Understanding XDR Security: Concepts, Features, and Use Cases

How Does XDR Work? 3 Key Capabilities

Here are three key capabilities of XDR solutions.

1. Analytics and Detection

XDR solutions rely on a range of analytics for threat detection. Below are some of the analytical features that are typically included:

• Analysis of both internal and external traffic—ensures that malicious insiders and compromised credentials are detected as well as identifying external attacks. By monitoring and analyzing both internal and external traffic, XDR is able to identify a threat even if it has already bypassed your system perimeter.
• Integrated threat intelligence—incorporates information on known attack methods, tools, sources, and strategies across multiple attack vectors. Threat intelligence enables XDR to learn from attacks on other systems and use that information to detect similar events in your environment.
• Machine learning-based detection—includes supervised and semi-supervised methods that work to identify threats based on behavioral baselines. Machine learning technologies enable XDR to detect zero-day threats and non-traditional threats that can bypass signature-based methods.

2. Investigation and Response

Once suspicious events are detected, XDR can provide tools that help security teams determine the severity of a threat and respond accordingly. Below are some of the features included in XDR that can assist with investigation and response:

• Correlation of related alerts and data—tools can automatically group related alerts, build attack timelines from activity logs, and prioritize events. This helps teams quickly determine the root cause of an attack and can help them predict what an attacker might do next.
• Centralized user interface (UI)—enables analysts to investigate and respond to events from the same console. This helps speed up response time and makes documentation of responses simpler.
• Response orchestration capabilities—enables response actions directly through XDR interfaces, as well as communication between tooling. For example, XDR can update endpoint policies across the enterprise, in response to an automatically blocked attack on a single endpoint.

3. Dynamic and Flexible Deployments

XDR solutions are designed to provide additional benefits over time. Below are some of the features that help accomplish this goal:

• Security orchestration—ability to integrate with and leverage existing controls for unified and standardized responses. XDR solutions can also include automation features to help ensure that policies and tooling are deployed consistently.
• Scalable storage and compute—XDR uses cloud resources that are able to scale to meet your data and analysis needs. This ensures that historical data, useful for identifying and investigating advanced persistent threats or other long-running attacks, remains available.
• Improvement over time—inclusion of machine learning ensures that solutions become more effective at detecting a broader range of attacks over time. This, in combination with inclusion of threat intelligence, helps ensure the maximum number of threats are detected and prevented.

Why Do You Need XDR? 5 XDR Security Benefits

An XDR platform can provide the following benefits:

• Improved prevention capabilities—inclusion of threat intelligence and adaptive machine learning can help ensure that solutions are able to implement protections against the greatest variety of attacks. Additionally, continuous monitoring along with automated response can help block a threat as soon as it is detected to prevent damage.
• Granular visibility—provides full user data at an endpoint in combination with network and application communications. This includes information on access permissions, applications in use, and files accessed. Having full visibility across your system, including on-premises and in the cloud enables you to detect and block attacks faster.
• Effective response—robust data collection and analysis allows you to trace an attack path and reconstruct attacker actions. This provides the information needed to locate the attacker wherever they are. It also provides valuable information that you can apply to strengthen your defenses.
• Greater control—includes the ability to both blacklist and whitelist traffic and processes. This ensures that only approved actions and users can enter your system.
• Better productivity—centralization reduces the number of alerts and increases alerting accuracy. This means fewer false positives to sift through. Also, since XDR is a unified platform and not a combination of multiple point solutions, it is easier to maintain and manage, and reduces the number of interfaces that security must access during a response.

Use Cases for XDR

XDR provides support for a wide range of network security responsibilities. It can also be adopted to help support specific use cases, depending on the maturity of your security team. Below are three use cases that mirror the tiers security professionals are often classified with.

• Tier 1: triage—XDR solutions can be adopted as the primary tool for aggregating data, monitoring systems, detecting events, and alerting security teams. These systems can form the base for further efforts or can enable a hand-off to higher level teams.
• Tier 2: investigation—teams can use solutions as repositories of analyses and information on events. This information, in combination with threat intelligence can be used to investigate events, evaluate responses, and train security staff.
• Tier 3: threat hunting—data collected by XDR solutions can be used as a baseline for performing threat hunting operations. These operations proactively seek evidence of threats that have been overlooked by systems and analysts. Data used for, and collected during, threat hunting processes can also be used to create new threat intelligence which is then used to strengthen existing security policies and systems.

How XDR Differs From Other Security Solutions

XDR is different from other security tools in that it centralizes, normalizes, and correlates data from multiple sources. These capabilities enable more complete visibility and can expose less obvious events.

By collecting and analyzing data from multiple sources, XDR solutions are able to better validate alerts, thereby reducing false positives and increasing reliability. This helps reduce any time teams might waste on excessive or inaccurate alerts. According to Gartner, this results in improved productivity in security teams and allows faster, more automated responses.

Although similar results can be achieved with a combination of EDR and security incident and event management (SIEM) solutions, XDR goes beyond these capabilities. SIEM solutions collect shallow data from many sources while XDR collects deeper data from targeted sources. These collection methods enable XDR to provide better context for events and eliminate the need for manual tuning or integration of data. Moreover, because the alert sources are native to the XDR solution, the integration and maintenance effort required for monitoring alerts in a SIEM is eliminated.

You can learn more about endpoint security concepts in our guides:

• EPP vs. EDR: What Matters More, Prevention or Response?
• EDR Cybersecurity: Unlocking the Black Box of Endpoint Protection

EDR vs XDR

EDR was created to provide perimeter-wide protection for a system. This was an advancement on existing methods as it provided coverage for a primary component in an attack: endpoints. The result was proactive endpoint security that covered many security gaps and blindspots.

Effective use of EDR still requires collaboration with other tools and processes, however. It cannot protect your system on its own. It also cannot provide full visibility of your system. Rather, it can provide limited visibility into what actions attackers are taking on your endpoints. If you want to know what happened throughout the attack, you need to bring in other monitoring and detection tools.

XDR was designed to fill this information gap. Unlike EDR, it can provide visibility into every phase of an attack, from endpoint to payload. By integrating XDR into your security platform, you can collate information from across your systems. This helps you determine a more accurate picture of past attacks as well as attacks in progress. This is especially important as networks become more distributed and more external services are incorporated and provided system access.

Learn more about EDR in our guide: What Does EDR Stand For?

How Does XDR Work with SIEM?

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) is used in most security operations centers as a central repository of security event data and a way to generate alerts from security events. XDR can extend SIEM by tapping into SIEM data, and combining it with data from point solutions that integrate with the XDR platform. 

XDR can take SIEM one step further. For example, when a SIEM platform generates an alert, instead of having security analysts manually go into endpoint security systems or cloud systems to investigate further, XDR can do this automatically. It can combine data from the SIEM with forensic data from endpoints and cloud resources, and create a complete attack story. Analysts can immediately understand the full scope of the threat and respond to it.

XDR also enables more advanced analytics. SIEM was traditionally based on statistical correlation rules, while XDR introduces AI-driven analysis that establishes behavioral baselines, and identifies anomalies based on these baselines. It can add another layer of analysis to SIEM data, saving even more time for security analysts and improving the time to detection and response.

Mistakes to Avoid With XDR Platforms

While XDR platforms are a significant improvement over traditional tools and many EDR systems, these solutions are not foolproof. To ensure that your implementation is effective and that you are getting the greatest protection for your investments, make sure to avoid the following mistakes.

Complexity of integration

XDR solutions need to integrate smoothly with your existing solutions. If integration requires excessive work or custom plugins, you lose out on productivity gains. You’ll likely also have to sacrifice some of the control and visibility that makes XDR an improvement over alternatives. If the platform you want doesn’t integrate well, you’re likely better off finding another.

While you may not get all of the features of your preferred platform, not having to maintain or build an integration from scratch can be worth the compromise. Being able to take advantage of native integration enables you to implement a new platform quickly and provides immediate protection enhancements.

Likewise, when looking to integrate additional tooling with your XDR, make sure to prioritize those that are already compatible. In general, you should be wary of applications, tools, and services that require additional integration work since this is a debt you’ll have to carry forward.

Lack of sufficient automation

Automation is a key driver of the efficiency of XDR. The ability to automate tracking, alerts, and responses is what reduces the workload of security teams and enables them to focus on higher-level tasks. However, automation needs to go beyond simply sandboxing processes or blocking all traffic to be effective.

The XDR platform you choose should ideally include automation that adapts to current system conditions and responds based on multiple parameters. For example, recognizing when a device has connected to your network and being able to either match it to a previous user profile or assigning it a temporary status. This can then enable you to more closely monitor unknown devices and more quickly restrict potentially malicious access.

Operational complexity

XDR platforms are supposed to ease the efforts of security and response teams. This goes beyond interfaces and dashboards and extends to configuration and maintenance requirements. If a solution is difficult to update or does not enable settings to be easily set or changed, its value decreases.

Additionally, if a platform is constructed of various technologies that are not natively-linked, your teams are effectively still using disparate tools. These tools are unlikely to be as effective and are more likely to require extra operational efforts. Instead, you should look for platforms that include native services and functionalities that don’t require external add-ons.