An effective security operations center (SOC) relies on context-aware threat detection in a world where mean-time-to-detect and mean-time-to-respond are becoming critical success metrics. This is where XDR delivers. Unlike point solutions, XDR ingests data across an organization’s security ecosystem to centralize and correlate findings within a single console. This leads to faster investigations and more productive SecOps teams.
Analytics
Security teams face a flood of alerts and logs from multiple-point solutions. They need broad visibility and a deep understanding of the threat landscape to respond quickly and effectively. So, what is XDR security?
XDR provides this visibility by consolidating alerts and telemetry into common data formats within a single repository, offering 30 days or more of historical retention. This allows analysts to sift through the noise and find actionable events by automatically grouping, correlating, and prioritizing related activity from disparate tools.
Once a threat is identified, XDR can provide the full causality chain to help analysts quickly identify and resolve the issue. It also helps them prioritize responses to reduce MTTD and MTTR rates. This is possible because XDR leverages the same data and analytics as EDR and MDR, including threat intelligence and context, to reduce noise and accelerate detection.
Unlike SIEM (security information and event management) tools, XDR uses human-machine teaming to reduce noise and enable more effective threat behavior analysis. It uses advanced algorithms and machine learning to apply situational security context to improve visibility and assist analysts in identifying and taking action on threats. It also provides a common query capability across a repository of multivendor sensor telemetry to reduce search time, and it offers prescriptive recommendations and automated response actions to accelerate analyst-led investigations. This all adds up to a faster, more focused response that can prevent attackers from achieving their objectives and increase the risk of a costly data breach.
Detection
XDR collects and normalizes log data and telemetry from the integrated security tools, creating a continuously updated record of everything that happens in the infrastructure – such as successful and unsuccessful log-in attempts, network connections, file creations, application and device processes, authentication credentials, configuration changes, and so on. The XDR platform then uses this information to identify threats that may have breached the defenses and surface them for further investigation and remediation.
This broad visibility eliminates blind spots, enabling analysts to find and prioritize threats with greater context quickly. The platform also helps to reduce alert volume by correlating events across vendors, eliminating low-confidence or repetitive incidents, and surfacing higher-confidence events.
After a threat has been isolated, XDR platforms can help investigate it further by using forensic analytics and ‘trackbacks’ to pinpoint attacker activity. This information can then be used to update detection rules to prevent recurrences, improving the efficacy of your preventative security strategies and freeing up resources to focus on other important cybersecurity initiatives.
Correlation
A key aspect of XDR is its ability to correlate data and telemetry from multiple security layers, including endpoints, networks, servers, and cloud environments. This allows for more effective detection and forensics in the face of a growing attack surface that includes bring-your-own-device (BYOD) tools, remote work settings, and as-a-service security options.
Using advanced analytics and machine learning algorithms, XDR analyzes the vast volumes of data collected by these layers to understand the context that can be obscured by traditional solutions that rely on signature-based detection technologies. This capability enables more accurate, targeted detection of attacks that use scripting environments, compromise authorized system files, modify the registry, or utilize other unique characteristics.
This contextual understanding can also speed up incident response, which is often complicated by the need to access forensic artifacts from multiple sources. XDR centralizes this information in one place, allowing for a swift investigation of incidents and attacker paths involving a mix of email, endpoints, servers, clouds, and network components.
As with EDR and SIEM, implementing XDR requires a clear vision of your cybersecurity needs and the desired outcomes. Consider consulting with a cybersecurity expert to clarify your current security landscape and what you need to address with the solution. It is also essential to consider how XDR will integrate with your existing security ecosystem and to plan to identify potential compatibility issues or concerns.
Automation
When a threat passes the firewall or antivirus, it can quickly spread and cause much damage. XDR takes a broader approach and automatically looks at data from multiple security layers to find those threats – including email, servers, cloud workloads, and endpoints. This automates detection, freeing up resources to investigate and respond.
Unlike traditional layer-specific point solutions, XDR collects telemetry from your entire security infrastructure and feeds it into a single data lake. This enables effective correlation and analysis and provides context to alerts. This enables you to identify and prioritize threats, improve MTTD and MTTR rates, and reduce risk.
This centralized view also helps you eliminate siloed alerts, making it easier for overextended SOC teams to detect and respond to attacks. And since XDR is built to integrate with your existing tools, it prevents vendor lock-in.
Ultimately, XDR is the key to building a proactive security operations team. As a platform that can provide a unified, seamless, and effective way to unify prevention, detection, and response capabilities, it reduces your overall risk, optimizes your security investments, boosts SecOps efficiency, and ensures that you can thwart even the most sophisticated threats. It’s time to stop reacting to events as they occur and start proactively protecting your organization from the threats that matter.
