How XDR can take cybersecurity strategies to new heights
In the digital age, there is no shortage of challenges that security teams have to face. The race towards digital transformation has signalled an ever-increasing barrage of advanced threats. Moreover, as enterprises become increasingly dispersed, security leaders cite mounting bottlenecks that hamper cyber resilience including skills gap, the proliferation of siloed security tools and solutions, and the lack of visibility over their digital environments.
To navigate these challenges, security leaders need to work towards modernising their threat detection and response set-up to eliminate silos, unify workflows and automate work.
Enter Extended Detection and Response or XDR.
XDR is a security solution that enables end-to-end visibility, detection, investigation and response across multiple security layers.
“XDR is the evolution of Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR),” explains Tamer Odeh, regional sales director, SentinelOne. “While EDR collects and correlates activities across multiple endpoints, XDR broadens the scope of detection beyond endpoints to provide detection, analytics, and response across endpoints, networks, servers, cloud workloads, SIEM and much more.”
With XDR, security teams can achieve a unified, single pane of glass view across multiple tools and attack vectors. This improved visibility provides contextualization of these threats to assist with triage, investigation and rapid remediation efforts.
Moreover, by automating the collection and correlation of data across multiple security vectors, XDR can facilitate faster threat detection so that security analysts can respond quickly before the scope of the threat broadens.
Building a proactive security approach with XDR
Threat hunting is commonplace in most security teams. This practice is crucial in ensuring that all facets of an organisation’s attack surface are covered and that threats that might’ve managed to slip past enterprise security defences are addressed accordingly.
XDR enables threat hunters to perform a deeper inspection of data that may be relevant to a specific threat, giving them more visibility and context into cyber incidents. With a single pool of raw data comprising information from across the entire ecosystem, XDR allows faster, deeper, and more effective threat detection and response. It can then take threat hunting to the next level by automating a response, whereby once a threat is detected, XDR can act at any layer of the environment to identify and mitigate it.
“A typical ransomware attack traverses the network, lands in an email inbox, and then attacks the endpoint. Addressing security by looking at each of those independently puts organisations at a disadvantage,” explained Odeh.
“XDR integrates disparate security controls to provide automated or one-click response actions across the enterprise security estate such as disabling user access, forcing multi-factor authentication on suspected account compromise, blocking inbound domains and file hashes and more – all via custom rules written by the user or by logic built into the prescriptive response engine.”
So, how can companies start with XDR?
For organisations looking to minimise their security risks with XDR, they first need to identify their high-priority IT assets that need to be protected. They then need to assess which security tools they already have in place and pinpoint where gaps or replications exist. And then, the next key step is finding the right XDR solution and provider.
To do this, Odeh highlighted that organisations first need to determine whether an XDR solution can provide rich, cross-stack visibility with the ability to seamlessly ingest from multiple data sources.
EDR solutions are excellent in obtaining security-relevant information from endpoints. However, they lack telemetry to provide broad visibility for an accurate depiction of an attacker’s behaviour and goals that may span other sources.
“A robust XDR platform solves the telemetric limitation problem by enabling telemetry from multiple security layers and possible attack points. This makes it possible to monitor and manage incoming alerts continuously. Additionally, with the help of threat intelligence feeds, XDR systems can proactively search for concealed threats,” explained Odeh.
“Singularity XDR can enable enterprises to seamlessly ingest structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data in real-time from any technology product or platform, breaking down data silos and eliminating critical blind spots. With our recent Scalyr acquisition, the solution can empower security teams to see data collected by disparate security solutions from all platforms, including endpoints, cloud workloads, network devices, and more, within a single dashboard.”
Next, security teams should find out if an XDR solution can provide automated context and correlation across different security layers.
“Many EDR solutions require (human) security teams to conduct investigations. But given the volume of alerts generated, many security teams are not resourced to dwell on every single incident. A robust XDR solution should be augmented with AI and automated built-in context and correlation,” said Odeh.
He highlighted that features such as SentinelOne’s patented Storyline technology provides real-time, automated machine-built context and correlation across the enterprise security stack to transform disconnected data into rich stories and lets security analysts understand the full story of what happened in their environment. This allows security teams to see the full context of what occurred within seconds rather than needing to spend hours, days, or weeks correlating logs and linking events manually.
Another key factor to consider when looking for an XDR solution is whether it automates threat intelligence enrichment. “Threat intelligence provides up-to-date information on threats, vulnerabilities, and malicious indicators freeing security teams to focus on what is most important. A well-built XDR solution enables threat intelligence integration from multiple sources to help security teams prioritise and triage alerts quickly and efficiently,” said Odeh.
Security leaders also need to determine whether an XDR solution can automate response across different domains. “Of course, incident detection and investigation need to trigger an effective response to mitigate the incident,” said Odeh.
He explained: “The response needs to be pre-defined and repeatable to make remediation more efficient and intervene at any step in an attack that is in progress. The response should distinctively define both short-term and long-term measures that can be used to neutralise the attack. It is also essential to understand the cause of the threat to improve security and prevent attacks of a similar manner in the future. All necessary steps must be taken to ensure that similar attacks are not likely to happen again.”
Finally, Odeh emphasised that organisations need to find an XDR solution that can be easily integrated with leading SOAR tools.
“As you may have other security tools and technologies deployed in your SOC, your XDR solution should let you utilise your existing investments in security tools. Key features would be built-in integrations, including automated responses and integrated threat intelligence,” he said.
In today’s landscape, there’s no such thing as being 100 percent secure. Attackers will continue to innovate and so should we. XDR offers organisations the capability to reduce risks and heighten their defences.
“Regional organisations have been embracing the journey to XDR in an ambitious manner and with SentinelOne’s proven expertise in the EDR to XDR space, we are well-positioned to assist them in accelerating their strategies to achieve their security goals,” said Odeh.
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