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Why Do I Need an EDR Solution?

by | Jul 4, 2019

Is an EDR Solution required for your cybersecurity strategy? Keep reading to see the benefits an EDR could provide as well as the potential benefit of outsourcing. 

What is EDR?

EDR or Endpoint Detection & Response is rather defined as solutions to store and record endpoint system-level behaviors, block malicious activities, provide contextual information, make use of different types of data analytics to identify and detect unwanted suspicious system behavior and offer remedial measures to restore all affected systems.

Today’s organizations are quite aware of the fact that determined adversaries wait patiently to evade their defenses and gain better access to networks and systems. This will only cause ‘silent failure’ of the standard security solutions as they are unable to detect such intrusions or alert you. Lack of visibility is often cited to be the major culprit for this failure. This challenge, however, can be addressed properly by EDR.

Endpoint detection and response, first coined by Anton Chuvakin, is still a new technology that hasn’t quite reached maturity yet. However, it can be best described as the endpoint security counterpart to SIEM: a solution that focuses on threat detection, investigation, and mitigation of enterprise endpoints and networks.

Endpoint detection and response’s main focus is improving IT security teams’ visibility into relevant endpoints and providing continuous monitoring. But that is the tip of the iceberg of what EDR includes.

Many EDR solutions provide:

+ Endpoint data aggregation
+ Endpoint data correlation
+ Centralized reporting and alerting
+ Behavioral analysis similar to UEBA
+ Centralized data search
+ Forensic investigations
+ Whitelisting and blacklisting for users and entities

Source

EDR Security: Know the key aspects

Effective EDR includesncludess one that includes the capabilities given below:

  • Prevention of malicious activities
  • The threat to data exploration or hunting
  • Detection of suspicious activities
  • Alert suspicious activity or triage validation
  • Incident data investigation and search

Read more about Managed EDR Security.

What is Required in an EDR Solution?

To know what solution is to be derived for the organization, it is crucial to understand EDR’s key aspects and why they are vital! It is essential to identify EDR software that can provide the ultimate protection level without requiring much investment or effort. It should also enable value to the security team, but without draining precious resources.

Some EDR solution key aspects to consider:

  • Threat Database: Telemetry will be required for effective EDR gathered from endpoints and rich in context. Only then will it be possible to use different analytic techniques to mine for attack signs.
  • Visibility: Adversary activities can be viewed with real-time visibility on all endpoints, even if the environment is breached, thereby stopping them instantly.
  • Intelligence and insight: EDR with threat intelligence integration can help provide the necessary context, which also includes details on the attacking adversary or other vital information about the attack.
  • Behavioral protection: ‘Silent failure’ is caused if only IOCs (Indicators of compromise) or signature-based methods are only relied upon, thus causing the occurrence of data breaches. Behavioral approaches will be essential for effective endpoint detection to search for IOAs (indicators of attack). This way, you will be alerted in case, of suspicious activities.
  • Cloud-based solution: Zero impacts can be ensured on endpoints with Cloud-based EDR solutions. It also assures capabilities like investigation, analysis and search are done in real time and accurately.
  • Quick response: EDR which can enable accurate and quick response to incidents can help prevent an attack before it becomes a major breach. This allows the organization to safeguard itself and get back to normalcy quickly.

Read more: Traditional Antivirus vs. EDR

Why is an EDR Solution Vital?

It is without a doubt that with sufficient resources, time and motivation, youhttps://cybriant.com/antivirus-vs-edr/r adversaries are likely to devise ways and means to tackle your defenses, irrespective of how advanced it is. Given below are a few compelling reasons why EDR is to be made part of the endpoint security strategy.

  • Adversaries can be within the network for weeks. They may also return at will: Silent failure will only cause free movement by attackers in your environment. They might create back doors to allow returning at will. It is only a third party that might identify the breach like your suppliers, customers, or law enforcement.
  • Prevention alone will not assure 100% protection: Your organization is likely to remain ignorant due to the existing endpoint security solution. The attackers will only take full advantage of this and navigate within the network freely.
  • There will be necessary access to proper and actionable intelligence to derive the response to such incidents: Besides lacking in visibility, organizations might not know what is exactly happening on the endpoints, not be in a position to record things relevant to security, to store and later recall quickly this valuable information as and when required.
  • Organizations lack the visibility required to monitor effectively endpoints: If a breach is discovered, then you are likely to spend a good amount of time trying to identify what exactly caused the situation, what exactly happened, and how it is to be fixed. This is because of the lack of visibility. But the attacker will only return in a few days before appropriate remedial measures are taken.
  • Remediation can be expensive and protracted: Organizations need to have the right capabilities. Otherwise, they will only spend weeks or even months trying to identify the type of actions to be taken. This might mean reimaging machines that could disrupt the degraded productivity, and business processes, thus leading to serious financial losses.
  • Having data is part of the solution: Adequate resources will be necessary for the security teams to analyze and derive full advantage from it, even if there is available data. It is for this reason, that security teams have become aware of the fact that even after deploying event collection products like the SIEM, they tend to face complex data issues. There also crops our various types of challenges like what to identify, scalability, and speed, including other problems, before addressing the primary objectives.

Conclusion

The EDR market is growing at a tremendous pace over the last couple of years. According to industry analysts, EDR is only expected to grow further at 45% in the coming year 2020, when compared to the 7 percent growth of the cybersecurity market. Hackers these days are gaining easy access to more advanced and sophisticated tools, it is without a doubt that cyberattacks are only increasing with time. Governments and businesses, across the globe, have realized the potentiality and significance of EDR and have started to stop this modern and crucial technology.

The fact is that cyberattacks on endpoints only are found to be increasing rapidly in complexity and numbers. With digitization continuing to transform governments, industries, and businesses, devices in huge numbers are likely to be found online. Presently, only forty million traditional endpoints out of 700+ million are said to have adopted EDR solutions.

Read More: EDR vs. SIEM

Consider Managed EDR

Could a managed EDR solution be right for you?

When you outsource the management of your Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) to Cybriant, our security analysts can:

  • Perform root cause analysis for any blocked threat or any other artifact deemed important found on an endpoint
  • Proactively search endpoints for signs of threats commonly referred to as threat hunting
  • Take decisive action when a security incident, or potential incident, is identified

Learn More

The Ultimate Guide to Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

 

PREtect: a Tiered Cybersecurity Solution

Learn More

Insight on Threat Hunting with Managed EDR and Its Effectiveness

by | Jun 20, 2019

Requirement or need results in more inventions. Threat Hunting with Managed EDR is the result of the massive cyber threat landscape we are dealing with in 2019. With the new breaches cropping up daily, there is a race going on between cyber-defenders and hackers. This has resulted in the managed security service disruption.

The advanced threats of today are designed to circumvent the defenses of conventional cyber security. This is where EDR, Endpoint Detection, and Response, have helped many organizations defend themselves.

They eliminate the advancing threats before they try compromising the data. This leverages the capabilities of automation and response. There is also endpoint protection using machine learning, application control, behavioral analysis, vulnerability protection, and other techniques enabling it to work seamlessly.

What is EDR?

EDR represents the Endpoint Detection and Response that help in detecting a threat. These are the tools focused mainly on detecting suspicious activities and investigating other hosts/endpoints’ problems.

It is a new solutions category relatively that is referred to as EDR. The EDR is a technology emerging to address the continuous need for monitoring advanced threats and responding.

How Does EDR Work?

EDR, Endpoint Detection, and Response work by monitoring the network events and endpoints. It records in a central database the information and this result in detection, further analysis, reporting, investigation, and alerting.

When you outsource the management of your Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), security analysts can:

  • Perform root cause analysis for any blocked threat or any other artifact deemed important found on an endpoint
  • Proactively search endpoints for signs of threats commonly referred to as threat hunting
  • Take decisive action when a security incident, or potential incident, is identified

Ongoing detection and monitoring are done using analytics tools. These help in identifying the tasks that promote the security overall state. It is done by deflecting common attacks. It also facilitates quick identification of attacks ongoing, if any, including external attacks and insider threats, besides enabling rapid response towards the detected attacks.

Read more: Traditional Antivirus vs. EDR

Of course, the fact stays that not all the EDR tools work typically or offer the same capabilities in the available space.  Some tools of EDR help in performing more analysis on agents, while some perform backend data analysis through a management console.  On the other hand, a few differences in the collection of scope and time may also differ in their integrating ability with the providers of threat intelligence. However, all the tools of EDR perform essential functions such as:

  • Providing means to monitor continuously and to perform analysis to identify readily
  • Work with tools to detect instantly and prevent advanced or advancing threats.

 EDR capabilities

 The capabilities of the EDR tool reveal a broader security function set. This is a tool offering EDR apart from application control, network access control, device encryption, and control, data encryption, privileged control, and a lot more capabilities.

The EDR tools are appropriate for endpoint visibility even in multitudes. Thus, endpoint visibility falls into three categories:

  • Data E
  • Data search and investigation
  • Detection of suspicious activity

Most EDR tools tackle the response portion of these capabilities. They make use of sophisticated analytics that helps in identifying the patterns and also in detecting the anomalies such as unique processes, unrecognized or strange connections, or even risky activity marks appearing on baseline comparisons. The endpoint detection and response, EDR tools permit user-led analysis of data to be done manually, though this can be an automated process such that the anomalies will trigger alerts when instant action or investigating further is required.

EDR, Endpoint detection, and response is a budding field, though the capabilities of EDR are becoming quickly an essential element for any enterprise security solution. There may be enterprises or companies with a requirement for advanced threat protection and they can consider the EDR very well as it features an in-demand capability. There are continuous benefits as it offers visibility into the data activity at all times. This makes the EDR tool very valuable and its response immediately ensures the security component of any enterprise.

Related: The Ultimate Guide to Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

EDR solutions features include:

  • Detecting ability and preventing hidden exploiting complex processes than some simple pattern or signature.
  • Data collection enables the creation of a repository that will be used for analytics.
  • Automation of alerts and defensive responses on detecting an attack by turning off specific processes.
  • Threat intelligence including visibility of processes, applications, communications, and endpoints to detect nasty or spiteful activities and to abridge security incident response.
  • Forensic capabilities and this is because if you find an attacker is already inside, there is a need to plunge into their activities to comprehend their movements so that the breach impact may be minimized.

Threat Hunting with Managed EDR

Endpoint Detection and Response, EDR is highly powerful to detect attacks. EDR offers rapid actions in response as required enabling to contain the threat immediately. However, if you plan to proactively hunt a threat, it is not easy to do it all alone. That’s where threat hunting with Managed EDR is incredibly helpful.

Understanding the EDR platform’s categorization capabilities and automated detection is required to bypass successfully an adversary present on the systems. Hackers are very intelligent and they mostly get a better hand. Now it is the role of the hunters to look for granular logs collected by the EDR solution as the endpoint activity. These logs may be really powerful while hunting for historical events or adversary behaviors while leveraging. Such hunting type is the widely used technique for hunting known as ‘Historical Search’, and this is the primary technique.

Regrettably, most EDR solutions are less effective in threat hunting platforms and so there is a need for additional analytics solutions. This is needed to perform hunting to understand post-compromise behaviors and it is done using more advanced analysis. Thus, you may bank upon EDR as a data analytics solution or a log source.

The Financial Industry’s Biggest Threat – Click Here to Read More

Role of Managed EDR

Managed EDR refers to the agents monitoring and proactively hunting continuously for threats, known and unknown in each of your endpoints. Thus, they provide complete visibility of potential threats. As the analytics of the advanced endpoint identifies suspicious behavior, the AI-driven platform examines the threat. With the validation of the threat, instant action is taken to contain the endpoint or points compromised, the threat is resolved, and the endpoints are protected from similar attacks in the future.

Benefits of Managed EDR

Detects identified and unidentified threats

Managed EDR service is not focused only on identifying known threats. The advanced analytics of EDRs identify even the unknown previous threats and contain them, besides defining the attack’s root cause.

Stop the attacks in-progress

Managed EDR service is of immense help as it monitors the endpoint behavior continuously and it also uncovers the unidentified previously attacked campaigns even before they attain their objective.

High-speed response

Detection and response services are done under one platform. This also is combined with advanced machine learning featuring skilled security staff that immediately find a solution to any security incident the moment it is identified to be cutting coordination time.

Conclusion

In today’s massive threat landscape, it’s best to keep all your endpoints covered. And having the ability to stop a malware attack before it happens is a benefit of EDR. When you outsource the management of EDR to a trusted cybersecurity firm, you allow for 24/7 threat detection. Threat hunting with managed EDR is a vital aspect of a thorough cybersecurity strategy.

Consider Threat Hunting with Managed EDR

Learn More

Can Traditional Enterprise Antivirus Protect from Unknown Threats?

by | Feb 27, 2019

Hackers and cybercriminals have quickly outpaced traditional enterprise antivirus tools. Endpoint detection and response (EDR) security tools provide antivirus features but can help protect an organization’s modern attack surfaces.

Legacy enterprise antivirus also fails to accommodate the modern enterprise’s IT environment. In the heyday of antivirus solutions—not coincidentally also the earliest days of computers—few business processes relied on digital actions or interconnectivity to function optimally. Enterprises didn’t have a digital network perimeter to protect, as endpoints were generally treated and managed individually. Enterprise antivirus solutions were installed on each endpoint with no central administration and were then forgotten about until it was time for their renewal.

As more enterprises undergo a digital transformation—becoming digitized and taking advantage of new online business programs such as cloud storage—the more the decentralized cybersecurity protocol fails to properly secure the IT environment. With the introduction of the mobile revolution and the remote employee—not to mention the increase of computers in everyday enterprise interactions and business processes—the enterprise’s IT perimeter is constantly expanding.

A digital perimeter of this size can be assailed from multiple entryways and attack vectors simultaneously, requiring a consistent and coordinated cybersecurity platform to ensure the highest level of protection. Endpoint security can provide centralized security that compiles security alerts from throughout the IT environment and updates every endpoint’s cyber-protection simultaneously. Only with this cybersecurity can your IT security team be aware of what threats are assailing your enterprise and from where.

In the battle of endpoint security vs legacy antivirus, the former certainly proves superior to the latter for enterprises looking to secure their endpoints against modern hacking tools and tactics.

Source

Many organizations are not comfortable removing their antivirus product completely. Very often, clients will utilize managed EDR security services to determine just how much their current AV has missed. Managed EDR Security solutions can typically augment or replace traditional antivirus security solutions. You’ll have the ability to detect and prevent hidden exploit processes that are more complex than a simple signature or pattern and evade traditional antivirus. Gartner coined the term EDR back in 2013.

Read more, “7 Reasons You Need Managed EDR Security”

Enterprise Antivirus: Unknown Threats

An enterprise’s attack surface is complex and ever-changing, and that’s partly because of the constantly evolving modern threat landscape.

Many successful modern cyber attacks stem from previously unknown threats. Because legacy enterprise antivirus solutions often only block known attacks, they are being rendered increasingly ineffective.

Modern organizations will need to be prepared to combat unknown threats with proactive, preventive technology. With the power of AI, unknown attacks can be identified and stopped before they cause harm, actively reducing the enterprise attack surface and saving a business both time and money.

Do you have a handle on the vulnerabilities attackers are increasingly pursuing, and what it takes to protect them?

enterprise antivirus

Legacy enterprise antivirus is no match for unknown threats. Organizations cannot wait for the latest update or a threat to first be discovered, identified, and added to AV. Signature- and behavioral-based solutions that use a defined list are reactive and suited only to block yesterday’s attacks. Today the most dangerous threats are unknown—i.e., custom, brand-new (zero-day), or polymorphic exploits and payloads.

Read More: Traditional Antivirus vs. EDR

To stay ahead of attackers, organizations need dynamic, proactive security that can identify previously unknown threats and harmful payloads before they can execute.

Other common attack surface tactics and how to defend against them

Memory Exploits: Potential file executions from possible unknown malware need to be analyzed in milliseconds before executing in the computing device’s memory. A malicious payload may begin with a benign operation to fool security measures. Analysis should be rapid and deep enough to see downstream malicious actions.

Unauthorized Applications: Application control capabilities are a must as the next line of defense on purpose-designated servers and fixed-function devices. These need constant monitoring to prevent unauthorized apps from running or unauthorized use of a system.

Cloud Assets and Infrastructures: The cloud must not be a weak link in your attack surface. Cloud environments need to be protected from misconfiguration. The same security from on-prem resources must be extended to the cloud to provide consistent protection.

Using an AI-driven EDR solution, Cybriant offers a Managed EDR service that delivers self-contained, automated, machine-learning threat detection modules which uncover threats that would be nearly impossible to find with static behavior rules.

Enterprise Antivirus: Replace with EDR

There is no doubt that organizations stand to benefit from EDR technologies, which enable faster response and remediation of security incidents. According to 451 Research, the right EDR components can greatly augment and complement existing prevention-based security postures. Read the 451 Research report: Expanding Machine Learning Applications on the Endpoint.

Keep pace with the threat landscape. Modern attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) are quickly outpacing legacy antivirus products, rendering them less effective over time. The same will hold for EDR solutions that rely on rules alone. See how AI-powered EDR compares with the traditional EDR approach.

enterprise antivirus

An organization’s attack surface includes all elements that can be used by an attacker to gain control of systems, networks, software, users, and assets. As much as 97% of all malware now uses a polymorphic technique to avoid detection by legacy AV. 1 The attack surface is constantly changing — new users, new systems or software, network changes, and security changes. To gain access, an attacker will look to exploit the weakest link in the attack surface. In an ideal world, security teams would simply reduce their attack surface to virtually zero. However, in today’s hyperscale enterprise environment, where new assets are added as demand dictates, it’s unrealistic to assume that enough action can be taken by the IT team to achieve this.

Attackers Seek the Weakest Link

Organizations want to minimize their attack surface, but realize that the attack surface is constantly growing and changing. Legacy AV is no match for unknown threats. Organizations cannot wait for the latest update or a threat to first be discovered, identified, and added to AV. Signature- and behavioral-based solutions that use a defined list are reactive and suited only to block yesterday’s attacks.

Today the most dangerous threats are unknown—i.e., custom, brand-new (zero-day), or polymorphic exploits and payloads.

To stay ahead of attackers, organizations need dynamic, proactive security that can identify previously unknown threats and harmful payloads before they can execute. It’s time to focus on the bigger picture. An organization’s attack surface is the total sum of all vulnerabilities in a device or network that an attacker can exploit to gain access and compromise the system or environment.

The aim is to keep the attack surface as small as possible and to actively manage all potential areas of vulnerability. But in today’s hyper-scale enterprise environment, where new assets are added as business demand requires, the strategy for managing the attack surface has become ever more unwieldy. Here, we review some of the considerations and best practices for managing your attack surface. Potential file executions from possible unknown malware need to be analyzed in milliseconds before they have an opportunity to execute in the computing device’s memory. A malicious payload may begin with a benign operation to fool security measures. Analysis should be rapid and deep enough to see downstream malicious actions. Application control capabilities are a must as the next line of defense on purpose-designated servers and fixed-function devices. These need constant monitoring to prevent unauthorized apps from running or unauthorized use of a system.

The cloud must not be a weak link in your attack surface. Cloud environments need to be protected from misconfiguration. The same security from on-prem resources needs to be extended to the cloud and provide consistent protection.

Reduce Your Attack Surface with AI-Driven Security Solutions

It’s time to say goodbye to traditional EDR approaches that don’t actively reduce risk and are only capable of slowly reacting and responding to attacks after they’ve been executed.

With evolved, AI-driven Managed EDR security, you will reduce the overall volume of security alerts and cut down on the amount of time required to remediate.

Prevention vs. Detect and Respond

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Top-Clicked Phishing Email Subject Lines of Q4 2018

by | Jan 30, 2019

Wondering what the top phishing email subject lines from Q4 of 2018? KnowBe4 reports on this every quarter. Take a look at the infographic, you may be surprised to see what hackers are using!

Here at Cybriant, we are no longer surprised to see the phishing email subject lines that are our users click on. Even the best, most highly trained employees can be tricked. It seems you have to be suspicious of each and every email that comes into your inbox. 

Through our PREtect ADVANCED service, we have the ability to stop any malicious activity before it can execute. 

PREtect ADVANCED is the second level of our tiered cybersecurity service, adding next-generation endpoint technology which utilizes AI and machine learning to insulate endpoint devices from malicious code while capturing and analyzing forensic data which Cybriant’s Security Engineers can then utilize to further isolate and remedy the threat.

PREtect ADVANCED features Endpoint Protection Including:

  • True Zero-Day Protection
  • AI-Driven Malware Prevention
  • Script Management
  • Device Usage Policy Enforcement
  • Memory Exploitation Detection and PRevention
  • Application Control for Fixed -Function Devices

Top Phishing Email Subject Lines

Even with this amazing service, you should always train your employees to know what to look for. According to the infographic below, the top general phishing email subject lines are: 

  1. Password Check Required Immediately
  2. Your Order with Amazon/Your Amazon Order Receipt
  3. Announcement: Change in Holiday Schedule
  4. Happy Holidays! Have a Drink On Us.
  5. Have a Drink on Us
  6. De-Activation of [[EMAIL]] in Process
  7. Wire Department
  8. Revised Vacation & Sick Time Policy
  9. Last Reminder: Please respond immediately
  10. UPS Label Delivery: 1ZBE312TNY00005011

From KnowBe4, the top security awareness training company:

KnowBe4 reports every quarter on the top-clicked phishing emails. Here we have the results for Q4 2018. We track three different categories: general email subjects, those related to social media and ‘in the wild’ attacks. The results come from a combination of the simulated phishing email subject lines used by our customers as well as from the millions of users that click our no-charge Phish Alert Button to report suspicious emails to their IT Incident Response team.

Trends That Persisted Throughout 2018

In reviewing the Q4 2018 most clicked subject lines, trends were easily identified; five subject line categories appeared quarter-over-quarter throughout 2018, including:

  • Deliveries
  • Passwords
  • Company Policies
  • Vacation
  • IT Department (in-the-wild)

Additionally, three “in-the-wild subject lines” were clicked three out of four quarters and included Amazon, Wells Fargo and Microsoft as keywords.

The Subject Lines Tell Us Users Are Concerned About Security

“Clicking an email is as much about human psychology as it is about accomplishing a task,” said Perry Carpenter, chief evangelist and strategy officer at KnowBe4. “The fact that we saw ‘password’ subject lines clicked four out of four quarters shows us that users are concerned about security.

Likewise, users clicked on messages about company policies and deliveries each quarter showing a general curiosity about issues that matter to them. Knowing this information gives corporate IT departments tangible data to share with their users and to help them understand how to think before they click.”

Here is the full InfoGraphic of top subjects in all categories for the last quarter, the top 10 most-clicked general email subjects in Q4 2018, and most common ‘in the wild’ attacks during that period.

Read the full report here. 

 

What is Managed EDR Security?

by | Jan 9, 2019

Managed EDR Security is more important now than it ever has been. Here are our top guides and recommendations for managed endpoint detection and response.

Update: As technologies have evolved, our EDR service is now called Managed Detection and Remediation. Find out more at cybriant.com/mdr.

EDR, or endpoint detection and response, is a type of security software that helps protect individual devices on a network. It does this by monitoring activity and looking for patterns that may indicate an attempted or successful breach. If a suspicious event is detected, EDR can take action to block it or contain it.

EDR systems are typically deployed as part of a broader security solution, such as an intrusion detection and prevention system (IDPS) or a managed security service. They can also be used on their own, though this is less common.

EDR software is designed to complement other security solutions, not replace them. It’s important to have multiple layers of security in place to protect against the full range of threats.

EDR, or endpoint detection and response, is a type of security software that helps protect individual devices on a network. It does this by monitoring activity and looking for patterns that may indicate an attempted or successful breach. If a suspicious event is detected, EDR can take action to block it or contain it. EDR systems are typically deployed as part of a broader security solution, such as an intrusion detection and prevention system (IDPS) or a managed security service. They can also be used on their own, though this is less common.

What is EDR Security? 

EDR Security is a type of cyber security that uses EDR technology to protect devices on a network. EDR systems are deployed as part of a larger security solution, such as an IDPS or managed security service. EDR software is designed to complement other security solutions, not replace them. EDR Security is an important layer of security that should be used in conjunction with other security solutions to protect against the full range of threats.

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) is defined as a set of cybersecurity tools that are designed to detect and remove any malware or any other form of malicious activity on any endpoints connected to your network.

Endpoints are attackers’ favorite targets. They are the weakest link in your company’s network. It was recently reported that the WannaCry attack exposed the vulnerabilities of 230,000 endpoints around the world. To this end, installing an endpoint detection and response or EDR is a VITAL aspect of cybersecurity for every company that needs to be proactive to modern-day threats.

Endpoint Detection and Response Definition or EDR Definition

EDR or Endpoint Detection and Response is primarily a technology that brings a proactive approach to the issues of cybersecurity. Most traditional products are reactive to security threats—that is not the case with EDR. EDR security does a great job at monitoring endpoints in real time, hunting for threats that have found their way into the company’s defenses. You’ll also get greater flexibility as regards the happenings on endpoints and even the mechanism to help mitigate the attacks.

One of the common tactics synonymous with cybercriminals is the compromise of endpoints, which enables them to create a foothold on the network. With rapid detection and subsequent response to such attacks targeting hosts— laptops, desktops, and servers– you can be a step ahead in securing your IT infrastructure.

What is Managed Detection and Response?

Managed detection and response security is a service that exists because organizations need resources to take into cognizance risks and also improve their ability to detect and respond to threats.

Companies have a set of tools and procedures that they employ in the detection and response to threats. But all MDR come with similar characteristics:

  • MDR is more concerned with threat detection, instead of compliance.
  • Services are delivered by using the tools and technologies of the provider—but deployed on the premises of users.
  • MDR is highly dependent on security event management and also advanced analytics
  • MDR is associated with incident validation and remote response.

Why Choose Managed Endpoint Security?

With the level of cybersecurity breaches, your company’s ability to detect and respond to threats is critical. Lacking the complete picture of what is going on across your environment, might put you in a vulnerable position when a threat surfaces.

Managed EDR Security Benefits

  • Improving detection capabilities—not just network-based monitoring
  • Identify threats beyond traditional preventative security
  • Finding the root cause of attacks quickly and effectively
  • Looking out for threats with suspicious behavioral patterns
  • Separating infected hosts from a network

Endpoint Detection and Response Vendors (EDR Vendors)

Some of the more well-known EDR vendors include SentinelOne, CrowdStrike, Carbon Black, and Symantec. Each endpoint detection and response vendor is a company that provides software or services to help organizations detect, investigate, and respond to malicious activity on their networks.

Cybriant utilizes the SentinelOne platform which specializes in the detection and prevention of ransomware attacks. Together, we offer a 24×7 service along with a platform that can identify malicious activity, including ransomware, and automatically take action to stop it. Plus, our security analysts can stop any malicious activity in its tracks before it can do any harm.

What Is The Difference Between EDR and Antivirus?

Technology is increasingly becoming sophisticated, and cybercriminals are also getting better at their game to keep up. Cyber threats are evolving, and antivirus no longer has the same level of protection it once did—detecting suspicious activity and also protecting your device against malware. Cybercriminals are deploying advanced threats to get ahead in this game. Verizon’s 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report puts it that over half of the breaches are malware related, and after one year, their 2018 Data Breach Investigations Report records only 31% as the included malware.

It then becomes expedient to actively monitor behavioral events at the endpoint level, which is now the new standard. Using EDR security in conjunction with AV allows you to detect abnormal behavior, including an excellent indicator of compromise which the AV solution is not capable of detecting.

Read more: Traditional Antivirus vs. EDR. 

3 Types of Attacks That AntiVirus Will not detect

  1. Zero-day attacks

It is as good as it sounds; it opens up as soon as the weakness is established in AV protection. Hence, before a fix is done, it is exploited. AV may detect a malware signature (continuous sequence bytes that is within the malware), but with a zero-day attack manipulation, sneaking past traditional AV is an easy feat.

  1. Ransomware attacks

Ransomware attacks deal with software downloaded with the help of an unsuspecting victim through an email attachment that has been infected—like a Microsoft word document. AV cannot protect against ransomware; sometimes it is difficult for the signature of malware to be recognized.

  1. Fileless malware attacks

Fileless malware attacks happen on existing Windows tools instead of malicious software that is installed on the victim’s computer. As a result, the AV has no signature to pick on.

There are even more advanced threats that antivirus will not detect. Read more here. 

Why is EDR Important? 

Effective EDR includes the capabilities given below:

  • Prevention of malicious activities
  • The threat to data exploration or hunting
  • Detection of suspicious activities
  • Alert suspicious activity or triage validation
  • Incident data investigation and search

Read more

Managed EDR solutions are used to detect and assess any suspicious activity on the network endpoints. It is becoming a preferred resource for most enterprises for ensuring their network security. It’s important to consider EDR as well as SIEM, and they work better together.

The reasons which make EDR important for businesses are as follows:

Proactive Approach
With the increasing dependence of technology on businesses, the digital perimeter of companies is expanding very fast. The approach of reactive management of cyber threats and security issues for the network is no longer a prudent strategy.

The current approach is to identify cyber threats and potential attacks before they occur and take remedial actions immediately. EDR solutions are best suited for this approach of proactive management of cybersecurity threats to your network.

Why is EDR important? It can help you detect even malware that has polymorphic codes that keep evolving on its own and take suitable corrective action. Traditional antiviruses are no longer suitable for providing security to your network as hackers have become smarter and devised malware and threats which can easily bypass antiviruses.

Better Data Monitoring and Management
EDR solutions are designed in such a manner that they can collect and monitor data on each of the endpoints on a network. They collect and monitor data about potential cybersecurity threats to the network. The data is collected and stored in the form of a database on endpoints.

The stored data can be further analyzed for determining the root cause of any security issues and also for detecting any potential cyber threat. Collection, monitoring, and analysis of such high-quality forensic data also help in preparing a superior incident response and management strategies.

Read more about Why Is EDR Important. 

Regardless of the kind of malware or virus introduced, EDR security cares less—only cares about the existing behavior. If behavior indicates suspicious activity, EDR will immediately send an alert having identified it. The monitoring of indicators that give a sense of malicious activity will continue to protect against further threats.

AV protection cannot be relegated to the background, but combining it with EDR gives a depth approach as regards your overall security apparatus.

Managed EDR Security to boost Existing Security

MDR is offered to augment the existing security infrastructure and also contain threats that could bypass traditional control. Threats such as network attacks, fileless malware, targeted attacks, etc., are fashioned in such a way that it is difficult to detect.

Most organizations are more concerned with where the threat enters and exit the network. But most often than not the lateral movements of threat is less attended to when they enter the system.

Managed EDR security does not in any way replaces the traditional ant-virus software; it supplements it—works together with anti-virus, blocking obvious threat indicators. These types of security threats cannot be tamed by conventional security controls, especially those associated with continuous detection and also response. EDR cannot block threats but can carry out root cause analysis and possibly identify the devices that have been infected.

Typical use cases for Managed Endpoint Detection and Response

  • Identifying and subsequent blockage of Malicious Executables
  • Control of executing scripts– where, how, and who
  • Managing the use of USB devices and preventing the use of unauthorized devices
  • Disabled attackers’ ability to use various techniques of fileless malware attack
  • Prevention of the malicious email attachment
  • Identify and prevent zero-day attacks successfully.

Learn more about Managed Detection and Response. 

Merging SIEM with EDR

Organizations are gradually moving from SIEM (Security Information and Event Management)–even the security providers—to EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response). However, it may not be the best decision to take regarding the security of your IT infrastructure. These technologies are quite similar but different fundamentally. The EDR may be a fantastic technology, but it does not suffice for replacing SIEM.

To speedily understand the full scope of an attack, one could merge SIEM and EDR and monitor from a single console.

Why should we deploy multiple tools—whose integrations barely happen—if we don’t have to?

In today’s world, traditional SIEMs which depend on logs and related correlation rules find it challenging to detect sophisticated attacks. The combination of logs, endpoint data, network packets, etc., can go a long way to automate threat detection and avail the security team of the opportunity to investigate advanced attacks. Several SIEM is without this combination or better still, they come up with a weak add-on and assume they have a complete solution. This is barely sufficient for your infrastructure and you may soon find yourself in an uncompromising state.

As cyber threats continue to manifest in different ways, your security strategy should be fine-tuned to conform to current challenges. While endpoint security may be vital to your IT architecture, there is a need to ensure that emerging threats and unwanted applications are not jeopardizing your company’s reputation or profits. Having a system that detects and responds rapidly to modern-day threats is indeed undebatable!

Read More (+endpoint +detection +and +response) – 7 Reasons You Need Managed EDR Security

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7 Reasons You Need Managed EDR Security

by | Sep 4, 2018

By using managed EDR Security solutions with AI and machine learning technology, your organization will be able to prevent malware attacks before they can execute. Here’s how. 

edr securityImagine. You just started a new job as the Global Information Security Director for a large multi-national organization. Your first recommendation – adding an Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) security technology – was implemented over the weekend. The first report is available from the initial scan. Holy #$%^. You have just discovered an active threat to your organization. You have two realizations:

  1. You are a HERO. You are going to save the company from a cyber threat that the legacy antivirus completely missed.
  2. You have no idea what to do next. You know this is going to require an overwhelming amount of work to eliminate these threats. And you don’t know where to begin.

By using a managed EDR security service, you’ll have a team of security experts that would have already discovered and eliminated the threat. When you outsource the management of your EDR, a team of experienced security analysts will be able to perform a root cause analysis for any blocked threat or any other artifact deemed important found on an endpoint. The team will proactively search endpoints for signs of threats commonly referred to as threat hunting and take decisive action when security or potential incident is identified.

What is Managed EDR Security?

Here are 7 reasons to consider Managed EDR Security services:

  1. Discover what traditional Antivirus has missed

Many organizations are not comfortable removing their antivirus product completely. Very often, clients will utilize managed EDR security services to determine just how much their current AV has missed. Managed EDR Security solutions can typically augment or replace traditional antivirus security solutions. You’ll have the ability to detect and prevent hidden exploit processes that are more complex than a simple signature or pattern and evade traditional antivirus. Gartner coined the term EDR back in 2013. 

  1. Improved Threat Intelligence with AI

It’s possible to use the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to block malware infections with additional security controls that safeguard against script-based, fileless, memory, and external device-based attacks. Unlike traditional endpoint security products that rely on signatures and behavior analysis to detect threats in the environment, our managed EDR solution uses AI, not signatures, to identify and block known and unknown malware from running on endpoints. Also, it delivers prevention against common and unknown (zero-day) threats without a cloud connection and continuously protects the endpoint without disrupting the end-user.

  1. Increased visibility throughout endpoints.

With Managed EDR security, you can detect malicious activities and simplify security incident response on endpoints including applications, processes, and communications. It’s possible to stop attacks before they cause harm, vs allowing attacks to happen, then clean up the mess.  By reducing the number of endpoint security products deployed on the endpoint, customers gain operational efficiencies by not having to manage signatures, policies, or deployments of additional protection.

Related The Ultimate Guide to Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

  1. Alerts and defensive responses when an actual threat is detected

When you work with Cybriant, our analysts can immediately investigate any endpoint in your environment to determine if the activity is malicious. Real attack data is an invaluable source of intelligence for your security team. Without deploying sandbox technology, our analysts can get a glimpse into the mind of the attacker and how they try to compromise your endpoint.

  1. Forensic capabilities

Once an attacker is inside, you need the ability to take a deep dive into their activities, so you can understand their movements and minimize the impact of the breach. When sensitive data has been compromised, the livelihood of a business is at stake. The longer it takes to discover and remediate the cause of a breach, the greater the chance of damage to the company’s reputation and business operations. To limit the amount of exposure and prevent further breaches, organizations need a forensic team dedicated to piecing together any evidence and understanding the scope of the breach.

15 Shocking Stats About Endpoint Security Solutions

  1. Data collection to build a repository for analytics

With managed EDR security, you have a team of endpoint security experts not only utilizing next-generation tools on your behalf but are also feeding back information to your organization on how to respond to alerts.  Our security team brings together endpoint analysts, incident responders, forensics experts, and security engineers. They understand what normal endpoint activity should look like, when a more thorough investigation is required when to raise the alarm, and how to respond.

  1. Consolidated Endpoint Security Efforts

Endpoint security has evolved over the decades into several reactive technologies to attempt to stay ahead of the constantly changing threat landscape and provide protection, but today a new kind of endpoint security technology can help reduce the number of overall technologies deployed on the endpoint.

The use of artificial intelligence to protect the endpoint enables organizations to reduce their deployed technologies because the effectiveness rate is superior to traditional signature-based security.

How many different technologies are deployed on your users’ endpoints? How many full-time employees does it take to manage those technologies? By reducing the number of layers of security on your endpoints, you’ll find that you see an improved level of security. Deploying more technology or software on the endpoint will have an impact on system performance.

Traditional endpoint security solutions utilize massive amounts of CPU (50-70%) and memory (100s of MB). As a result, end-user productivity is heavily impacted. On average, if an employee loses 10 minutes a day due to slow PC performance caused by traditional endpoint security, the loss in productivity equals about $1,000 per employee over a year.

By using a low-footprint solution and outsourcing the management of that EDR security solution, you are improving the security as well as the user experience. Consider Managed EDR from Cybriant today. 

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