Traditional cybersecurity approaches are no longer effective in dealing with advanced threats. After the pandemic, remote work culture became standard everywhere around. But this culture boosted up endpoints into an organization network.
Today, your employee can access your system from any device, anytime, since you must offer them a protective work environment and keep your system exploit-free. Thereby, you look for a solution.
Many options surface on the web during the search, such as IDS and EDR. Since you don’t want to get them both, you start wondering what’s the difference. Or Whether EDR is an IDS? If that’s what you are thinking, let’s continue reading and uncover all details below:
Explained
Before we start comparing both security solutions, it’s vital to understand what they are and how they work. So, let’s find out their key details.
What is IDS
It stands for Intrusion Detection System. It is a comprehensive security solution that includes automated software and cyber expert. This system monitors the network for malicious access or unauthorized access. As a result, it plays a vital role in protecting the overall network.
How is IDS Deployed?
Here are two common ways this system is deployed.
Host-Based IDS (HIDS)
A host-specific system protects a single device or endpoint from external and internal threats. It observes processes and files and inspects the system log. It offers your security team excellent visibility into a host machine. You can find complete data on host’s Internet through it. However, it doesn’t provide a comprehensive threat context.
Network-Based IDS (NIDS
It is deployed on the network side with the sole purpose of protecting the entire IT Infrastiurcutr. It offers significant visibility since your team can keep an eye on the complete flow of traffic. They get more context and an excellent ability to detect network-wide threats. However, they don’t have any internal information and data about the host or any machine connected to the network.
The best cybersecurity strategy includes both NIDS and HIDS because one system alone isn’t helpful and won’t help you protect the organization from all kinds of intrusion.
IDS Methods
Here are some methods an IDS system uses to identify intrusions.
Signature Based Detection
This method uses fingerprints of known threats to identify existing malware, viruses, trojans, etc. As soon as the code of a file matches with a known threat, it generates an alert so that the system administrator can look into this security event.
Although it is an excellent method to find threats, it’s only limited to identifying known threats. It won’t let you prevent zero-day threats.
Anomaly Identification
Some advanced IDS relies on this method, creating a model of normal behavior by looking into the network so that if anything feels abnormal or out-of-ordinary, it can detect it.
This method effectively deals with the zero-day attack and known behavior. However,’ this system has a big problem with keeping the baseline updated. If there is no accurate model of normal behavior, your IT Team has to deal with multiple false alerts. It’s a hectic thing to handle.
Hybrid Technique
You can also find a hybrid model; it combines signature and anomaly detection, allowing you to detect all kinds of threats.
What is an EDR?
It is an acronym for Endpoint Detection and Response System. It is a comprehensive enterprise endpoint security system designed to detect, prevent, analyze, and respond to known and unknown threats.
How EDR Words?
You can install an EDR on your endpoint and gain visibility. It uses signature-based detection, machine learning, and behavior analytics tools. Once this system is installed, you can monitor all the endpoints and keep an eye on activities.
When malicious activity is detected, it sends alerts and responds to threats by isolating an endpoint. You can prevent an attack easily through this software.
Let’s Compare
No, it is not an Intrusion detection system. It’s far more advanced than IDS, which only detects and sends an alert. The endpoint detection and response tool is capable of doing other things too. For example, when you get an Xcitium EDR, it quarantines an infected endpoint. As a result, it doesn’t spread viruses and malware inside your network.
EDR works like IDS regarding detection and alerts, but it offers visibility into all endpoints and doesn’t only stick to network-based detection.
Final Words
No, EDR is not an IDS; it’s more than this tool. It helps your organization prepare for sophisticated threats and avoid zero-day and file-less attacks by getting a system. Your team can manage threats on the endpoint through this software. It’s good to secure network through IDS but when it comes to making your endpoints foolproof only endpoint solution does the job right.