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In this article

Why Do You Need XDR? 5 Security Benefits
How Does XDR Work? 4 Key Capabilities
How XDR Differs from Other Security Solutions
XDR Security with Cynet 360 AutoXDR
Learn More About XDR
See Additional Guides on Key Cybersecurity Topics

Understanding XDR Security (eXtended Detection and Response)

June 14, 2020

Last Updated: November 19, 2024

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What Is XDR?

Extended Detection and Response (XDR) is a cybersecurity solution that unifies threat data, gathering it from previously isolated security tools within an organization’s technology stack. This enables more efficient and rapid threat investigation, hunting, and response. XDR is a cybersecurity architecture that integrates security tools across multiple layers, allowing for faster threat detection and improved investigation and response times.

XDR combines data from various security layers including email, endpoints, servers, cloud workloads, and network. It employs sophisticated analytics to weave this information into a coherent narrative of an attack, providing a unified view of threats even when multiple attack vectors are involved. XDR also has improved malware detection that can catch more sophisticated threats.

XDR vs. EDR

The holistic approach of XDR heightens cyber defense capabilities, providing a more efficient response to multi-faceted threats. It provides holistic protection against cyberattacks, unauthorized access, and misuse. XDR broadens the scope of security compared to systems like endpoint detection and response (EDR). XDR software integrates protection across a wider range of systems, including endpoints, servers, cloud applications, emails, networks, cloud workloads, applications, and data.

This is part of an extensive series of guides about cybersecurity.

Why Do You Need XDR? 5 Security Benefits

An XDR platform can provide the following benefits:

Improved prevention capabilities—inclusion of threat intelligence and adaptive machine learning can help ensure that solutions are able to implement protections against the greatest variety of attacks. Additionally, continuous monitoring along with automated response can help block a threat as soon as it is detected to prevent damage.
Granular visibility—provides full user data at an endpoint in combination with network and application communications. This includes information on access permissions, applications in use, and files accessed. Having full visibility across your system, including on-premises and in the cloud enables you to detect and block attacks faster.
Effective response—robust data collection and analysis allows you to trace an attack path and reconstruct attacker actions. This provides the information needed to locate the attacker wherever they are. It also provides valuable information that you can apply to strengthen your defenses.
Greater control—includes the ability to both blacklist and whitelist traffic and processes. This ensures that only approved actions and users can enter your system.
Better productivity—centralization reduces the number of alerts and increases alerting accuracy. This means fewer false positives to sift through. Also, since XDR is a unified platform and not a combination of multiple point solutions, it is easier to maintain and manage, and reduces the number of interfaces that security must access during a response.

Related content: Read our guide to how xdr works.

How Does XDR Work? 4 Key Capabilities

Here are the four key capabilities of XDR solutions.

Collecting data from multiple security layers

XDR solutions analyze both internal and external traffic, from multiple layers of an organization’s technology stack. This makes it possible to identify threats even if they bypass the system perimeter, integrate threat intelligence to identify known attack methods, and leverage machine learning-based detection to identify unknown and zero-day threats.

Advanced analytics for automated investigation

XDR tools correlate alerts and data from multiple security silos and use advanced analytics to build complete attack timelines. They can also combine data to provide unified visibility into attacks that involve multiple attack vectors.

Fast detection of threats and improved investigation and response

XDR tools provide a central UI that lets analysts investigate and respond to events, regardless where they occurred in the environment. They provide response orchestration, integrating with multiple security tools—for example, XDR can automatically update endpoint policies or spam email rules across the enterprise, in response to an attack.

Flexible SaaS-based deployment

XDR solutions can orchestrate and automate existing security tools, making more of existing security investments. They are cloud-based, with scalable storage and compute to reduce costs and operational overhead. Finally, they continuously improve by applying machine learning and threat intelligence to huge volumes of historical data.

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How XDR Differs from Other Security Solutions

XDR is different from other security tools in that it centralizes, normalizes, and correlates data from multiple sources. These capabilities enable more complete visibility and can expose less obvious events.

By collecting and analyzing data from multiple sources, XDR solutions are able to better validate alerts, thereby reducing false positives and increasing reliability. This helps reduce any time teams might waste on excessive or inaccurate alerts. According to Gartner, this results in improved productivity in security teams and allows faster, more automated responses.

Solution	Description	Advantages	Limitations
XDR	Centralizes, normalizes, and correlates data from multiple sources to provide complete visibility across systems. Integrates with various point solutions and automates incident response with AI-driven analysis.	– Reduces false positives and increases reliability. – Enhances productivity with faster, automated responses. – Provides comprehensive visibility across all phases of an attack.	– May require integration with existing security infrastructure.
EDR	Provides perimeter-wide protection focusing on endpoints, offering proactive endpoint security that addresses many security gaps and blindspots.	– Effective at securing endpoints. – Covers many endpoint-specific security gaps.	– Requires collaboration with other tools and processes. – Limited visibility across the entire system.
MDR	Offers 24/7 network monitoring by human analysts, acting as a SOC as a service. May include XDR as part of the service offering.	– Supplements internal security teams. – Cost-effective for organizations building their security infrastructure.	– Relies on external staff for monitoring and incident response.
SIEM	Serves as a central repository for security event data, generating alerts based on statistical correlation rules. XDR can extend SIEM capabilities by automating further investigation and providing advanced analytics.	– Centralizes security event data for easy access. – Can be enhanced with XDR for automated responses and advanced analytics.	– Limited to traditional correlation rules without XDR. – Requires manual intervention for deeper investigations without XDR.

EDR vs. XDR

EDR was created to provide perimeter-wide protection for a system. This was an advancement on existing methods as it provided coverage for a primary component in an attack: endpoints. The result was proactive endpoint security that covered many security gaps and blindspots.

Effective use of EDR still requires collaboration with other tools and processes, however. It cannot protect your system on its own. It also cannot provide full visibility of your system.

XDR is a more advanced version of EDR. Unlike EDR, it can provide visibility into every phase of an attack, from endpoint to payload. By integrating XDR into your security platform, you can collate information from across your systems.

Learn more about EDR in our guide: What Does EDR Stand For?

XDR vs. MDR

Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is a solution that provides an alternative to an in-house SOC. It provides 24/7 network monitoring and detection of security incidents by human security analysts.

Both MDR and XDR help security teams deal with limited resources and growing threats, by they do so in different ways:

MDR supplements the internal security team – it offers SOC as a service, which might include an XDR solution as part of the offering, operated by the MDR’s staff.
XDR automates security tasks and improves analyst productivity – if an organization has an in-house SOC, it can improve its incident response effectiveness.

For organizations just starting to build their security infrastructure, MDR will typically provide a more cost effective solution and significantly faster ramp up.

XDR and SIEM

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) is used in most security operations centers as a central repository of security event data and a way to generate alerts from security events. XDR can extend SIEM by tapping into SIEM data, and combining it with data from point solutions that integrate with the XDR platform.

XDR can take SIEM one step further. For example, when a SIEM platform generates an alert, instead of having security analysts manually go into endpoint security systems or cloud systems to investigate further, XDR can do this automatically.

XDR also enables more advanced analytics. SIEM was traditionally based on statistical correlation rules, while XDR introduces AI-driven analysis that establishes behavioral baselines, and identifies anomalies based on these baselines.

You can learn more about endpoint security concepts in our guides:

EPP vs. EDR: What Matters More, Prevention or Response?
EDR Cybersecurity: Unlocking the Black Box of Endpoint Protection

Tips From the Expert

In my experience, here are tips that can help you better adapt to XDR implementations:

Integrate external threat intelligence feeds While XDR uses internal data, integrating external threat intelligence feeds from industry sources or trusted threat-sharing platforms can enhance its ability to detect advanced persistent threats (APTs) and emerging malware strains.
Leverage custom detection rules for unique environments Each organization’s security needs are different. Customize detection rules in XDR to focus on specific behaviors or activities unique to your environment, such as proprietary applications or specific cloud environments.
Use XDR to enrich threat hunting efforts XDR is a powerful tool for proactive threat hunting. Security teams can use its unified data collection to search for weak signals or hidden threats across multiple layers, including low-and-slow attacks that evade traditional detection.
Cross-train SOC analysts to leverage automation Automation in XDR is key, but analysts must be trained to optimize and fine-tune the automation rules. Ensure they know how to balance human oversight with automated responses, especially for high-risk assets.
Focus on lateral movement detection XDR excels in detecting lateral movement between different security layers. Invest time in building detections for anomalous lateral movement within internal networks to spot attackers before they reach critical assets.

Eyal Gruner is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cynet. He is also Co-Founder and former CEO of BugSec, Israel’s leading cyber consultancy, and Versafe, acquired by F5 Networks. Gruner began his career at age 15 by hacking into his bank’s ATM to show the weakness of their security and has been recognized in Google’s security Hall of Fame.

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XDR Questions and Answers

What Does XDR Stand For?

XDR stands for eXtended Detection and Response:

Extended means XDR can provide insight into data in networks, clouds, endpoints, and applications (unlike traditional EDR which only focused on endpoints).
Detection means XDR has automated analysis capabilities that can help it identify anomalies in the IT environment, detect potential security incidents, and provide the full attack story.
Response means that XDR gives security teams the tools to immediately respond to an attack, by locking down endpoints, applying network segmentation, or other proactive measures.

Why is XDR Important?

The main promise of XDR is to reduce the likelihood of breaches that will have an impact on an organization and its customers.

XDR gives analysts contextual information about real attacks that can help them understand, contain and eradicate the threat more quickly. It can do this by combining data sources from the entire cybersecurity ecosystem, including endpoints but extending to networks, cloud resources and other resources, and helping analysts visualize the entire kill chain.

In addition, XDR can achieve significant efficiencies in security organizations, which suffer from a talent shortage and scarce resources. XDR is a unified platform, rather than a set of separate security tools, making it easy to deploy, upgrade, expand, and manage. This reduces the need for extensive training and certifications, and improves productivity, especially for Tier 1 security analysts.

What is the Difference Between Point Solutions (NGAV, EDR, NDR, etc.) and XDR?

XDR collects activity data from multiple vectors including endpoints, servers, and networks, providing a level of detection that is difficult or impossible to achieve with SIEM or isolated security solutions.

Tools like next generation antivirus (NGAV), endpoint detection and response (EDR) or network detection and response (NDR) are only effective against attacks that are focused on one layer of the security environment, and find it difficult to detect and respond to threats that cross multiple layers, for example leveraging a compromised endpoint to attack the network.

Is XDR Better than EDR?

XDR takes endpoint detection and response (EDR) one step further, evolving the original EDR approach which focused on a single security vector.

EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) is still of great value, and XDR solutions continue to leverage EDR capabilities to protect endpoints. However, EDR is ultimately limited because it can only see the endpoint in a complex attack story. This limits the scope of the threats that can be detected and mitigated. In this sense, XDR is better than just EDR alone, because it extends the benefits of EDR to threats that go beyond the endpoint to target additional security layers

Which are the Top XDR Solutions?

Here are five leading XDR security solution providers:

Learn More About XDR