EDR vs XDR: what's the important difference?
Endpoint detection and response (EDR) technology has certainly improved the security posture of many organizations: by scanning for indicators of compromise (for ex. new processes, registry entries, unsigned executables, etc.) and known tactics & techniques, it's making it much easier to discover and block adversary activity within an organization.
With EDR, endpoints are becoming harder to breach, which makes it an essential requirement for cyber insurance. However, attackers are now shifting focus away from endpoints: witness the recent exploitations of zero-days within networking appliances or the ever popular phishing attempts, usually via e-mail or other social engineering techniques.
That's why it's becoming important to "stitch" or connect data from other sources beyond the endpoints. That includes e-mail, network data from devices not covered by an EDR agent, and cloud services.
Traditionally, it has been hard to correlate these disparate sources, usually with expensive SIEM solutions or even costlier customizations. With the advent of Extended Detection and Response (XDR) and a common data lake for threat correlation, the job is now much easier.
To get practical insights on how to correlate data beyond the endpoint and include into a detection and response framework, have a look at Trend Micro's XDR Vision One - request a free trial here: