Increasing the scale of your cybersecurity is not easy.
After all, cybersecurity is not just about prevention. With cyber-attacks part of our world, organisations must be prepared to respond effectively to threat actors.
One such way of preparing and responding is through endpoint detection and response (EDR) and or Managed EDR solutions.
Organisations use EDR solutions to improve their overall security posture by identifying, responding to, and detecting cyber attacks.
EDR works via machine learning that monitors endpoints for malicious behaviours.
This blog will learn how real-time monitoring, endpoint data collection, analysis, and response play an important part in endpoint protection.
ENDPOINT PROTECTION CHALLENGES
An organisation’s security teams face many endpoint security challenges that impact their ability to protect their day to day business.
These include:
INEFFECTIVE PREVENTION
Traditional endpoint security, such as antivirus (AV), doesn’t stop all attacks.
Some AV platforms may not be able to handle the high-volume, high-sophistication modern enterprise threat environment.
Therefore, an organisation may be missing out on an endpoint protection platform tailored to give its security teams visibility of complex malware threats across all endpoint devices.
ESCALATING COMPLEXITY
Adding capabilities can lead to additional agents and tools to manage.
Increased visibility means significant amounts of data, and subsequently, expert analysis is needed to make sense of it. Therefore, you must assess if your tools are scalable to your organisation and security teams – if not, then investment in resources is needed to achieve this.
DROWNING IN ALERTS
Too many security events make prioritisation and decision making difficult.
Organisations are typically collecting security data from many different sources and devices. This data will then have to be processed, analysed and acted on from web routers to firewalls – all in real-time. For many security teams, this can be an overwhelming burden.
LACK OF QUALIFIED STAFF
One of the biggest challenges is the security implications of increased remote working and having the necessary in-house expertise and tools to respond to any suspicious behaviour. Skills shortage results in security staff being stretched thin and missing important issues.
These four challenges make monitoring and securing the endpoint more complex, driving the need for increased EDR security.
HOW WE WORK HAS CHANGED
As organisations become more dispersed and working from home becomes the norm, the endpoint has become a vital component of cybersecurity.
Take, for example, devices such as a computer or laptops.
Threat actors can take advantage of this new way of working to obtain sensitive information from a device or use its connection to the enterprise network to gain access to corporate systems and data.
It is safe to say that endpoints not protected by endpoint detection and response (EDR) will not be protected against cyber threats.
HOW YOU CAN STAY AHEAD OF THREATS
One way of staying ahead of threats is through Managed EDR Solutions via a security operations centre (SOC).
A SOC (Security Operations Center) can leverage an organisation’s investment in security controls to provide highly granular collection, correlation, analysis, detection and response capabilities.
From threat hunting and incident response to accurate reporting, a SOC is important in protecting against current cybersecurity threats and overcoming cybersecurity challenges.
HOW DO MANAGED EDR SOLUTIONS WITHIN A SOC WORK?
The goal of a Managed EDR solution is to:
- Monitoring endpoint data.
- Analyse the data to find threat trends.
- Respond to these dangers to eliminate or contain them.
- Investigate dangers using forensics and analysis.
EDR takes what was AV leading to NextGen AV and again takes functionality up another level. While EDR will detect traditional signature-based attacks, this form of attack is now massively in the minority penetration methods.
With this in mind, EDR moves away from the usual scan windows as EDR is constantly monitoring and addressing behaviour, system files, and new threats with the added protection of agreed actions to move, change or isolate the potential issue in near real-time.
Monitoring endpoint data.
Events or alerts deemed critical are defined within the SOC for an automatic increase in prioritisation, ensuring a rapid response time when issues occur. In addition, customised alerts can be defined depending on what is required by an organisation.
Detected threats are inspected and validated, checking their severity and impact.
SOC analysts, for example, can operate 24×7, taking fast, effective remediation against threats.
Analyse the data to find threat trends.
A SOC analyst’s job is to respond to alerts in real-time, undertake threat hunting activity, uncover suspicious behaviour, disrupt active attacks, and address gaps in defences before attackers can take advantage.
Threat hunting requires special expertise to identify and interpret the data for security-related events. Endpoint event data is collected and analysed to determine the root cause to stay ahead of threats.
Once the analysts are alerted, they can respond to protect the endpoint.
Respond to these dangers to eliminate or contain them.
Events or alerts deemed critical are defined within the SOC for an automatic increase in prioritisation, ensuring a rapid response time when issues occur. Going a step further, customised alerts can be defined to give an organisation a clearer picture.
SOC analysts take fast, effective remediation against threats. Detected threats are inspected and validated, checking their severity and impact. This process includes creating cases, gathering evidence, providing commentary and escalating to higher tier analysts for further review.
Investigate dangers using forensics and analysis.
Within a Managed Service, there is the continuous collection of data and generation of reports.
Reporting can detail individual threats detected on devices and applications and management and board-level analysis. Reports include metrics, threat statistics, detailed remediation activities, analyst commentary, and detection and response times.
Expert digital forensics is sometimes required to understand suspicious activities. Digital forensics, for example, focuses on recovering, investigating, and extensively analyse of digital data.
Sapphire’s endpoint security solutions
Sapphire’s managed edr solutions combine the technologies required to defend against data breaches, suspicious behaviour, and cyber-attacks.
From authentic next-generation antivirus, endpoint detection and response (EDR) to managed threat intelligence are among our suite of services is broad in scope.
Sapphire can also provide managed or stand-alone security solutions to businesses across sectors, thanks to access to technologies that provide a comprehensive security solution rather than a collection of differing point products.
