Cybercrime is an ever-expanding risk confronting companies of all sizes in all industries. To shield themselves from the many cyberattacks they are prone to, teams must stay a stride ahead of cybercriminals by safeguarding their assets from a torrent of progressively refined attacks that are advancing in both frequency and intensity.
The techniques and attack vectors that experienced cyberattackers use are continually advancing. Security teams face this classic problem of covering each possibility, while attackers only need to intrude networks once.
Along these lines, businesses must persistently update their defenses depending on the current risk trends.
Organizations have traditionally relied on SIEM, Antivirus technologies (EPP), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), and few others, as a means to effectively respond to security incidents. However, as criminals and their attack tactics have become more sophisticated, the time to identify as well as respond to incidents has increased.
Moreover, criminals need to be checked for not only on the endpoints but throughout the increased attack surface such as network and cloud.
It’s clear that we need a new and more holistic approach to detection and response.
Explaining XDR Security and why this is a game-changer
XDR replaces siloed security and helps organizations address cybersecurity challenges form a unified standpoint.
In XDR, the X has many significations at TEHTRIS. First, it’s the X like in mathematics, the unknown, as our tagline is “Face the unpredictable” in our company, and we deliver a detection and response service against anything. Secondly, the X is also an X to say that it works anywhere, with anything, compared to the E with Endpoint only, in EDR. But finally, the X is because our method is an eXtended one, so that our customers and partners get an enhanced service of Detection and Response.
So, eXtended Detection and Response could help you find stealthy threats quicker with assistance from machine learning algorithms and round-the-clock analytics across cloud, networks, and endpoints. Think about the low signals for example.
Moreover, an XDR platform could simplify the investigation and response to known and unknown cybersecurity threats. As a consequence, XDR could radically improve your cybersecurity posture and help you get higher returns on security investments.
Instead of relying on traditional endpoint protection which puts security in several compartments- each dedicated to one endpoint or solution- XDR offers any business a comprehensive overview of their network.
Spot inefficiencies and gaps more effectively. Bridging these gaps can be the Holy Grail when it comes to tightening your defenses against the ever-changing nature of attacks.
XDR can revolutionize how you approach cybersecurity by addressing one key issue that was prevalent in the traditional EDR landscape. Once a hacker entered a company network, they could move laterally and determine all other weak points in the system.
Given the stringent regulatory environment of today, companies would then find themselves paying significant financial fines and reputational penalties when the hacks would come to light.
But, even more concerning is the attack that never got discovered as it lets a cybercriminal gain an open link with the company’s network that will not get fixed in the near foreseeable future.
XDR never lets that happen in that the technology introduces email security, endpoint protection, and network intelligence in the broader company system and links that with other data points.
EDR vs. XDR: Finding the best-fitting cybersecurity solution
At this point, it makes sense to see what differentiates EDR from XDR solutions.
Historically, endpoints have been the most favored point of entry for malicious attackers. And antivirus solutions were ‘THE’ security solutions for any organization. However, as attacks increased in sophistication, enterprises needed more than antivirus software to protect their data and applications through endpoints.
EDR then came around as a viable security solution to this problem. An EDR platform works by installing an agent on the endpoint to track, monitor, and collect data, which is then relayed to the cloud for analysis, threat detection, and remediation.
However, what happens when we talk about data from a thousand endpoints, or even more? What if you not only have endpoints to monitor, but also remote VPN accesses, proxies, antivirus activities, firewalls, etc. Then your EDR is not enough.
Enterprises need to either have their own Security Operations Facility or leverage managed security services to analyze that humongous data. Which would still be feasible if EDR was capable of preventing and mitigating threats successfully.
But, as the threat landscape has been constantly evolving, enterprises have been struggling with holistically protecting their data and looking for a more advanced cybersecurity solution.
This need led to the birth of XDR: an expanded version of EDR, which also includes server, email, cloud, and network security in its purview. The key to doing XDR efficiently is to deeply understand the underlying data to derive insights and provide alerts.
Furthermore, the advancements in artificial intelligence have made doing this a tad bit easier as the leading XDR platforms now employ ML to make better sense of the XDR data. The TEHTRIS XDR Platform, for instance, leverages artificial intelligence to comprehensively and intuitively detect anomalies throughout an enterprise’s systems and flags malicious behavior- taking the first step toward response.
The longer you use the system, the better it becomes in managing your cybersecurity posture.
This holistic approach is what most differentiates the EDR solution from the XDR.
6 Mistakes to Avoid with XDR Platforms
Here are a few things to keep an eye out for when you consider choosing an XDR solution for your enterprise:
- High complexity of integration – If an XDR solution is too complicated to be integrated with your existing solutions, it could add significantly to the overall cost of the software. Moreover, it would be expensive for you to maintain such an integration. For instance, if you already use a SIEM solution, you’d definitely want your XDR to integrate with it. However, with a lot of the existing solutions, this could be a pricey pursuit.
- Low speed of integration – We need to highlight this separately, keeping in mind the current crisis of COVID-19. Speed of integration is critical right now as attackers try to take advantage of remote workers accessing sensitive data from insecure networks at home. Therefore, choosing a detection and response solution that needs weeks to successfully integrate with the current stack would mean high cost and risk. On the contrary, a powerful XDR that’s flexible and easy to deploy will improve your cyber resilience in no time.
- Lack of sufficient automation – Some XDR solutions might not be automated enough. Or they only base on preliminary automation, such as automatic responses, which might not be the realistic and complete reflection of AI capabilities. TEHTRIS XDR comes with an integrated SOAR feature and leverages automation to a massive potential.
- High operational complexity – If your XDR solution is highly complicated for your SOC/MDR team, you might not be able to derive high ROI from investing in it. Even if an XDR platform comes with an attractive interface, they might not come with a powerful cybersecurity engine. TEHTRIS XDR is ready to be managed and is compatible with new services known as Managed XDR. Moreover, it offers a unified console with several cybersecurity tools to fight against seen and unseen threats.
- Duct-taped solutions – We advise you to never make the mistake of choosing a duct-taped XDR solution. These platforms are created by putting together a host of disparate technologies that are not natively linked together. In essence, this means that the technologies are duct-taped together and lack in-depth technical compatibility. This is not the case with TEHTRIS XDR- all of whose components are built from scratch to complement each other through a robust internal relationship.
- Highly expensive solutions – Heavily spending on an XDR solution might not be the best bet for you right now as we stare into a possible and looming economic slowdown. Instead, we would advise you to take the decision from the standpoint of how powerful a solution is, what’s it worth to you, and then gauge its value to you, knowing that you might be trying to reduce costs of business at this time.
The Benefits of XDR for Your Enterprise
Here are a few advantages of working with XDR solutions for your cyber resilience:
- Granular visibility – XDR helps an organization look into the user activity at the endpoint, the applications they use, their access rights, and the files they download. This information, augmented with high visibility into the network and applications communications across cloud and on-premise accelerates detecting and blocking an attack significantly.
- Holistic approach – Connecting email, cloud, server, and network security under one solution provides a broader perspective and better context to identify and mitigate threats easily and contain them more effectively. Therefore, in the era of evolving cyber threats, XDR poses as an ideal solution to safeguard an enterprise from all avenues.
- Faster response – Powerful artificial intelligence combined with security analytics prioritizes high-impact threats. Since security teams have to grapple with too many alerts that lack information and context, XDR greatly increases operational productivity for security teams in that they can view enterprise security posture through a consolidated XDR platform, instead of relying on several disparate products.
- Effective response – It’s as important to respond to threats effectively as it is to respond quickly. XDR platforms offer a wealth of data and analysis for security teams to trace attack origin and reconstruct its mechanism. This, in turn, enables security teams to respond better by blocking the source of the attack instead of just the endpoint where it started.
- Contain threats better – XDR solutions allow you to see beyond endpoints. This means you can detect and respond to threats across layers and gain greater context to understand the situation better. Activity that may not seem suspicious in and of its own might suddenly become high-priority, allowing you to contain the impact faster.
Now that we have straightened out what XDR is and all that it’s beneficial for, it’s highly critical for you to choose the right XDR platform for your enterprise.
Our Approach with XDR Solutions and Cybersecurity
Customers of the TEHTRIS XDR platform benefit from our horizontally layered approach to cybersecurity. Our XDR offering is a horizontal layer above all of our technologies such as EDR, SIEM, NTA, mobile security, EPP, and Deceptive Response.
Further, the TEHTRIS XDR platform augments important cybersecurity needs, such as automatization, cyber threat intelligence, artificial intelligence, hunting, ticketing system (ISO 27035), compliance/audits, and unified view of all the security with a complete security alerts database.
Here’s what this means:
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) and Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM) are two aspects of security automation that are critical for businesses. SOAR points to an amalgamation of solutions that help optimize the capabilities and efficiency of security operations, freeing up humans for more value-add tasks.
Compared with EDR, SIEM is more manual in nature, comprising of manual responses to alerts and notifications, signatures for efficiency and optimization, and so on.
Therefore, it’s good news that TEHTRIS XDR comes readily with an integrated SOAR. This means you have many outstanding default playbooks to leverage capabilities in order to automize your cybersecurity and make it more error and human-free.
However, we believe in human-machine teaming, because certain aspects of cybersecurity need humans on your team. Therefore, our XDR platform utilizes human capabilities exclusive to your security team as well as artificial intelligence that increases the impact and speed of overall cybersecurity- augmenting human effort.
In summary, we don’t place XDR as a replacement of EDR, but as a technology that expands the scope of EDR in a way that betters your cybersecurity posture.
A proof that we have pioneered in this space: both our platforms, EDR as well as XDR received recognition at the RSA conference 2020. Indeed, we won the Endpoint Security Award for TEHTRIS EDR and the Best Products Award for the TEHTRIS XDR Platform.
And you want more good news? Please know that our TEHTRIS XDR Platform, is easily, modularly and quickly integrated.
For example, you just want the EDR brick to avoid espionage and sabotage attacks? No worries, we deploy the TEHTRIS XDR Platform, with only one vertical dimension, the TEHTRIS EDR agents, to quickly protect your entire fleet.
And next year, you are changing your antivirus? You can add ours with TEHTRIS EPP, and then you have all the records collected in the XDR Platform.
Are you worried about attacks against your email in Office 365 and you want to keep track of what’s going on, or do you think hackers might be breaking into your VPNs, or do you wonder if malicious employees are already active? Don’t worry, we can add the SIEM dynamically, and track whatever’s going on.
And so on and so forth. Modularity. Simplicity. Overall efficiency. We’ve already deployed our solutions in less than a day for already compromised fleets that we’ve successfully rescued in a very short period of time.
If you want to be part of the growing number of those who are finally protected against cyber threats, contact us, we are at your disposal, and learn more about how we can help you face the unpredictable.