What is EDR?

what is edr

Every endpoint is a potential gateway to an organization’s network. While traditional antivirus solutions are effective tools for blocking threats on singular or small groups of devices, they often don’t provide the visibility needed to see and act on indicators of compromise at the earliest stage possible.

That’s where endpoint detection and response (EDR) comes. EDR tools enable organizations to continuously monitor the target environment and collect valuable telemetry that can be used to triage and investigate incidents, regardless of the number of endpoints in the environment.

In this blog post, we’ll show exactly what EDR is and how it fits into an organization’s broader cybersecurity strategy.

What is EDR?

EDR is a relatively new category of cybersecurity tools designed to give organizations better visibility of their endpoints, automatically detect potential security threats and reduce incident response times.

Whereas many other cybersecurity concepts focus purely on blocking threats, EDR takes a more holistic approach to cybersecurity by capturing large amounts of data and contextual information from each endpoint to detect potential threats that may have never been seen before in the wild.

While enhanced visibility is the primary benefit of EDR, all EDR solutions also include response capabilities to respond to events in real-time. Many EDR tools, including Emsisoft EDR, use behavioral analysis and machine learning to identify suspicious patterns of behavior and contain or eliminate threats before significant damage can take place.

Despite these automated functions, manual, human talent is still required to analyze the alerts and extrapolate meaning from the computer-generated data. Smaller businesses, which may not have the resources to maintain an in-house security analyst, may wish to consider the services of a managed security service provider.

How does EDR work?

The specific capabilities of EDR can vary significantly depending on the vendor and how the system has been implemented. At a high level, however, most EDR tools provide the same core functions:

Why is EDR important?

EDR has come to be seen as an integral part of an organization’s wider security posture as cyberthreats evolve and become increasingly sophisticated.

Prevention alone doesn’t guarantee protection. While perimeter-based defenses are effective at blocking the vast majority of cyberattacks, there’s always a chance – no matter how slim – that something slips through the gaps and compromises an endpoint. And the threats that do slip through are often the most destructive.

We’ve seen this time and time again in recent years, with well-resourced ransomware groups investing significant time and resources into human-operated attacks that are carefully designed to circumvent traditional cybersecurity solutions. After compromising an organization, ransomware operators may spend days or even weeks in the target network preparing the environment to maximize the impact of an attack. These targeted, carefully planned out attacks are often specifically designed to fly under the radar of security solutions and security teams if an organization does not have good visibility across its endpoints.

Organizations should operate on the belief that an attacker will, at some point, bypass their outer walls. When that day comes, EDR is crucial for seeing what happened, how it happened and, most importantly, how to fix it.

Emsisoft EDR tools

Emsisoft is currently developing a robust set of EDR tools to help users gain better visibility of their Emsisoft-protected devices. Emsisoft EDR features a number of protection layers that work together to identify suspicious behavior, automatically block attacks and provide security teams with detailed insight into potential threats.

Emsisoft EDR protection layers include:

Best of all, Emsisoft EDR will be available for free to our business and enterprise customers, which will give smaller businesses and MSPs that serve smaller businesses access to the benefits of EDR without breaking the budget.

Emsisoft Business Security customers will receive a light version of Emsisoft EDR as a no-cost add-on to their regular subscriptions.

Emsisoft Enterprise Security customers will receive Emsisoft EDR with data retention as a no-cost add-on to their regular subscription.

Stay tuned over the coming weeks as we release more information about Emsisoft EDR.

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Senan Conrad

Senan Conrad

Senan specializes in giving readers insight into the constantly and rapidly changing world of cybersecurity. When he’s not tapping away at his keyboard, he enjoys drinking a good coffee or tinkering in his workshop.

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