What is XDR?

In the world of cybersecurity, extended detection and response, otherwise known as XDR, has been gaining popularity as an essential tool in protecting businesses from digital threats. But what is XDR, and why is it so important? In this article, we’ll answer those questions and more. Read on to learn everything you need to know about XDR in cybersecurity.

Defining extended detection and response

As attacks grow and become more sophisticated, XDR is the newest defensive weapon in cybercrime. Cyber defenses must be up 24/7 and your organization must understand the real threats to its infrastructure from the inside, where visibility by the attacker is rare.

XDR is a security solution that helps to identify, investigate and respond to threats faster by collecting data from multiple security layers and then automatically correlating this information. This allows for better detection of threats as well as improved investigation and response times.

Benefits of XDR

There are many benefits of using XDR in cybersecurity, including:

• Faster detection of threats
• Improved investigation and response times
• Better protection against sophisticated attacks
• Greater visibility into the network
• Reduced false positives

XDR provides the comprehensive coverage that businesses need to protect themselves from all kinds of digital threats.

XDR origins

XDR started with endpoint detection and response, or EDR. Examples of endpoints include laptops and iPads. Now seen as just one vector, the goal of EDR is to protect infrastructure and data.

EDR does provide a challenge with integration, especially moving toward detection and response. It is also a challenge to staff the right people in the right technologies. You effectively very much narrow your lane and finding the right IT people can be hard.

EDR continuously monitors endpoint analytics to mitigate cyberthreats. EDR doesn’t see all the traffic that is going outbound to a destination with a bad reputation. It may not be able to detect firewall traffic. It may just see the content filters and VPNs in place.

Email XDR and NDR

Next came email XDR, which is about more than just spam. It’s about detecting and responding to threats that come in through email, such as phishing attacks. Email XDR looks at the full email life cycle, from when an email is sent to when it’s delivered to the inbox or deleted.

Network detection and response, NDR, looks at traffic flows to and from an organization’s network. It looks for anomalies that could indicate a breach, such as unusual amounts of data being transferred or devices communicating with known malicious IP addresses.

XDR solutions are able to detect and respond to threats faster than traditional security solutions because they collect data from multiple security layers and then automatically correlate this information. This allows for better detection of threats as well as improved investigation and response times.

What businesses need to know about XDR

In order to set up XDR, businesses need to have a clear understanding of their digital assets and how they are interconnected. They also need to have visibility into all of the traffic flowing in and out of their network. Once these things are in place, businesses can then start to implement an XDR solution that best meets their needs.

XDR provides the comprehensive coverage that businesses need to protect themselves from all kinds of digital threats. By collecting data from multiple security layers and then automatically correlating this information, XDR is able to detect and respond to threats faster than traditional security solutions. This allows for better protection against sophisticated attacks, and reduced false positives.

False positives

A false positive is when a security solution incorrectly identifies something as being malicious when it’s actually not. This can cause businesses to waste time and resources investigating and responding to threats that don’t actually exist.

False positives can also lead to “alert fatigue,” where employees become so used to seeing alerts that they start to ignore them, even if they are actually legitimate.

Reducing false positives is one of the main benefits of using XDR. By collecting data from multiple security layers and then automatically correlating this information, XDR solutions are able to more accurately identify threats and reduce the number of false positives that businesses have to deal with.

XDR is the next generation of detection and response. XDR’s data is open-source. It has the ability to bring in disparate data sets to normalize, enrich and reduce those false positives. The next step is to put the data through multiple types of machine learning, which leads to better detection and better responses.

The role of MSSPs

The success of every managed security service provider, MSSP, should be measured by how quickly they catch bad activity. The most important factor is how quickly they can respond. MSSPs should focus more on mitigating risks than eliminating them, which is impossible. This allows for a more structured approach to remediation.

XDR provides MSSPs with the comprehensive coverage they need to protect their clients from all kinds of digital threats. By collecting data from multiple security layers and then automatically correlating this information, XDR solutions are able to detect and respond to threats faster than traditional security solutions.

Dwell time

Dwell time refers to how long the bad guys live in the network — from when they get into when they get removed. It used to be that the bad guys could live in a network upwards of 106 days before detection. Now with XDR, that number is significantly reduced. The average is now down to days and in some cases, hours.

Visibility

Invisibility is a true problem in cybersecurity. Specialists can’t see everything to correlate and make decisions. Risk is the metric that keeps everyone up, and XDR sees all security measures that have been deployed and then put together. It then paints a picture to correlate the data.

One of the main benefits of XDR is that it provides businesses with visibility into all of their digital assets and traffic. This allows businesses to more easily identify and respond to threats.

XDR is a holistic security solution that collects data from multiple security layers and then automatically correlates this information. This allows for faster detection of threats and improved investigation and response times.

XDR answers business pain points, but not all security centers offer XDR. The future of cybersecurity rests in XDR. Some companies are hesitant because to implement it, they have to rebuild their data gathering and orchestration tools. XDR offers more scalability and integration ability. The more you can do with less, the better off you’ll be. XDR is not one-size-fits-all but it’s the best solution on the market today.

Some companies are still using legacy security solutions, which can’t keep up with the constantly evolving threat landscape. Others have invested in multiple-point solutions, which often don’t work well together. XDR is the next generation of detection and response, and it offers the most holistic view of an organization’s digital assets and traffic.

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