2017’s notorious WannaCry attack—affecting more than 230,000 endpoints across the globe—is a great example that endpoints are a favorite target of attackers.
EDR endpoint security solutions can help protect and secure your organization’s endpoints but there may be limitations in what type of activity they can keep track of and in what type of malware or cyberattacks they can identify. As such, it’s crucial that you have a secured, well-maintained EDR solution in place.
What is EDR endpoint security?
EDR or Endpoint Detection and Response is a solution that records and preserves endpoint-system-level behaviors, according to Gartner. Its ultimate goal is to identify suspicious system behavior, block malicious activity, provide contextual information, and determine resolution suggestions to restore affected systems by utilizing various data analytics techniques.
An ideal EDR endpoint security tool should feature the following capabilities:
Investigation and incident data search
Suspicious activity validation or alert triage
Suspicious activity diagnosis
Data exploration or threat hunting
Malicious activity prevention
How does EDR endpoint security work?
EDR tools run by delivering real-time continuous and comprehensive visibility into what is going on with your endpoints. After which, behavioral analysis and actionable intelligence are implemented to endpoint data to prevent an incident from progressing.
EDR endpoint security solutions also work by keeping track of endpoint and network events, as well as recording the information in a central database. This is where further analysis, investigation, detection, recording and alerting take place.
Analytic tools are used to facilitate ongoing monitoring and detection. These tools single out tasks that can improve an organization’s overall state of security through identification, responsiveness, and deflection of internal threats and external attacks.
Why is EDR endpoint security important?
Attackers are always on the move to devise a way to get through an organization’s defenses, no matter how advanced. This alone is a major reason why implementing a robust EDR endpoint security is essential.
If that still doesn’t convince you to invest in a reliable EDR tool, here are more reasons why it’s important:
Prevention doesn’t ensure 100 percent protection
When your organization’s prevention measures fail, your entire network can be left in the dark by its current EDR solution. This is a great opportunity for attackers to lurk and navigate inside your network.
Enemies can be inside your network for long periods of time and return at will
Silent failure allows adversaries to linger in your environment and find a way to create back doors that will give them access anytime. It’s often too late for instances like this to be detected, which are only typically noticed by a third party, such as law enforcement or your customers or suppliers.
Organizations don’t have the visibility needed to monitor endpoints effectively
When an organization lacks the visibility required to spot and understand what happened when an attack took place, it can spend months trying to resolve the incident—wasting valuable resources and time.
Finding a resolution can take time and be costly
Organizations can spend weeks trying to identify what actions to take, which can disrupt business operations, decrease productivity, and ultimately cause significant financial loss.
What to Look for in an EDR Endpoint Security Solution
It’s vital to choose an EDR endpoint security solution that can provide you with the highest level of protection, which only requires the least amount of effort and investment.
Here are the key features of EDR you should look for:
Visibility
Threat Database
Behavioral Protection
Insight and Intelligence
Fast Response
Best Practices to Improve EDR Endpoint Security
There are a few considerations and key practices that your organization can apply to improve and strengthen your endpoint detection and response strategy:
Focus on endpoints and users
Users who leverage endpoints are often one of the weakest links involved with EDR endpoint security processes. As such, it’s crucial to include user training and awareness education in an organization’s security system. Your company should establish a foundation of user education and awareness that encompasses protection, detection, and response strategies.
Consider integrating EDR with root cause analysis
There have been “talks” surrounding endpoint detection, protection, and response, as well as the ability to build on this with root cause analysis. Put simply, it’s time to consider integrating your tools that guard against and identify potential threats with strategies that will help you identify how these threats happen and how you can prevent them in the future.
EDR endpoint security requires the right resources
Endpoint detection and response solutions should be incorporated into larger, overarching security considerations. This means that you also have to utilize the right and reliable resources, as well as tools.
Final Thoughts
EDR endpoint security solutions are in high demand, especially for enterprises requiring advanced threat protection. Still, it’s important to implement an endpoint detection and response strategy that the whole of your business can rely on, regardless of size. This is essential since the benefits you can get from continuous visibility into every data activity results in an improved EDR that can be a valuable component of your organization’s security stack.
Comodo EDR Solution can monitor endpoints in real-time and identify vulnerabilities to quickly mitigate threats. Call us now to speak with our security experts.
