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Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) protects systems by monitoring behavioral patterns rather than scanning for known malicious code, making it effective against novel and emerging threats. Extended and managed variants—XDR and MDR—broaden that coverage across entire networks and through third-party security providers.

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About this video

Traditional anti-malware solutions rely on recognizing specific code signatures, which means they are only effective against threats that have already been identified and catalogued. When attackers develop new or custom malicious code, signature-based tools often fail to detect it. Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) addresses this limitation by shifting the focus from code identification to behavioral analysis, continuously monitoring system activity, network traffic, and other endpoint metrics to build a baseline of normal operation. This baseline-driven approach, known as User Behavior Analytics (UBA), allows EDR to identify anomalies—such as an unusual spike in outbound network traffic or unexpected process activity—and flag them for investigation. The system functions similarly to a machine learning model, learning what normal looks like for a given endpoint and treating significant deviations as potential indicators of compromise. This makes EDR effective against both known and previously unseen threats. Two important extensions of this technology are XDR and MDR. Extended Detection and Response (XDR) broadens the scope of monitoring beyond individual endpoints to encompass email servers, cloud services, and other network components, providing a unified view of threat activity across an entire environment. Managed Detection and Response (MDR) involves contracting a third-party managed service provider to operate and monitor an EDR deployment on an organization's behalf. This model is particularly valuable for smaller organizations that lack the internal resources or expertise to manage security operations, as MDR providers can correlate threat intelligence gathered across their entire client base to identify emerging risks more quickly.

What you'll learn

Distinguish between EDR, XDR, and MDR solutions, including their scope of monitoring and primary use cases in endpoint security
Explain how user behavior analytics (UBA) enables EDR systems to detect threats through anomaly detection rather than signature-based methods

What's covered

Endpoint Detection & Response

EDR vs Anti-Malware
- Anti-Malware Limits
  - Detects known code only
  - Misses new/unknown code
- EDR Monitors Behavior
  - Not code-based detection
  - Flags anomalies
User Behavior Analytics
- Establishes behavior baselines
- Identifies traffic anomalies
- AI-like trend analysis
XDR Extended Detection
- Expands beyond one machine
- Covers network-wide services
- Analyzes multiple elements
MDR Managed Detection
- Hired MSP manages EDR
- Benefits smaller companies
- Cross-company trend visibility

Key terms

Endpoint Detection and Response: A security solution that continuously monitors endpoint devices to detect, investigate, and respond to threats.
User Behavior Analytics: User Behavior Analytics applies machine learning to baseline normal user activity and detect anomalies such as insider threats, account compromise, and data exfiltration attempts.
Extended Detection and Response: Extended Detection and Response is a security platform that integrates and correlates telemetry from endpoints, networks, cloud workloads, and email to provide unified threat detection, investigation, and automated response across the full attack surface.
Managed Detection and Response: A managed security service where an external provider operates and monitors an organization's EDR system, providing threat detection and response on behalf of the client.
Endpoint: Any device that connects to a network, including computers, smartphones, tablets, and IoT devices.
Antivirus: Software designed to detect, prevent, and remove malicious software from a system.

Topics

Endpoint Security Edr Xdr Mdr User Behavior Analytics Anomaly Detection Cybersecurity

Transcript

Endpoint detection and response

Another piece of software that can help protect our endpoints would be an endpoint detection and response, or EDR.

Essentially, an anti-malware is looking at files and code to determine if there's any kind of malware incorporated into that. But it doesn't detect everything. It really has to know what it's looking for — it's looking for some specific pieces of code. Well, that doesn't cover anything, because what if somebody generates new code? Then this anti-malware is not going to catch it.

Endpoint detection and response isn't looking necessarily for a piece of code. Instead, it's looking more for behavior. What it's going to do is monitor what's happening on the machine and take a look at a few different aspects of this machine to see if they're off. For instance, maybe it's the traffic that's coming in and out of this machine. It could have very consistent traffic, and then when it gets compromised, that traffic can look differently. So it's looking for those types of patterns that are different.

We call this user behavior analytics, or UBA. Essentially what it's doing is it's setting trend lines. It's trying to figure out what is the behavior it typically sees on this machine, and once it understands what its typical behavior is, then it can look for anomalies. So it's like you kind of program it. It's like an AI, where it's looking for these trends and for what's happening, and then anything that goes beyond what is typical and how this machine responds, then it will start flagging that and say, hey, this is something to be concerned about. So if we suddenly have a big burst of traffic that's going out of this machine where it typically wouldn't be happening, then it will identify — hey, something is off here, something's going awry.

XDR

There is something called an extended endpoint detection response, or XDR. XDR extends it beyond just this machine. So we'd have EDR running on this machine looking at the specific behaviors on that machine; XDR extends it across the network. So maybe we have an email server here and it's analyzing that as well, and maybe some other services here. So it's looking at the big picture, the extended picture, and analyzing the behavior across multiple elements within this network.

MDR

Another term you may hear is a managed endpoint detection and response, or MDR. Essentially what this is is we set up an EDR system on here, but we are hiring a managed service provider, or MSP. We're hiring some other entity to be able to manage all of this.

The thing is that if we're a smaller company, we might not be able to see everything that's happening on our network. So by hiring an external company to help manage this and monitor this, we can better protect our systems and look for trend lines across even other companies. They'll see trends in other companies and come and identify if there are any issues within our company.

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