Extended Detection and Response, also known as XDR, has become a hype over the last few years. As research from IBM shows, 31% of organisations have adopted XDR, and of those, 76% agree that adopting XDR has strengthened their organisation’s cyber resiliency. When deployed correctly, XDR can connect multiple isolated security tools. Not only does this reduce complexity, it also allows for faster detection and response. Not convinced yet that XDR can sharpen your security posture? Here are five best practices that make a strong case for adopting XDR!
1. Leverage Strong EDR Foundations
XDR is based upon the foundations of EDR – Endpoint Detection and Response – and includes all the benefits which EDR provides. But XDR exceeds endpoint protection and provides detection and response across your organisation’s entire IT network. Consequently, it gives your IT team far greater visibility on and analysis of threats targeting your organisation. EDR’s ability to provide real-time behavioural detection and response can be applied more broadly across the organisation with XDR. Threats on your network can be identified earlier with the use of XDR and therefore be remediated quicker, prior to any impact. The in-depth intel means that you can have a more complete story of what is going on inside the whole enterprise security estate.
2. Maximise the Value of Your Existing Security Investments
How does XDR help maximise the value of your security investments? Open XDR concentrates on backend analytics and workflow and can integrate with an organisation’s existing workflow. This flexibility makes sense as many organisations have tools and technologies deployed already in their CSOC (Cyber Security Operations Center), which to decommission these tools would be a loss to the organisation. Best-in-breed technologies provide reliable point solution coverage, but each comes with a steep learning curve and operational burden for SecOps efficiency. Switching these out for a new tool would simply trigger you on another learning curve with a new burden. XDR allows you to make use of your existing tools, connecting them through built-in integrations.
3. Increase Efficiency of Your Security Team
Forbes IT Skills Gap Report 2023 states that 93% of the 500 business they surveyed reported an IT Skills gap. As the IT landscape is constantly changing this skills gap continues to grow, making an XDR solution integral for unburdening understaffed IT teams. Cyber security analysts are under pressure and the adoption of an XDR solution would mean automatically correlating related activity into unified alerts, which drastically simplifies the task for IT analysts and relives them from the growing pressures.
4. Automate Rumination to Contain Attacks Faster
Automation is crucial to maximising the value of your existing tools and to unburdening your IT team. Automation improves both threat detection and response. Additionally, it also reduces the manual effort needed and reduces the skillset barrier of responding to alerts. In conclusion, your team will be relieved of work and any threats will be contained quicker.
5. Deliver Measurable Outcomes
In the 2022 Gartner Board of Directors Survey, 88% of board members classified cybersecurity as a business risk. This growing concern on cyber security of organisations from the board means an increased pressure on IT Teams to provide concrete evidence that the business is protected from the latest threats as they continue to invest. XDR means no more delivering of proof points to boards, as XDR is effective in detecting techniques and tactics that indicate threatening behaviour, across the entire enterprise security estate. XDR can monitor stealth behaviour, effectively identify fileless attacks, lateral movement, and actively executing rootkits, so you can be confident in your organisations security posture.
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Content originated from SentinelOne.