What are Endpoint Detection and Response Tools?

EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) tools are security solutions designed to monitor, detect, and respond to cyber threats on endpoints, such as laptops, desktops, servers, and mobile devices. These tools provide advanced capabilities to identify suspicious activities, investigate potential security incidents, and mitigate threats in real-time.

Endpoint Detection and Response Overview

Security operations (SecOps) teams work diligently to protect their increasingly digital organizations. Various categories of security tools are designed to help businesses prevent as many adversaries as possible from entering systems and to detect and respond to those who manage to bypass their initial defenses. For SecOps teams, keeping up with advanced threats is not only more critical than ever but also more complex, as new technologies introduce new threat vectors.

EDR is designed to identify potential cybersecurity threats, such as malware, ransomware, and intrusion attempts. When a threat is detected and a security incident is believed to have occurred or is about to occur, EDR tools send out alerts, triggering an incident response.

An EDR solution typically integrates with other cybersecurity tools, such as System Information Event Management (SIEM) or Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), to initiate the necessary actions to stop the event's spread and address any impact. Following containment of the event and neutralization of the threat, an investigation usually takes place to assess what happened, where the threat occurred, why it happened, what actions were taken to contain it, and how it can be identified and prevented in the future.

Control Points of EDR Tools

The future of cybersecurity is centered around four main control points: endpoints, identities, applications, and data.

Endpoints are crucial because they are the source of most activity and the most common target in an attack. Detecting malicious activity at the endpoints, where data is unencrypted, is essential.

Digital transformation requires increased connectivity between applications and business processes. The goal is to integrate trust into this "machine" of connected services to enhance business agility and provide a seamless experience for customers and partners. As applications become more independent from specific servers and networks, traditional network-centric security measures are becoming less effective. Security measures need to be applied at the application level, with Layer 7 taking precedence over Layer 3.

Data is essential for digital transformation and is also a prime target for cyberattacks. Protecting data access is an ongoing challenge, and implementing security measures that travel with the data can significantly enhance the integrity of digital transformation activities.

EDR Critical Capabilities

EDR equips security professionals with modern forensic tools for endpoints, providing telemetry to uncover hard-to-find malware. Additionally, the "response" capability enables security professionals to take action, such as quarantining a file or disconnecting an endpoint from the network.

Expectations for EDR focus on two primary attributes: visibility and efficacy, along with people efficiency. Of course, visibility and efficacy are self-explanatory. EDR needs to be able to detect and block malicious activity that EPP is not expected to detect and block. Almost by definition, EDR must leverage data outside of the endpoint.

Visibility and Efficacy

Context matters. For example, PowerShell scripts are useful for managing endpoints, and running such a script is not necessarily malicious. Seeing a lone script run on an endpoint does not necessarily indicate malicious activity.

However, if a PowerShell script was launched from a Word document that was previously attached to an email from an external sender, the context changes. Similarly, if an executable sends a beacon to a location from a known questionable IP range before encrypting a file, the context is important.

Understanding what happened before a file landed on an endpoint and what happened after is crucial. For example, knowing that an executable was unpacked on a networked printer or internet-connected fax machine before finding its way onto a laptop via an unknown lateral movement can provide context that may indicate a file's potential maliciousness.

Today, having a broad perspective is crucial. "Seeing" can be measured in degrees; more visibility is better, and understanding context has never been more important.

People Efficiency

People are our most valuable assets, and security experts are hard to come by. This scarcity has real implications, as security teams cannot respond to every alert. Instead, they focus on addressing the maximum number of alerts within their allotted time. There are informal or formal rules that guide the investigation and remediation processes.

For instance, a company's security policy might dictate that the security team prioritize the highest severity alerts, giving the best effort to Level 4 alerts. The attack plan is typically prioritized, meaning that some alerts receive immediate response while others may not be addressed at all.

As a result, the efficiency and ease of use of EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) tools directly impact their value. Analytics that correlate multiple alerts help filter out noise and enable automation of Level 1 analyst work. Guided search and automated intelligence tools allow Level 1 analysts to free up time by not having to triage alerts, thereby reducing the workload for Level 2 analysts. Therefore, people and time become the new return on investment (ROI) metrics for EDR tools.

Visibility and Efficiency EDR Feature Evaluation Checklists

For EDR to add value in the modern era, EDR tools must do the following:

• Find threats that cannot be detected by using telemetry on the endpoint alone
• Provide forensics information that will illuminate how adversaries got past the other layers of security before they were stopped by EPP

Both use cases have a similar implication: The data that fuels EDR needs to come from more than just the endpoint. Telemetry needs to come from the network, cloud, and other security measures.

Following is a table of attributes that should be considered in evaluating the visibility and efficiency of an EDR Tool. Each feature should be scored with a numerical weight (for example, troubling (1) to excellent (4).

Visibility and Efficacy EDR Features Evaluation

For People Efficiency Features, the same rating system applies—troubling (1) to excellent (4). Once again, the emphasis is on maximizing people's ROI.

EDR People Efficiency Features Evaluation

Optional Features that Enhance EDR Success

The following features aid the success of EDR solutions:

• Cloud-based sandbox for deep inspection and second opinion analysis
• Lightweight agent to minimize impact
• Single agent for both EPP and EDR
• Hardening such as application control or other features that reduce the attack surface
• Ability to collect data from and quickly share intelligence with network and cloud protection technologies
• Support for Windows, MacOS, and Linux operating systems

Endpoints Supported by EDR Tools

Defining an endpoint to assess the role of EDR tools is more challenging today than ever. Not only are more endpoints installed, but the variety of those endpoints is far more complex and challenging to spot and manage. All endpoints are connected in some way to a network, to the internet, or to each other.

Traditional endpoint configurations include computers such as desktops, notebooks, and servers. In recent years, however, endpoints have been broadened in their applications and definitions, including smartphones and tablets. More recently, endpoints have been broadened to include the Internet of Things (IoT), sensors, and intelligent everyday electronics like office equipment or appliances.

Endpoints also include a wide range of specialty devices that are computer-driven or computer-controlled and connected to a network. These include digital signage, kiosks, wearable computers, and vehicle-mounted computers.

Benefits of EDR Tools

EDR tools provide endpoint systems and an organization's entire IT infrastructure with end-to-end detection, protection, response, and remediation. They cover a wide range of use cases (see the "EDR use cases" section below) and are typically implemented fairly easily and quickly by experienced security teams and knowledgeable IT professionals.

Specific benefits of EDR tools include:

• Continuous monitoring
• Integration with threat intelligence services
• Threat hunting
• Behavioral analysis
• Contextual analysis
• Report generation for management and compliance requirements
• Event triage and validation
• Automated alerts and incident response

Deployment of EDR Tools

EDR tools can be implemented in several ways. They are often deployed as software products on endpoint hardware and monitored continuously. They can also be implemented as managed services, outsourced to a managed software service provider (MSSP) that offers managed detection and response (MDR) over the cloud.

EDR tools may also be deployed hybrid, using both on-premises-installed tools and outsourced/cloud-based tools for different parts of the solution. In those cases, the full range of EDR tools are linked in a platform configuration, using both hardware and software to build a common foundation for all EDR tools.

EDR Tools vs. EDR Services

The terminology used to describe the technologies that enable Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) can be confusing because they often overlap. Systems, solutions, tools, services, and products are all used to describe how EDR is acquired, implemented, and utilized, but they are not interchangeable.

To clarify, let's distinguish between EDR tools and EDR services.

EDR tools are software products or applications that are installed on individual endpoint systems. They can also be deployed on an organization's physical or virtual network to support, manage, and control endpoint cybersecurity. These tools provide continuous monitoring, collect endpoint data, perform data analytics, trigger incident response, and share forensic details after an event.

On the other hand, EDR services offer similar capabilities but are provided as a managed service by an external provider. This is typically done by an experienced third-party service provider, often referred to as a managed security service provider (MSSP). These MSSPs often include EDR services as part of a broader range of security services, known as Managed Detection and Response (MDR). These service providers offer a wide range of capabilities similar to EDR tools but as an outsourced service.

EDR Use Cases

One of the most important and attractive qualities of EDR is its ability to be applied across a wide—and growing—number of use cases. As the number, complexity, and diversity of endpoints continue to expand, so does the potential for use cases for EDR.

EDR is used in a wide range of use cases because it requires a number of the same capabilities, including advanced threat detection, continuous monitoring, incident response, end-to-end visibility, alert triage and validation, and reporting.

Specific use cases include:

• Malware Detection and Prevention: Identify and block various types of malware, whether they are known or unknown (zero-day threats).
• Behavioral Analysis: Monitor the behavior of applications and processes on endpoints, as well as spot deviations from standard behavior patterns.
• Cloud Security: Extend endpoint security coverage to cloud-based endpoints and resources, ensuring consistent security coverage in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
• Zero-Day Threat Detection: Identify new vulnerabilities and threats for which no patches or signatures are available.
• Incident Response: Provide real-time visibility into endpoint activities, helping security teams to identify and respond to events rapidly.
• Threat Hunting: Proactively searching for known and unknown threats within the organization's endpoints and networks.
• IoT Device Security: Protect Internet of Things (IoT) devices, helping organizations secure a broader range of endpoints--many of which come from the factory with limited, "light" cybersecurity defenses.
• Insider Threat Detection: EDR tools review user behavior and access patterns to spot insider threats, which may be either malicious or unintentional.
• File Integrity Management: Unanticipated or unauthorized file changes may indicate potential attacks leading to file tampering.
• Forensic Investigation: Security analysts use endpoint data to trace the source of attack, understand its root cause and gather information that could indicate how to stop and block it.
• Endpoint Patch Management: Many attacks succeed simply because users fail to keep their endpoints properly up-to-date on the latest security tools.
• Compliance/Auditing: Audit trails, security event logs, and reports demonstrating compliance with various regulations are essential parts of EDR capabilities.

EDR Tools FAQs