What Is EDR and Why Is It Important?
Cybercriminals do their utmost to successfully target and attack your company’s endpoints for various reasons. They might want to exfiltrate your data or hold it for ransom, override your machines, exploit them in a botnet and conduct DDoS attacks, and much more.
The term EDR stands for Endpoint Detection and Response. It was coined in 2013 by Anton Chuvakin, former VP and security analyst at Gartner, now security product strategist at Google. He said,
"These are the tools which are primarily focused on detecting and investigating suspicious activities (and traces of such) other problems on hosts/endpoints."
In the scheme of things, EDR stands above the Antivirus and below the Firewall protecting the perimeter
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EDR vs Antivirus -- What is the difference?When you compare the EDR systems to traditional Antivirus solutions, you find that traditional Antivirus solutions are simpler in nature and should be seen as an important component of EDR. Normally, Antivirus tools accomplish basic tasks such as scanning, detection, malware remover and they use signature-based threat detection methods.
On the other hand, EDR is superior to the traditional Antivirus and are much broader in scope and usually include multiple security layers such as attack blocking, patching, exploit blocking, firewall, whitelisting/blacklisting, full category-based blocking, admin rights management, and of course, a next-gen Antivirus. EDR security solutions are therefore more suitable for today’s businesses.
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EDR vs EPP
You may not be aware of what EPP stands for. EPP stands for Endpoint Protection Platform.
EDR aims to target advanced threats that, because they are engineered to get past primary defenses, have gotten inside your environment. On the other hand, an EPP targets threats as they hit the perimeter of your network. It is nearly impossible for an EPP to catch all threats and prevent them from penetrating your system. Remember, it is always safer to assume that some threats will sneeck in your boundries. Therefore, an effective endpoint security plan often includes both EDR and EPP.
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3-COMPONENTS OF AN EDR
EDR security provides an organization with a center for collecting, organizing, and analyzing data from the endpoints connected to it. It can coordinate responses and alerts to imminent threats. This involves the incorporation of three elements:1. Endpoint data collection agents
These agents which are installed on your endpoints, collects that data and monitor endpoints. This includes data related with what processes are running, how much activity is occuring on the endpoint, What aret the connections of the endpoint, and what & how of the data transferred to and from the endpoint, etc.
2. Automated incident response
EDR allows you to incorporate RULES that you & your team has designed to identify threats. Then based on these rules they can trigger the automatic responses. The automated response can both recognize the threat and determine what kind of threat it is. Then it can also perform a response, such as sending an alert that the endpoint’s user will be logged off.
3. Analysis
EDR also good in analyzing the endpoint data in REAL-TIME. Analysis involves analyzing endpoint data in real time. This enables the EDR system to diagnose threats quickly—even if they do not necessarily match preconfigured threat parameters. Analysis also uses forensic tools to examine the nature of the threat and how the attack was executed after it has been dealt with.
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The Main Characteristics Of EDR
#1. Integration with multiple tools
EDR solutions always come in multiple tools/layers. They feed intelligence into each other to successfully protect your organization from multiple angles.
#2. Alerts, reporting, and a unified overview of your environment
A dashboard that provides access to your endpoints’ protection status is a mandatory feature of any EDR solution. At the same time, you should be able to receive timely alerts and have the capability to identify and monitor endpoint-security threats and vulnerabilities. Also, running reports for compliance purposes is a crucial aspect of all EDR tools.
#3. Advanced response capabilities and automation
An EDR technology would provide you with specialized tools for assessing and reacting to security incidents, including prevention, detection, threat intelligence, and forensics. At the same time, automation capabilities are essential.
#4. Global availability
EDR should allow you not to be dependent on platform constraints and you should be able to manage your environment wherever you or your teams are, at the time of your choosing.
#5. Prevention
An effective EDR technology must offer prevention methods and adaptive protection against most next-generation malware, based on behavioral analysis of incoming and outgoing traffic in your organization.
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How Does An EDR Work Actually?After your EDR system has been installed, it makes use of algorithms that analyze the actions of the different users on your system. This enables it to store information regarding the activity taking place on each endpoint. In this way, an EDR acts almost like a friend, sensing when something is not quite right about someone’s behavior. When activity on an endpoint goes against an established pattern of behavior, the EDR can detect the anomaly and take action.
To accomplish this, an EDR collects data then filters and analyzes it, simultaneously looking for evidence of any malicious file(s). If something is detected, an alarm is triggered, and this initiates an investigation. During the investigation, the algorithms identify the source of the attack, pinpointing how it got through the system's perimeter.
To make it easier for analysts to examine, the data is parsed and consolidated into smaller categories. Once determined that a threat has indeed affected an endpoint, the user is notified of the next steps. If the system identifies a false-positive, the alert is canceled, and what was learned is recorded to help more accurately address future threats.
Some major EDR tools are:
• Fortinet's FortiEDR
• CrowdStrike’s Falcon Insight
• Check Point’s SandBlast
• SentinelOne
• F-Secure
• Kaspersky’s EDR
• Microsoft Defender for endpoint security
• FireEye Endpoint Security
• Trend Micro’s Apex One
• Bitdefender GravityZone
• CylanceOPTICS EDR
• Symantec Endpoint Security (SES)
• VMware Carbon Black Cloud
• RSA NetWitness Endpoint
• etc
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