EDR vs MDR: How They Compare and the XDR Connection
May 30, 2021
Last Updated:
November 27, 2024
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What is EDR?
What is MDR?
An endpoint is a point on the network granting access to authorized users. The device connected to the network is called an endpoint device.
A poorly secured network endpoint can grant access to unauthorized actors. Cyber criminals often target endpoints and leverage these connections to breach the network.
Endpoint detection and response (EDR) is a security strategy dedicated to securing endpoints. EDR is usually offered by third-party security experts who analyze the endpoint components of the network and then design a security strategy dedicated to protecting the endpoints.
Managed detection and response (MDR) is a service that provides advanced threat detection and mitigation. MDR enables organizations of all sizes to outsource endpoint protection cyber security efforts to third-party experts.
MDR specialists offer an assessment of the security posture of the organization. Typically, this involves detecting vulnerabilities and threats that might be exploited by attackers.
After completing the assessment, the MDR specialist develops a comprehensive security strategy, which is implemented and maintained by the MDR service.
MDR and EDR provide different services, which are more complementary than competitive.
EDR provides alerts and information needed to protect endpoints on the network. EDR solutions make it possible to actively hunt for threats and respond as needed. When attacks occur, EDR provides information about the point of origin of the attack, how it spread through the network, how far the attack reached within the network, and provides tools for instant response.
This information is highly useful during and also after attacks when analyzing the issues that lead to the event. The analysis performed at these later stages often helps organizations understand the tactics and techniques used during the attack and design measures that fix these issues.
EDR often supports the effort of an internal security team. MDR is a third party service that lets you outsource all security efforts. In this case, the MDR provides analysis, maintenance, and response to security events. MDR can also provide support to internal teams during major events that require more hands on deck.
MDR services are usually teams of highly experienced security professionals. They often actively look for threats and respond quickly, providing faster interventions. They aggressively hunt for threats using forensic tools and design effective solutions. MDR and EDR can work together to provide more coverage. The question is, perhaps, which responsibilities the organization needs or wants to outsource to an external team.
Extended detection and response (XDR) is the next phase in the evolution of EDR. XDR provides detection and protection across all environment components, including networks, cloud infrastructure, software as a service (SaaS) applications, and other network components.
Here are key features of XDR:
Visibility—into all network layers, including the entire application stack.
Advanced detection—including automated correlation and machine learning (ML) processes capable of detecting events often missed by security information and event management (SIEM) solutions.
Intelligent alert suppression—which filters out the noise that typically reduces productivity.
Here are key benefits of XDR:
Improved analysis—XDR helps you collect the right data and transform it with contextual information.
Identify hidden threats—with the help of advanced behavior models powered by machine learning algorithms.
Identify and correlate threats—across various layers of the application stack and network.
Minimize fatigue—XDR provides prioritized and precise alerts for investigation.
Forensic capabilities—XDR provides the forensic capabilities needed to integrate multiple signals. This helps teams to construct the big picture of an attack, and promptly complete investigations with high confidence in their findings.
In my experience, here are tips that can help you better adapt to the distinctions and integrations between EDR, MDR, and XDR:
Align your choice of EDR, MDR, or XDR with business objectives Consider the organization’s growth plans and security requirements before choosing EDR, MDR, or XDR. While EDR might be enough for smaller setups, growing companies may benefit from MDR’s 24/7 external oversight or XDR’s broader, multi-layer coverage.
Use EDR’s forensics capabilities for post-incident hardening Leverage EDR’s detailed forensics to continuously enhance your security posture. Analyzing attack vectors, timelines, and breach points provides valuable data for tuning defenses and identifying persistent vulnerabilities.
Set custom alert thresholds To minimize alert fatigue in EDR or XDR solutions, configure custom thresholds for alerts. Tailoring alerts to your environment’s risk profile helps prioritize genuine threats and reduces noise from low-priority issues.
Integrate threat intelligence feeds into your XDR While XDR consolidates security data, enhancing it with real-time threat intelligence from third-party sources adds an extra layer of context, helping to identify advanced persistent threats (APTs) and emerging attack patterns.
Automate triage for faster incident response Use automation within EDR and XDR to handle repetitive tasks like triaging alerts and isolating compromised endpoints. Automating these processes accelerates response times and reduces human error.
Eyal Gruner is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cynet. He is also Co-Founder and former CEO of BugSec, Israel’s leading cyber consultancy, and Versafe, acquired by F5 Networks. Gruner began his career at age 15 by hacking into his bank’s ATM to show the weakness of their security and has been recognized in Google’s security Hall of Fame.
MDR, EDR and XDR with Cynet
Cynet 360 is a holistic security solution that protects against threats to endpoint security and across your network. Cynet provides tools you can use to centrally manage endpoint security across the enterprise.
Cynet’s intelligent technologies can help you detect attacks by correlating information from endpoints, network analytics and behavioral analytics with almost no false positives.
With Cynet, you can proactively monitor entire internal environments, including endpoints, network, files, and hosts. This can help you reduce attack surfaces and the likelihood of multiple attacks.
Cynet 360 provides cutting edge EDR and XDR capabilities:
Advanced endpoint threat detection—full visibility and predicts how an attacker might operate, based on continuous monitoring of endpoints and behavioral analysis.
Investigation and validation—search and review historic or current incident data on endpoints, investigate threats, and validate alerts. This allows you to confirm the threat before responding to it, reducing dwell-time and performing faster remediation.
Rapid deployment and response—deploy across thousands of endpoints within two hours. You can then use it to perform automatic or manual remediation of threats on the endpoints, disrupt malicious activity and minimize damage caused by attacks.
In addition, Cynet provides MDR services, as detailed below.
Cynet CyOps 24/7 MDR Service
Cynet understands that building and managing an incident response team is not a viable option for all organizations. This is why, in addition to providing incident response automation, Cynet offers on-demand incident response services.
CyOps, Cynet’s Cyber SWAT team, is on call 24/7/365, allowing enterprises of all sizes to get access to the same expert security staff that protect the largest enterprises. Here’s what you can expect from the CyOps incident response team:
Alert monitoring—continuous management of incoming alerts: classify, prioritize and contact the customer upon validation of active threat.
24/7 availability—ongoing operations at all times, both proactively and on-demand per the customer’s specific needs.
On-demand file analysis—customers can send suspicious files to analysis directly from the Cynet 360 console and get an immediate verdict.
One click away—CISOs can engage CyOps with a single click on the Cynet Dashboard App upon suspicion of an active breach.
Remediation instructions—conclusion of investigated attacks entails concrete guidance to the customers on which endpoints, files, user and network traffic should be remediated.
Exclusions, whitelisting, and tuning—adjusting Cynet 360 alerting mechanisms to the customers’ IT environment to reduce false positives and increase accuracy.
Threat hunting—proactive search for hidden threats leveraging Cynet 360 investigation tools and over 30 threat intelligence feeds.
Attack investigation—deep-dive into validated attack bits and bytes to gain the full understanding of scope and impact, providing the customer with updated IoCs.
