What is XDR Security? 8 Best Solutions for Your Business

An extended detection and response (XDR) solution combines security tools that monitor, detect, and respond to a wide range of threats across various layers of an IT infrastructure.

Ideally, an XDR consolidates multiple security tools to provide a unified solution that automatically monitors, analyzes, detects, and mitigates threats. It also provides unified visibility and control across all network, cloud, and endpoint workloads.

A typical XDR integrates the features and benefits of the data collection of an EDR, threat mitigation of SOAR, threat hunting of SIEM, and network traffic analysis (NTA). It then combines these with User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) and other tools to provide a unified and comprehensive solution that can identify and respond to existing and emerging sophisticated threats. While some vendors offer the modules as individual components, others may provide them as bundled services.

Generally, an XDR solution can detect complex and advanced threats that traditional security tools would miss. To achieve this, it uses telemetry, detection, and response capabilities that enable it to provide functions such as;

Tracking unusual or suspicious activities across multiple IT environments and network layers.
Identifying and responding to advanced and persistent security threats and malware
Quickly and efficiently investigate security threats using inbuilt intelligence and automation.
Improve threat detection and mitigation speed hence reducing downtime.

Benefits of XDR

Some of the major benefits of the XDR solutions include, but are not limited to;

Improving detection, response, and protection against a wide range of threats.
Lower costs to effectively detect and respond to threats
Reduces workloads for security teams hence enabling them to focus on other activities and improve productivity.
Providing visibility into the organization’s security posture
Automating various security operations.

Today, there is a wide range of XDR solutions in the market. However, these differ in performance, scalability, integration with other tools, cost, and other features.

That said, below are the best XDR solutions.

McAfee MVision XDR

McAfee Mvision XDR is a pro-active, data-aware solution that effectively detects and stops normal and sophisticated attacks. It provides a unified view across the network, cloud, and endpoints. By integrating and orchestrating various security solutions, McAfee Mvision XDR enhances visibility, response, and control while reducing manual tasks and increasing speed.

Features

Data awareness features determine the sensitivity and criticality of an asset hence enabling automated prioritization of threat detection and protection.
Efficient and costs effective solution that delivers proactive and actionable threat intelligence.
Automated investigations and countermeasures to detect attacks and protect the systems and devices, thereby minimizing risks before and after attacks.
Combines cloud and on-premise telemetry data to provide a holistic view of entire business assets and systems data, along with the attacker’s behaviors.
AI-based and automated investigations enable teams to make better security decisions to quickly resolve potential threats and prevent or reduce damage. It also enables teams to accelerate investigation and prioritize what is sensitive and critical, hence minimizing damage.

Heimdal

Heimdal is an award-winning leader in cybersecurity, with over 15k customers globally. The Heimdal Extended Detection & Response (XDR) platform offers an innovative and comprehensive solution to simplify security management while reducing complexity, costs, and the need for multiple solutions.

This Unified Security Platform has integrated AI/ML capabilities that enable automated response actions to help remediate any incidents quickly without compromising on the protection of assets, further driving down time-to-detect and resolve costs vastly.

XDR’s comprehensive security solution protects organizations from cyber threats by combining monitoring, detection, investigation, and response capabilities across multiple layers.

This integrated approach allows teams to detect suspicious activity faster than traditional endpoint protection solutions by leveraging data gathered from endpoints, emails, servers, cloud applications, and networks.

Its advanced threat intelligence provides real-time visibility into malicious activities that help security teams effectively respond to incidents and enhance security and other facets of their organization’s defense system.

Features

XDR utilizes endpoint telemetry data and AI-driven threat detection to identify advanced cybersecurity threats quickly and accurately.
A professional XDR solution provides organizations with the capability to proactively seek out malicious activity in their environment and respond quickly, mitigating risks before damage is done.
A dedicated security team enhanced by XDR provides thorough investigations and rapid incident responses to protect your organization.
Provides advanced threat intelligence, telemetry data, and ransomware insights for maximum defense coverage.
Our XDR incorporates an internal SIEM-like module to dramatically improve security capabilities. Its data lake integration refines alerts and reduces their quantity – so teams can focus on the most critical ones more efficiently.
Its advanced platform features an Action Center that allows one-click automated and assisted actioning for fast and effective responses to potential threats.
Empower your security teams with pre-computed risk scores, indicators, and detailed attack analysis presented in various views to give in-depth insight.

With XDR, organizations have the complete defense solution they need to stay secure and protect their critical assets from advanced threats. Heimdal Cloud-delivered XDR Platform provides access to comprehensive security services that layer protection, visibility, and response across your entire IT landscape – on-premises or in the cloud.

Trend Micro Vision One

The Trend Micro Vision One is a powerful XDR platform for detecting and responding to complex threats. It uses native sensors and protection points to detect a wide range of threat activities across different security layers.

Using a cloud-based SIEM, Trend Micro coordinates the on-site security solutions such as network security, server protection, endpoint protection, and email security products to identify and respond to threats. Besides the on-premise tools, it has a cloud security option for virtual workloads.

Features

Provide comprehensive visibility into data hence allowing security teams to identify and respond to threats promptly.
Organized reporting that enables security teams to see the chain of attacks across the different security layers
Seamlessly and automatically collects, correlates, and analyses data from servers, networks, emails, cloud workloads, and other sources while notifying relevant teams about suspicious activities.
Provides increased visibility into security posture while offering enhanced protection against normal and emerging threats. It provides faster threat detection and mitigation compared to traditional antivirus solutions.
The solution, which is easy to integrate with other security tools, provides effective threat prioritization, alert monitoring, incident investigation, policy management, and optimization.

Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR

Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR is a powerful security platform that integrates the right combination of tools to ensure comprehensive protection. Generally, this design combines the detection, response, prevention, and investigation features into one powerful and efficient security solution. Integrating the network, cloud, and endpoint data enable teams to protect their IT systems against advanced attacks.

Features

With a high detection rate, the tool has agents that protect the endpoints from exploits, file-less, and malware attacks.
Machine learning-based user behavior analytics and protection to stop anomalies and suspicious activities
Combines insights across Networks, endpoint, and cloud data
Reduces alerts by over 90 percent hence allowing security teams to concentrate on other activities
Advanced threat hunting and intelligence will enable it to identify and stop evasive threats.
It uses the Palo Alto Network Managed Threat Hunting service to provide its users with round-the-clock coverage and protection against a wide range of attacks.

Cynet 360 XDR platform

Cynet 360 is an autonomous breach protection platform that provides an all-in-one threat detection and mitigation. It allows you to automate the monitoring, threat detection, and remediation processes. In addition to the response automation, the XDR security solution includes network traffic analysis, in-depth visibility, and prebuilt and custom remediation features.

Features

Combines the antivirus, EDR, incident response, deception intelligence, network analysis, and UEBA to provide comprehensive detection and remediation of all types of threats. Consequently, it offers enhanced visibility and protection without having to deploy a multi-product security stack.
Supports automatic or manual remediation of threats targeting networks, hosts, users, and files
AI-based UEBA to detect suspicious user activities indicative of an intruder
A wide range of strategies and scripts to streamline and automate threat detection response and other security operations.
The deception intelligence service creates fake, weakly protected accounts which are very attractive to the attackers. Consequently, the service diverts the attacker’s focus so that they concentrate on performing their malicious activities on the fake accounts and data and easy to change counterfeit settings.

Rapid7 InsightIDR XDR solution

Rapid7 InsightIDR is a robust cloud-based XDR solution with an intuitive interface and the ability to quickly analyses data across networks, logs, endpoints, and other areas. The cloud architecture allows you to centralize and optimize security operations across the entire infrastructure. It uses Rapid7’s comprehensive machine learning-based threat intelligence network and UEBA to automatically and quickly detect and respond to security issues.

The platform is a SIEM solution with a browser-based console. Although it performs most of the operations on the cloud, it also has come components that run on-site. The on-site agents usually collect data from various sources and then upload these to the cloud over a secure encrypted connection for processing.

Features

Multiple advanced detection methods provide enhanced and round-the-clock protection.
Advanced threat detection and identifying chains of attack after analyzing unified log records
It uses machine learning to build a baseline of the users’ behaviors, after which it automatically alerts the security teams if it detects suspicious activities or stolen credentials.
It also employs UEBA to baseline the user activities hence easily detecting anomalies and reducing the false alerts.
Attack Behavior Analytics (ABA) allows the tool to detect the origin of various attacks hence stopping the bad actors before they launch their attacks.
An incident response mechanism that you can deploy using the local on-site agent modules.

Sophos Intercept X Endpoint

Sophos Intercept X Endpoint is a powerful XDR solution that provides teams with fully synchronized, cloud-native security. It consolidates data from multiple sources and then presents it on an easy-to-use dashboard.

The XDR tool provides enhanced visibility and threat response to ensure maximum protection for the infrastructure and assets. Additionally, it allows teams to quickly detect and investigate a wide range of threats across servers, endpoints, firewalls, networks, and other data sources.

Features

Provides a holistic view of the organization’s cyber security posture while allowing security teams to drill down into the granular details when investigating the threats.
Detecting and stopping the attack techniques attackers rely on to exploit security vulnerabilities. These include techniques used to launch malware-less, file-less, and other exploits. Ideally, this helps to stop zero-day attacks before the bad actors get started to start.
Provides total security based on the analyses of data from a range of data sources, including but not limited to servers, endpoints, firewalls, network devices, email, and more.
Protect files through file integrity monitoring, detailed insights, and application whitelisting
Perform advanced, AI-powered threat hunting and prevent existing and emerging malware, ransomware, file-less attacks, and other exploits targeting your endpoints.

Fidelis Elevate XDR solution

Fidelis Elevate XDR is a powerful, effective, and proactive cyber security solution. The active XDR enables security teams to find and respond to threats and use deception techniques to mislead the attackers. Ideally, the tool provides the visibility, accuracy, speed, and context that security teams require to respond effectively to threats and prevent attacks.

The platform integrates endpoint and network detection and response, data loss prevention, deception, and other features into one unified solution that prevents advanced threats and malicious activities.

Features

Provides visibility into all email, network and web and cloud traffic,
Provides visibility to all the endpoint and device activity,
Establishes an attacker’s next move and consequently determines what action to take to stop the attack. As such, it can quickly detect and respond to threats before they affect your systems.
Uses enhanced machine learning algorithms to identify potential zero-day attacks and advanced threats, allowing security teams to act fast and stop all malicious activities.
Automatic validation of network threat detection alerts to reduce false positives and ensure security teams focus on the actual threats.
Uses advanced machine learning analytics to detect intrusion and other signs of attacks. It also provides automated threat investigations using deep forensic.

Conclusion 👨‍💻

As the complexity of the threat landscape and cyber-attacks increases, IT teams need to look for more advanced security tools and strategies beyond the traditional antivirus and other endpoint protection solutions to detect and respond to sophisticated cyberattacks.

In most cases, the attackers use the endpoints as their entry points, after which they can move laterally to other IT assets on the network. Addressing this weakness requires advanced security solutions such as the XDR, which provides a more comprehensive endpoint and network security to prevent a broader range of attacks and threats.

A typical XDR solution ensures that the endpoint protection tools work seamlessly with the network, email, identity, and other security controls to detect and stop all attacks. Ideally, it provides a more effective and holistic approach to threat detection and response. Additionally, an XDR gives the security teams more visibility and better actionable reports while reducing false positives.

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