What Is EDR? Endpoint Detection and Response
Endpoint detection and response (EDR) represents a collection of integrated endpoint security solutions that combine data collection, data analysis, forensics, and threat hunting, with the end goal of finding and blocking any potential security breaches in due time.
Essentially Endpoint Detection and Response systems detect and respond in an active manner to sophisticated malware and cyberattacks. EDR solutions are able to recognize any suspicious patterns that can be further investigated later on.
We should also mention that, as implied by their name, these tools have been designed specifically for endpoint detection (and not for networks).
The term EDR was coined in 2013 by Anton Chuvakin, former VP and security analyst at Gartner.
Why Is EDR Important? The Benefits
Compared to traditional security solutions, EDR provides enhanced visibility into your endpoints and allows for faster response time. Furthermore, Endpoint Detection and Response tools detect and protect your organization from advanced forms of malware (such as polymorphic malware), APTs, phishing, etc.
It’s also worth mentioning that some EDR security solutions are based on AI and machine learning algorithms designed to spot yet unknown types of malware. They will subsequently make behavior-based categorization decisions.
Oftentimes, your organization’s endpoints can become key entry points for cyberattackers. With the evolution of workplace mobility and employees connecting to the Internet from their off-site endpoints across the globe, it should come as no surprise that devices are becoming increasingly vulnerable.
Without the proper cybersecurity protection measures in place, malicious hackers can easily take advantage of any existing vulnerabilities. This is why the need for enhanced security tools that surpass traditional solutions – like Firewalls and Antivirus solutions – has emerged as an undeniably top priority for organizations large and small.
Key Components of EDR Security
The components and features of an EDR system can vary greatly from vendor to vendor. Broadly, an EDR solution should have the following capabilities:
Endpoint Data Collection
The software gathers a wide range of data from endpoints by using a software agent installed on each machine.
The security system then sends the gathered data to a centralized location. The EDR vendor often provides a cloud-based platform for this purpose.
Data Analysis and Forensics
Now that the data is collected, algorithms and machine learning technology are starting to sift through it. This highlights potential irregularities.
It can be considered that many EDR solutions are able to “learn” what normal user behavior and endpoint operations are. They then make decisions based on this analysis.
This security solution can also correlate gathered data across multiple sources as threat intelligence feeds. These provide real-world examples of ongoing cyberattacks to compare them to the activity within an organization.
Threat Hunting Capabilities
If the EDR platform views any events or actions as suspicious, it generates an alert that the security teams can easily review.
Threat hunting is a proactive approach regarding endpoint threat detection. Endpoint Detection and Response software will not wait for an incident to happen. This is contracting with other reactive methods, focused on post-factum – after an attack – actions.
Automated Response to Block Malicious Activity
By using the automation capabilities that exist in your EDR security solution, the companies can actually have a faster response to a threat.
This type of solution is able to temporarily isolate an infected endpoint from the rest of the network in order to not allow malware to spread. Consequently, this blocks lateral movement, one of the threat actors’ favorite techniques.
EDR vs. Antivirus – What’s the Difference?
EDR solutions have several unique features and benefits that conventional Antivirus programs do not deliver. Compared to the novel EDR systems, traditional Antivirus, as an endpoint security solution, is simpler in nature. In this light, Antivirus is an important component of EDR security.
EDR security tools are much broader in scope and should include multiple security layers to detect and block attacks.
Here are the key differences between EDR and Antivirus:
- EDR is more effective against advanced, fileless malware that can bypass Antivirus due to its signature-based detection system. Furthermore, it can detect signature-less threats and behaviors, providing better protection against sophisticated attacks.
- Using EDR offers deeper visibility into malware behavior, aiding in threat-hunting and digital forensics. By comparison, Antivirus primarily focuses on file characteristics.
- EDR reacts faster to emerging threats without requiring constant signature updates.
- Antivirus mainly scans files for malicious content, while EDR collects and analyzes endpoint data in context.
- EDR provides real-time response to incidents, minimizing the need for security team intervention.
- EDR is designed for breach situations, enabling damage control, countermeasures, and investigations.
- Antivirus is user-friendly and resource-efficient but offers less comprehensive protection compared to EDR’s continuous monitoring.
Heimdal®’s Approach to EDR Security
We’ve combined an Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and achieved what we consider to be the golden standard in cybersecurity: EPDR (Endpoint Prevention, Detection, and Response).
Heimdal’s EDR brings you real-time proactive security via DNS filtering, smart threat hunting, proactive behavioral detection, automated patch management, a next-gen Antivirus, and a module for automated admin rights escalation/de-escalation procedures.
Thus, we deliver a layered security approach within a single and lightweight agent. Our customers get access to next-gen endpoint threat prevention and protection from existing and undiscovered threats. Plus a market-leading detection rate and compliance, all in one package.
By combining Heimdal Threat Prevention and Heimdal Next-Gen Antivirus & MDM you will obtain proactive IOCs and enhanced IOAs and gain a unique EDR ability to mitigate even concealed or unknown malware.
Our dashboard always provides you with notifications and warnings for all active clients. It offers real-time threat and status reporting, delivered at the interval of your choosing. Your endpoint data will be graphed and scaled daily, weekly, or monthly and it can also be integrated into SIEM via API.
The Heimdal Security Unified Threat Dashboard (UTD) stores the entire history throughout your customer lifecycle and helps you perform compliance audits and risk assessments. Alongside weekly reports, data exports, e-mail alerts, and built-in data drill down, the Heimdal UTD offers a powerful yet simple way to manage your environment.
Our platform also enables you to define policies for each of your components in great detail. For example, you can refine the blacklisting of websites, files, processes, or patches per active directory group of your environment. This will give you the powerful option to individually tailor your IT environment and create policies to fit your exact needs across the Active Directory groups in your organization.
Once configured, the Heimdal deployment is simple and easy and can happen through any MSI deployment tool.
Because we’ve taken into consideration the evolving needs of the global enterprise, our EPDR technology works anytime and anywhere in the world, for both on-site and remote work set-ups.
Last but not least, our multi-layered security suite combined into our EPDR system comes in a user-friendly and easy to deploy agent, that will be extremely lightweight on your systems and will certainly become the greatest time-saver for your sysadmins.
- Next-gen Antivirus & Firewall which stops known threats;
- DNS traffic filter which stops unknown threats;
- Automatic patches for your software and apps with no interruptions;
- Privileged Access Management and Application Control, all in one unified dashboard
Conclusion
No matter which EDR solution you end up choosing, make sure it can be scaled up and down and that it fits your organization’s needs. Should you want to try out our EDR technology, please register on the website or contact us at sales.inquiries@heimdalsecurity.com.
If you want to keep up to date with everything we post, don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube for more cybersecurity news and topics.