. That’s why it’s so important to have the most up-to-date cybersecurity products if you want to keep your IT environment safe.
Nowhere is this more true than with threat detection.
Modern tools use AI, machine learning, anomaly analysis, and a whole range of other functionality to help you proactively defend against emerging threats.
But getting the right threat detection tools is easier said than done.
In reality, there is a whole range of overlapping products that you need to understand before you can choose the right one for you. One of the most important of these threat detection tools is endpoint detection and response (EDR).
In this guide, we explain everything you need to know about endpoint detection and response, including how it works, what functionality to look out for, and how to effectively implement it.
Here’s everything you need to know.
Endpoint detection and response (EDR) refers to a series of cybersecurity tools that aim to protect your IT assets from real time threats like malware, phishing, man-in-the-middle, and more.
Unlike other threat detection tools, EDR aims to monitor threats and activity on specific devices like laptops, smartphones, and tablets.
This approach of monitoring behavior at the endpoint level is what makes these tools so valuable – since not all threat detection products take this approach.
💡Deep Read: What Is EDR? Endpoint Detection and Response
“EDR is crucial; it’s a foundational control. Businesses, regardless of size, need it, especially as cyber insurance carriers recognize its importance. It’s like putting locks on your doors – a necessary step for awareness and security.””
- Steven Logg , CEO of Security Consultancy Antigen
Businesses have always relied on threat detection tools to identify and repel malicious behavior. Once, this mostly involved keeping up with the latest antivirus products. But in today’s remote-first, multi-device world, we need a much more sophisticated range of functionality to keep our devices safe.
That’s where EDR comes in.
It combines traditional antivirus and anti-malware protections with more modern tools that can monitor endpoint activity and external connections. The goal is to offer a much more proactive and effective approach to both identifying and repelling malicious behavior.
This is why an EDR tool is such a crucial part of your company’s overall cybersecurity defense.
💡Deep Read: What Makes Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Important? With Solid Use Cases
“Today, the hybrid working revolution is underway and a lot of employees are working from home or bringing their own devices. This requires more focus on local device access management, rather than domain-related security. This is one of the hardest things about cloud security – if you have 200 or 2000 devices, then each of these has to be managed individually.”
- Mikkel Pederson , Head of Global Sales Enablement, Heimdal
The key benefits of EDR products are the most obvious: better security, and less wasted time for the IT teams responsible for delivering it. But there are several other benefits it’s important to be aware of:
💡Deep Read: 8 Benefits of Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) You Should Know [2024]
Here are the five most important tools that EDR products use to keep your endpoints and wider IT environment safe:
💡Check out Heimdal: Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) Software
Like with all cybersecurity products, endpoint detection and response sits inside a confusing Venn diagram of overlapping terms, concepts, and products. Some of these are designed to work alongside EDR as part of a layered defense. With other products, it’s more of an either/or.
So how do you know if you need an EDR product or something else? To make that decision, it helps to first understand the difference between EDR and its threat detection relatives.
Network detection and response (NDR) products are similar to EDRs, because they aim to monitor activity to detect and repel suspicious behavior.
However, they are much narrower in focus. Unlike EDRs, they only focus on network activity and traffic – rather than all endpoint-related behavior. Some EDR products (like Heimdal) also include network monitoring features, meaning an effective EDR should feature tools from both products under one license.
Find out more: NDR vs EDR: A Comparison Between the Two Cybersecurity Solutions
2. EDR vs EPP:
An endpoint protection platform (EPP) is similar to EDR, but with a slightly different focus: It mostly specializes in defending against known malware-based threats. Effectively, it acts as a perimeter around your IT environment, and can generally be deployed without your IT team having to monitor or supervise it.
EDR products, on the other hand, are generally broader in focus. Often, they include the same anti-malware protections as EPPs. But they also include tools to monitor behavior, and are much more effective at identifying unknown threats. EDRs require more active maintenance and can stop attacks from escalating, rather than just filtering out incoming threats. Again, an effective EDR or XDR product should include features of both, avoiding the need to duplicate licenses.
Find out more: EPP vs. EDR [How to Choose the Best Endpoint Protection Platform]
3. EDR vs XDR:
Extended detection and response (XDR) is essentially EDR+. It features the same functionality as EDRs, alongside a diverse range of additional cybersecurity tools. These can include network monitoring, privileged access management, SIEMs, email protection, vulnerability management, and more.
XDRs therefore aim to provide as wide a range of cybersecurity protections as possible under one license, avoiding the need for multiple, overlapping security solutions.
Find out more: XDR vs. EDR – A Comparison
4. EDR vs MDR:
Managed detection and response (MDR) is a managed service that’s offered by a cybersecurity provider, partner, or an MSSP – alongside the fundamental EDR product.
Generally, customers purchase an EDR license through the managed services provider, who then charges an additional rate for their own services. These can include active monitoring, threat response, vulnerability management, and more.
Find out more: Why Is MDR Better Than EDR: Enhancing Cybersecurity in the Modern World
5. EDR vs NGAV:
Next-generation antivirus (NGAV) is essentially the most modern evolution of anti-malware tools, which have been the bedrock of cybersecurity for decades. Unlike traditional tools, NGAV relies on advanced behavioral analysis to detect realtime threats. NGAV functionality is generally included in EDR and XDR products.
Find out more: EDR vs NGAV: Which Works Better for Your Organization?
6. EDR vs antivirus:
Antivirus is an umbrella term for all cybersecurity products that focus on viruses, ransomware, and malware more generally. This includes both traditional and next-generation antivirus tools. EDR or XDR products are generally the best way to get antivirus protections, since they’re included alongside a range of other tools.
Find out more: EDR vs. Antivirus: Choose the Best Security Solution for Your Endpoints
7. EDR vs SIEM:
Security information and events management (SIEM) is another type of threat hunting product.
Unlike EDRs, however, they don’t monitor activity on specific devices. Instead, they focus holistically on actions and events across the whole IT environment.
There’s a lot of crossover between EDR and SIEM products, and they each have their own strengths and weaknesses.
SIEMs largely rely on log file analysis to monitor behavior across the IT environment. This is useful because evidence of a security attack might not be restricted to just one endpoint; hackers may move laterally through various user accounts and target several endpoints in order to execute their attack.
SIEMs therefore take a more holistic approach to identifying malicious behavior. But there are drawbacks as well.
They’re less effective at identifying incoming threats like DNS-based issues, and aren’t generally the best tool to find unpatched vulnerabilities on endpoints.
EDRs and SIEMs are often used in combination to create a more effective, layered defense. But this can create issues as well, since there is significant overlap in the functionality they both offer and the threats they aim to identify.
Newer products like XDRs therefore aim to combine the tools of both EDRs and SIEMs into a more effective, unified defense.
This also has the added benefit of reducing excessive licenses, products, and confusion for the IT team that has to manage them.
Find out more: EDR vs. SIEM: Key Differences, Features, Functionality Gaps, and More
8. EDR vs CDR:
Cloud detection and response (CDR) is a relatively new term for cybersecurity tools that are specifically designed to detect cloud-based threats in complex multi-cloud environments. They have significant crossover with EDRs, SIEMs, and XDRs.
The best XDR products offer similar cloud-based detection functionality as CDRs.
Implementing effective endpoint detection and response protections isn’t as simple as choosing the right product and pressing ‘install’. Instead, there are several considerations you need to keep in mind if you want to create an effective threat response:
Check out the full guide to EDR implementation to find out more.
💡Deep dive: EDR Implementation: Essential Features, Considerations, And Best Practices
The best EDR tools in the market also feature tools that can automatically respond to DNS-based network threats. This can include blocking malicious websites, filtering out untrusted connections, and protecting against data loss via man-in-the-middle attacks.
Increasingly, the best tools in the market also use machine learning to identify emerging and persistent threats. This is the approach we take at Heimdal.
Our DNS filtering technology is built on DarkLayer Guard – Endpoint, one of the most advanced products of its kind in its industry. The product receives more than 800,000 updates of advanced and persistent new DNS threats, each week – all of which can be used to keep your IT environment safe. It then uses machine-learning-powered anomaly analysis algorithms to analyze information in your environment and identify suspicious behavior.
In this support article, we explain how DarkLayer Guard helps you set up and automate protections against the most advanced DNS-based threats. Find out more.
EDRs can also be used for advanced, proactive threat hunting. This is essentially when the IT team conducts a thorough investigation of the IT environment to find hackers that may have already gained a foothold into your environment.
Doing this involves a five-step process:
Check out the full guide to advanced cyber threat hunting to find out more.
💡Deep dive: What Is Cyber Threat Hunting? Process, Types and Solutions
In the last few years, AI and machine learning tools have become both more advanced and more popular. But in the cybersecurity world, they’re nothing new. In fact, they’ve been used to detect persistent threats for some time now.
Traditional security tools generally work by scanning for known threats.
This is certainly useful. But, by definition, they can’t detect attack methods that haven’t previously been identified. This means they’ll always be one step behind the hackers.
Today’s tools take a much more proactive approach. Hackers’ behavior is generally quite abnormal, since they rarely use IT in the same way as your average employee.
Therefore, the most advanced security tools (like EDRs) analyze behavioral signals at both the network and endpoint level to identify this suspicious behavior, using machine learning and anomaly analysis to identify these hackers.
Crucially, when a new threat is identified in one customer’s IT environment, that information can then be used to proactively protect every other customer using the same EDR product.
This is why EDRs and similar tools are so effective at proactively defending against new, innovative, and emerging threats.
In today’s increasingly diverse and complex IT environments, cybersecurity requires a fundamentally different approach. Today’s employees log in from any device and location.
To stay safe, you need to ensure robust security controls at the endpoint level – as well as simply protecting the network itself.
That’s the key issue that endpoint detection and response (EDR) products aim to solve.
By identifying all the devices in your IT environment and creating a robust set of protections, you can help build an effective, layered defense against the most innovative, emerging threats.
This is why EDRs and XDRs are such an important part of a modern cybersecurity defense.
For that reason, they’re absolutely worth the investment.
💡Deep dive: [2024] 12 Best Endpoint Security Software Solutions and Tools
““Heimdal XDR is not just another cybersecurity tool. It’s a unified and proactive approach to security. Your security team can detect, respond to, and mitigate advanced threats across the entire digital landscape. You can protect across vital attack surfaces such as cloud, network, email, identity, and access.” ”
- Nabil Nistar , Director of Strategy and Portfolio Marketing, Heimdal
Endpoint detection and response is a fundamental part of a modern cybersecurity strategy. Without the most up-to-date threat detection tools, you can’t hope to stay safe against advanced, persistent threats.
But EDR is just one of many important cybersecurity tools.
For the best possible security posture, it’s also important to combine this with vulnerability management, privileged access management, email security, SIEM platforms, and more.
This means many organizations end up with a confusing web of different platforms, each with a slightly different focus and set of functionality.
If you want to avoid this, it’s vital to get the threat detection product with the widest possible range of functionality.
For that, the best option on the market is extended detection and response (XDR).
An XDR platform like Heimdal’s combines leading EDR functionality with a range of other cybersecurity protections, including:
Ready to get started? Request your bespoke pricing plan today to find out more.
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