It’s no secret that cyberattack sophistication is evolving as technologies advance, posing a critical challenge for companies to secure their threat landscape. Adopting conventional defenses is no longer enough to detect modern breach attempts. Bypassing this obstacle requires deploying a more advanced and proactive endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution, alongside endpoint security software, for businesses of all sizes to safeguard their security environment.

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This article intends to build an understanding of endpoint detection and response by describing where it fits in a robust security strategy and help you comprehend its significance in your overall security approach.

This guide will provide insight into the following areas:

• What Is EDR?
• Best EDR Software
  • Sophos Intercept X Endpoint
  • Crowdstrike Falcon
  • SentinelOne Singularity XDR
  • Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
  • TrendMicro Vision One
• General Purpose
• Key Components
• Fundamental Capabilities
• Primary Benefits
• Trends
• EDR vs. EPP
• Next Steps

What Is EDR?

EDR (endpoint detection and response) is a layered endpoint security solution that combines real-time constant monitoring and endpoint activity data collection with rule-based automated response and analysis techniques. This integrated approach aims to identify potential cyber security threats, remove or contain incidents, further investigate and provide necessary remediation guidance to restore affected systems.

The term was first coined by Gartner’s Anton Chuvakin in July 2013. Chuvakin defined endpoint threat detection and response as “the tools primarily focused on detecting and investigating suspicious activities (and traces of such) on hosts/endpoints.”

EDR helps to:

• Detect threats penetrating your security environment by examining each file interacting with endpoints via continuous file analysis.
• Contain malicious files and prevent threats from spreading further by isolating potentially compromised hosts from adjacent network activity, preventing infiltration.
• Investigate threat behavior to identify vulnerabilities and utilize the information for addressing future threats.
• Eliminate threats by gathering actionable data on its entire timeline and execute an action plan for remediating systems to their original clean state.

Best EDR Software

Our analysts at SelectHub have carefully shortlisted top endpoint detection and response (EDR) platforms for your reference. Check these out to make an informed decision:

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Sophos Intercept X Endpoint

Sophos Intercept X Endpoint is a signature-free EDR system that provides cyber defense capabilities for businesses of all sizes. It offers both individual and business-grade solutions ranging from endpoint, network and email to cloud protection services. The system features a comprehensive antivirus suite along with other EDR capabilities to provide the best defense against modern threats.

Top Benefits

• Live Discover: A live tool allows you to ask detailed questions while hunting threats and answers immediately. It gives you access to customizable and out-of-the-box SQL queries with information about server and endpoint data from the last 90 days.
• Live Response: The command line tool enables live responses to issues you raise. You can remotely perform actions such as rebooting, executing scripts on programs, terminating a process, uninstalling software and remediating issues.
• AI-guided Investigations: Use AI integration to identify threats before they take hold of your data. AI-driven analysis helps investigate and detect unusual or suspicious activities at an early stage.
• SQL Query Library: Access a detailed SQL query library containing pre-written basic and complex sets of queries. You can also create custom queries in case pre-written ones don’t cover your requirements.
• Deep Learning Malware Analysis: This feature lets you analyze malware automatically with in-depth details. It first breaks down the code and file attributes and compares them to millions of other codes to give you a program overview. Based on the information, you can decide whether to block or allow the files.

Primary Features

• Threat Intelligence: The platform features advanced on-demand Sophos X-Ops threat intelligence. It leverages data from Sophos AI, SophosLabs and Sophos SecOps to provide real-time and predictive intelligence to your cyber security professionals and help with detection and response activities.
• Threat Hunting: You can automatically hunt and neutralize endpoint threats, freeing up threat hunters to focus on advanced threats. It involves investigating and aggregating weak signals to discover new indicators of attack (IoA) and indicators of compromise (IoC).
• 24/7 Monitoring and Response: Sophos has six global security operation centers (SoCs) that provide round-the-clock endpoint monitoring. It helps detect and respond to threats at an early stage before they get access to your data.
• MDR Root Cause Analysis: A root cause analysis team provides guidance to handle security crises by identifying vulnerabilities and an incident’s root causes. This feature helps prepare your cyber defense for future threats and fill security gaps.
• Suspicious Behavior Detection: The host intrusion prevention system (HIPS) technology can alert you of potential threats by evaluating process behavior during execution. You can configure this feature to alert you or directly take action after detecting suspicious behavior.

Limitations

• Sometimes there’s a lag while syncing data to the cloud.
• The platform doesn’t provide timely updates to the UI/UX.
• It doesn’t provide on-premise and private cloud deployment options.

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CrowdStrike Falcon

CrowdStrike Falcon provides a suite of endpoint protection platforms for small, medium and large industries. Its mobile support offers phishing protection to block suspicious domain activities, detect mobile threats and integrate with the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

Top Benefits

• Signatureless Detection: You get signatureless protection with behavioral analytics, threat intelligence and machine learning integration.
• Indicators of Attack (IoAs): The software can automatically detect and prioritize an attacker’s activity according to the threat level with AI-supported IoAs.
• Crowdstrike Overwatch: It provides threat hunters 24/7 to proactively identify hidden threats and get alerts on malicious activities.
• Identity Threat Detection: You can discover the security posture of all credentials within your environment. It offers continuous security assessments and allows security analysts to investigate threats.
• Threat Graph: With the help of AI and ML, this feature provides actionable data while identifying shifts in adversarial tactics and automatically preventing threats. Threat graphs offer real-time insights into threats for you to understand their nature and act accordingly.

Primary Features

• Automated Detection and Remediation: You can detect both known and unknown threats with AI. It also prevents fileless attacks with capabilities like script control, IoAs and memory scanning. You can automatically detect malicious behaviors, remove them and reverse registry modifications.
• Threat Intelligence: This feature lets you detect suspicious tactics, methods, actions and procedures and investigate issues automatically. It also enables alerts on the attacker’s information and other relevant issues.
• Query Builder: Falcon provides managed threat hunting with analysis of endpoint data. It continuously monitors endpoint activities and records and streams them to the threat graph and the cloud.
• Digital Forensics: This feature comes with automated data collection and in-depth research capabilities. It enriches forensic data by correlating it with intelligence data platforms. You can get features like a high-level telemetry view, high signal-to-noise ratio displays to identify potential hacker activity and customizable dashboards.
• CrowdScore: A real-time threat score helps security analysts understand threat situations within your organization. It offers an incident dashboard to compile security alerts into manageable incidents and prioritize them and Incident Workbench for a comprehensive threat view.

Limitations

• It lacks rollback support and uses script-based and manual mitigation mostly.
• You can manage only individual assets with remote consoles and commands, not bulk operations.
• Its reduced functionality mode can put devices out of support temporarily.

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SentinelOne Singularity XDR

SentinelOne Singularity XDR offers EDR solutions for businesses of all sizes with both on-premise and cloud-based deployment options. It primarily focuses on providing an AI-powered autonomous network and device security modules with unique features like automated responses, static AI and behavioral analysis, binary vault, and real-time forensics.

Top Benefits

• Autonomous Rollback Response: The platform offers automated file removal or rollback response to changes made by malicious software. It detects threats like unauthorized file encryption or access and isolates or blocks them.
• Data Analytics Interface: It unifies enterprise and security data to help you understand autonomous action. Its offerings include ingestion, storage capabilities, full data visibility and integration with third-party data.
• Storyline Active Response (STAR): Singularity ActiveEDR allows you to write custom detection rules to address targeted threats relevant to your industry. You can use it as a threat mitigation tool, policy enforcement module and endpoint quarantine solution. It also acts as a layer between EDR and threats that provides alerts on specific event subsets instead of the whole dataset.
• Query Library: You can create hunting queries and evaluate ever-evolving methodologies for uncovering new TTPs and IOCs.
• Storyline: The system offers real-time correlation and context to your company’s security stack and transforms data into stories, making it easier for your analysts to understand the threat landscape. It can link relevant events with their activities and create a storyline with unique identifiers.

Primary Features

• Threat Investigation: You can investigate data with data retention and MITRE ATT&CK techniques. Analysts can look at historical events and analyze them to understand how they happened, the threat timeline and other related activities and go beyond EDR data. Map malicious events with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to get insights into attack techniques and in-product indicators.
• Automated Response: It allows you to execute network quarantine, auto-deploy agents into an infected workstation and make necessary decisions to automatically remediate threats.
• Static AI and Behavioral AI Analysis: A built-in status AI can detect an array of threats in real time. Its integrated AI system protects against known and unknown threats, hacking attempts, memory exploits, bad macros, Trojans and ransomware.
• Binary Vault: This feature allows you to automatically upload and store portable benign or malicious executable files to SentinelOne cloud for 30 days. Security teams can then better analyze and run digital forensics on these files stored in the binary vault.
• Real-time Forensics: The software provides continuous endpoint monitoring and offers a 360° view of attacks with storyline, overview, raw data and summary information. You can use this feature via a single management console and determine a threat’s root cause.

Limitations

• The user menu system is complicated.
• Threat intelligence is limited to file hash reputation.
• The menu uses proprietary terminologies, making it difficult to understand.

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Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is one of the leading EDR solutions for businesses of all sizes. It’s built into Windows 10 and offers features like endpoint behavioral sensors, threat intelligence, cloud security analytics, attack surface reduction and next-generation endpoint protection.

Top Benefits

• Threat Analytics: Expert Microsoft researchers provide a threat analytics report that covers relevant threats, threat actors, campaigns and new attack techniques to give you a better understanding of the threat landscape. The report also leverages user data from the network to determine whether a threat is active.
• Advanced Hunting: You can analyze raw threat data from the last 30 days. Proactively monitor your network’s entities and threat indicators with this query-based tool.
• Incident Graph: Aggregate threat information from different sources to understand patterns and correlate data from various points. You can track data through the incident graph, which includes details about entry points, IoCs, threat history and associated file detections.
• Live Response: This capability allows you to access your devices remotely. You can take action against identified threats in real time and perform in-depth investigations.
• Automated Investigation and Response: You can automatically investigate suspicious incidents and supported events and get alerts about critical assets. After analysis, it marks files as infected or remediated and offers auto-response or remediation capabilities.

Primary Features

• Custom Detection: You can monitor and remediate system-stated events, such as misconfigured endpoints and suspected breach activities, through automated alerts and predefined response actions.
• EDR in Block Mode: Get extra protection against malicious threats, especially when Microsoft Defender Antivirus (MDAV) runs in passive mode. EDR capabilities help detect malicious activities, and EDR in block mode remediates them.
• Asset Discovery and Monitoring: Advanced scanners let you detect suspicious events even when your endpoints are not connected to the corporate network. Use consolidated inventories for a real-time updated view of your company’s digital certificates, software applications, browser extensions, hardware and firmware. You can use modules like browser extensions assessment and security baseline assessment to analyze your cyber asset exposure.
• Risk-based Prioritization: Use data from business contexts, threat intelligence and breach likelihood predictions to create a priority list of suspected vulnerabilities. This feature also helps prioritize security recommendations and keep your critical assets safe.
• Device Response: Respond to identified attacks by collecting an investigation package or isolating devices. After responding to threats, you can also check activity details on the action center. It lets you collect investigation packages, initiate automated investigations, manage tags, and contain and isolate devices.

Limitations

• Sensor updates require frequent device reboots and OS-level updates.
• There’s a limited scope of direct interaction between the hunter and the customer as it uses “Hunter-trained AI.”
• Analysts need to switch between several dashboards to manage different threats.

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Trend Micro Vision One

Trend Micro was the top player in the global endpoint software industry, with a 33.62% market share in 2022. Its EDR software offering, Trend Micro Vision One, offers all-around integrated cyber security solutions with a mobile agent app. Top features include malware detection, Wi-Fi protection, data loss and instant messaging protection, and application whitelisting.

Top Benefits

• Search Advantages: Investigators can sweep or search with several parameters, including specific malware, account activity and specific communications. They can also use YARA rules or OpenIOC to conduct searches.
• Advanced Threat Hunting: This feature helps create attack discovery rules based on IoAs.
• Vulnerability Management: This feature includes virtual patching and prioritized guidance to fix vulnerabilities before patching.
• Attack Surface Management: The platform focuses on identifying, compiling and contributing attack surface risk data to a risk dashboard to keep track of threats.

Primary Features

• Root Cause Analysis: Understanding the primary cause of attacks is the most important step in analyzing and preventing them. With this feature, you can identify how the threat originated, changed or spread by objects, viewing activities and processes.
• Threat Response: The software provides automated remediation capabilities, including isolating, blocking and quarantining infected files and endpoints. It also offers step-by-step remediation plans and customized clean-up modules.
• Investigation Capabilities: It creates a complete picture of malicious activities across the network by performing root cause analysis and identifying attack vectors, their dwell time and impact. You can work with security analysts during the investigation process.
• Vendor Intelligence and Assistance: A smart protection network offers assistance and clarity to threat investigators by defining known good and bad objects and processes. Investigators get color-coded root cause analysis and other remediation guides to easily analyze threat status.
• Reports: You can store details of the attack and vulnerabilities, IoCs, host and recommended mitigation options. Find all monthly case activity reports in the customer success portal.

Limitations

• The workflow and automation technology relies on third-party integrations and could be stronger.
• The platform requires several configuration changes and offers maintenance-heavy detection.
• It doesn’t offer rollback support, and you need to wipe and load recoveries.

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General Purpose

Every endpoint device connecting to an organization’s network forms a porous security perimeter, making it highly susceptible to data breaches and malicious attacks. Modern and sophisticated threats such as file-less malware, polymorphic malware, phishing, advanced persistent attacks and hidden malicious code in HTTPS traffic can easily evade the security perimeter and expose critical assets to hackers.

Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought a tremendous shift of business data and processes to online infrastructure and remote working, increasing vulnerabilities and loopholes in security environments. This transformation has resulted in an exponential rise of sophisticated attacks. A report by Verizon found a 13% increase in ransomware attacks. This jump is greater than the past five years combined.

Ransomware attacks have become one of the biggest security challenges organizations worldwide face. Cybercriminals steal sensitive data and hold it hostage, demanding cryptocurrency or similar compensation in exchange. Businesses face the risk of not only losing data but having it shared with the public.

These challenges demand an elaborate security strategy, and this is where EDR solutions can help. They provide the granular visibility and control required to safeguard endpoints before and after infection using automated analysis and response.

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Key Components

Endpoint Data Collection and Threat Detection

The first step of an EDR security solution involves monitoring and collecting endpoint and network event data such as connections, processes, activity volume and data transfers. Software agents that monitor host systems record this information into a central database where other events occur.

This process helps EDR with its primary job — threat detection. With the help of cyber threat intelligence, you can detect threats that frequently change their characteristics.

Automated Response and Containment

It utilizes behavioral analytics to analyze several incidents by different users in real time and detect traces of suspicious activities automatically. Through continuous file analysis, pre-configured rules generate automated actions on identifying a security breach and trigger an immediate response like sending alerts or logging the end user off. EDR also helps contain the threat and stop it from spreading and infecting other systems.

Data Analysis and Threat Hunting

The process also includes real-time analytics for the rapid diagnosis of threats that don’t correspond to pre-configured rules. Analytics engines utilize algorithms to search for patterns by evaluating and correlating large volumes of data. Users then receive next steps suggestions if a confirmed threat threatens an endpoint. False positives trigger threat cancellation, and the information is recorded to tackle future threats.

Forensic tools are utilized for threat hunting or conducting attack analysis. IT professionals can hunt for threats like malware or other undetected exploits on an endpoint and further investigate breaches to understand their behavior.

Threat Elimination

Lastly, EDR creates an action plan to eliminate threats. There are several issues to consider before implementing the elimination strategy, like figuring out the nature and origin of the threat, pinpointing affected systems and ensuring the threat has not replicated itself. You can collect endpoint security-specific telemetry to enhance visibility into the threat’s behavior, helping eliminate it efficiently.

Every EDR security tool doesn’t work the same way, but each performs essential functions with a similar objective to proactively monitor, analyze, identify, detect and prevent advanced threats.

Fundamental Capabilities

Provides Visibility Throughout the IT Environment

Complete endpoint visibility is the most crucial capability that EDR offers, making it an essential component of any security environment. It enables constant endpoint monitoring, either online or offline. Through a centralized management console, continuous monitoring provides comprehensive insights into all endpoints to view suspicious activities and stop them before they become breaches.

Data Collection To Create a Threat Repository

A team of security experts collects massive amounts of telemetry from endpoints, enriched with context. This data can address possible irregularities using technologies like advanced analytics, artificial intelligence or machine learning. The assembled information is also stored in a database for further analysis and investigation so that it can be mined for signs of future attacks.

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Behavioral Protection

EDR applies behavioral approaches to protect against emerging unknown threats, zero-day attacks and insider threats by searching for indicators of attack (IOAs). This feature tracks lateral movement across networks and resources, making it superior to traditional signature-based detection techniques or indicators of compromise (IOCs) methods that can cause a silent failure and lead to data breaches.

Enable Real-time Responses

An immediate and accurate response to a potential threat can prevent it from compromising your security infrastructure. The real-time response feature of EDR solutions can stop an attack in its initial stages by automatically triggering an action to contain or neutralize the threats. Rapid incident response allows you to limit cyberattack impacts and secure your business from full-blown breaches.

The Usage of Whitelists and Blacklists

EDR security systems incorporate whitelisting and blacklisting features, providing the ability to allow specific applications that run on a system or block suspicious domains, URLs and IP addresses. These options act as the first line of defense to ensure network safety against cybercriminals’ known modus operandi.

Primary Benefits

Detection of Endpoint Threats

EDR is designed to identify tactics, techniques and procedures used by attackers to invade your security perimeter. It gathers information on how attackers penetrate a network and their path of activity. The right EDR tools protect you against suspicious user activities and behavior, advanced malware, fileless attacks and misuse of legitimate applications.

More Cost and Time Efficient

These tools manage threats as soon as they enter an organization’s periphery, preventing disruptions, impact on productivity and financial losses. They automate detection, path analysis and lateral movement steps, eliminating human intervention. These initial automated phases allow security analysts to invest more time examining legitimate threats due to the presence of fewer alerts and false-positives.

Integration With Other Security Tools

Some highly advanced EDR systems can integrate with multiple security tools to deliver an extensive data security strategy. These integrations generate automated threat responses to instantly remove the detected malware via a third-party anti-malware program, avoiding delay in the user’s immediate actions.

Combines With Threat Intelligence

Many EDR vendors incorporate threat intelligence subscriptions in their endpoint security solution to expand their ability to identify the latest exploits, such as zero-day and multi-layered attacks. Cyber threat intelligence leverages AI and threat databases with data on past and currently evolving attacks, analyzes them and utilizes the information to detect threats targeting your endpoints.

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Trends

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Integration

Investigating threats is one of the most important features of EDR security systems. EDR can adopt machine learning and AI to provide automated investigation services.

AI allows you to track and learn the organization’s baseline threat behavior and use that information to analyze incidents. Machine learning helps identify threats and attack classes efficiently.

Adoption of the MITRE ATT&CK Framework

The Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge (ATT&CK) is a knowledge base developed with threat intelligence, real-world observations and incident reporting. It helps classify threats based on system vulnerabilities, malicious software programs and tactics used to infiltrate systems.

The adversary tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) method used by ATT&CK for threat analysis has made it popular across the world.

Increasing Usage of BYOD Policies and IoT Devices

There has been a paradigm shift of business data, processes and infrastructure towards cloud computing in recent years. Poorly secured and misconfigured cloud resources act as a potential entry point for attack vectors. Along with cloud adoption, a rapidly evolving mobile technology, BYOD (bring your own device) practices and increased usage of IoT devices for greater flexibility has contributed to a significant rise in cyber threats worldwide.

According to a study by Allied Market Research, the global EDR market is estimated to reach $18.3 billion by 2031, registering a CAGR of 25.3% from 2022 to 2031. This growth is driven by growing enterprise mobility, increasing instances of targeted endpoint attacks and the need to mitigate digital security risks.

EDR vs. EPP

Both EDR and EPP (endpoint protection platform) protect endpoints against threats, but they fulfill different purposes. EPP acts as the first line of defense and focuses primarily on protecting against known and unknown malware attacks on your endpoints. At the same time, EDR acts as a second protective layer that helps identify and respond to threats that circumvent EPP or other security platforms.

These systems can be used separately as standalone solutions or united as a single solution to face complex cyber threats. Many vendors offer a combination of both EPP and EDR capabilities to provide comprehensive protection to your digital perimeter against ever-evolving security issues and cyber threats.

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Next Steps

An appropriate security system can protect your enterprises against advanced cyber threats. Buyers can choose from plenty of EDR security solutions available in the market, delivering various tools and features. However, to maintain a proper security posture, you must understand your needs and requirements before investing in a system.

Keeping all considerations in mind, make sure you choose the right vendor so that you don’t have to compromise your company’s security and valuable assets. If you are interested in other endpoint security software, please visit our free comparison guide of some leading security systems.

Which solution do you use to ensure your business security? Which capabilities do you find most useful? Let us know in the comments below!