Getting to Know the XDR Solution and Its Uses

It is 2022, and the threatscape of cyber ecosystems is getting broader with each day. Attacks can originate from virtually any section of an organization's cyber ecosystem. 

In this post-COVID era, when hybrid work arrangements have become prevalent, employees may have to connect to company networks with untrusted devices.

This poses a big problem since there's no way to tell who and what an employee’s device may have been exposed to online.  According to this Verizon report, social engineering remains the highest contributor to data breaches. So, organizations have to worry about threats due to endpoint vulnerabilities. 

They have to worry about being collateral damage in attacks on shared cloud infrastructure, attacks due to third-party exposure, and also how to mitigate the extent of damage in the event of an attack.

Add all these to the cost, money, reputation, and stress of recovering from a cyber attack, and you'll agree that organizations need not just a solution, but a system that integrates the solutions to all these challenges, in one package. 

This is where the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) technology comes in. Built to streamline all the operations of a typical SOC, XDR integrates the securities of cloud infrastructure, network, and endpoints into a single suite.

With XDR, organizations not only detect threats across their entire cyber infrastructure in real-time, irrespective of the kind of attack; they can also respond immediately, with all the security stacks visible on a single console. 

By eliminating the silo approach of securing each section of an ecosystem independently, XDR is able to allow for deeper insights into how a threat may affect an entire ecosystem as a whole, thereby enabling the making of better, faster, and more holistic decisions. 

Before now, malware usually lasted months inside the network of an organization without detection. Sophos reports that the average dwell time in 2021 was 11 days.

With XDR, however, threats are detected as soon as they make contact with the system, thereby limiting the scope of the attack, the dwell time, and consequently, the damage.

Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), XDR comes with the capability of continuous real-time threat detection and monitoring, across all sections of an organization's ecosystem. Detection is usually followed by an automated response. 

This proactive approach reduces the need for much input by security teams, ensuring that time is spent on more productive endeavors. This has proven to be beneficial to organizations in terms of finance. 

With the XDR technology, security vendors understand that you may already have an existing system in place and that it may be a hassle to completely overhaul your entire security system.

To that effect, a lot of vendors have chosen the open XDR model, ensuring that their product integrates perfectly with the existing system. This also allows organizations to choose the very best performing vendors of each security stack solution. 

It has become very important for organizations to be able to have a comprehensive view of their entire security stacks. Not only will this improve how threats and attacks are managed, but it also inculcates proactiveness in such management. 

Also, since no organization will want its systems compromised during a collaboration, having a comprehensive security system like the XDR improves trust between collaborating organizations.