Do you know that your organization can be a victim of a ransomware attack only because someone opens an email with a malicious link or downloads malware by mistake? Source Sophos Endpoint attacks are rising day by day. Organizations use cybersecurity tools to prevent ransomware, malware, and other threats. Cybercriminals consider mall businesses an easy target. And thereby, they started installing EDR on the endpoint.
Do you want to know what exactly this tool is and how it helps you combat cyber threats of sophisticated kinds? Let's figure it out below:
What is an Endpoint?
EDR stands for endpoint detection and response tool. It is designed to ensure that your cybersecurity team can take a 360 view of all the endpoints, including laptops, desktops, tablets, workstations, and IoT devices.
Here are some techniques integrated into this tool that helps an organization prevent threats.
1. Signature Based Detection
It is a traditional technique employed to spot malware attacks on an endpoint and network. This method can identify malware by scanning the file. If it has a specific string of code of the hash, then the system readily contains this threat and sends an alert to the system administrator so they can analyze it further.
2. Heuristic Analysis
It is an advanced technique that helps an EDR tool detect sophisticated threats. This method is designed to spot new versions of existing threats and unknown viruses or malware. Endpoint detection tools separate malicious files and scan their code in the virtual environment.
3. Machine Learning and Behavior Analysis
EDR is far better than antivirus, which relies only on signature-based detection in a way that helps you detect known and unknown malware. When an EDR is installed on an endpoint, it continuously monitors all the device's activities. It keeps a complete record of all the activities.
This software is integrated with machine learning and behavior analysis techniques, so it can analyze all activities and behavior and help your team hunt threats. It will generate an alert and contain the threat as soon as it finds suspicious activity.
It can learn the usual behavior of an endpoint and helps you differentiate between malicious and everyday activities and behavior.
Unlock Main Functionalities
An EDR is an endpoint detection and response tool installed on every endpoint. It continuously monitors the behavior of all endpoints. Here is some primary function this tool performs.
1. Proactive Threat Hunting
EDR allows your security analyst to become proactive in the cybersecurity approach. Instead of waiting for a threat to affect the IT infrastructure, this tool offers real-time visibility. As a result, your team can know where an endpoint is vulnerable. It becomes easy for your team to nip the evil in the bud at the right time.
2. Containment
Xcitium EDR has a designated containment system. This tool isolates compromised endpoints as soon as malicious activities are discovered. There is a virtual environment where they run all the malicious codes and files. The malware won't spread inside your network as the infected endpoint is separated. It's how you can prevent advanced threats.
3. Quick Threat Analysis
Your team must always manually analyze a large volume of data to analyze the behavior. This task is super overwhelming. Thanks to the Endpoint detection solution, all your threat-hunting tasks are entirely automated. This tool automatically collects all the data across endpoints and then gathers it all on a single console. A cloud-based database is created, generally. Now your team can run queries on this database and try to get the information. Instead of spending hours in threat detection or analysis, they can quickly do threat analysis.
4. Single Dashboard
Endpoint detection and response tool combine the capabilities of multiple tools at one single dashboard. Your team can control all the endpoints from one point. When a threat is detected, an analyst will restrict user access or close the whole system or file readily.
5. Accelerate Event Response
If a malware attack happens, your team will be empowered with the best incident response tools. Many security solutions are designed with an incident response playbook. That means your team won't have to brainstorm about threat response. They can look into the book and get action plans for a specific security event. Your response time reduces, and you can tackle bad actors quickly and accurately.
What is an Endpoint? Final Thoughts
An EDR is an enterprise security tool installed across all endpoints. It boosts endpoint activities and behavior visibility for your team, who can detect, prevent, and respond to threats without wasting time and organizational resources. When you want to make your cybersecurity team super productive and efficient, certainly this tool is a great help. You can create a strong defense against known and unknown malware attacks through it.