Endpoint Detection and Response

EDR solutions have become essential security infrastructure, providing visibility, detection, and response capabilities that traditional antivirus never offered. Understanding how EDR works helps you maximize its value for detection and incident response.

How EDR Differs from Antivirus

Traditional antivirus relies on signatures that identify known malware. A file either matches a signature and gets blocked, or it doesn't and gets ignored. This binary approach misses sophisticated attacks that evade signature detection.

EDR continuously monitors endpoint behavior, recording process execution, network connections, file modifications, registry changes, and more. This telemetry feeds detection logic that identifies suspicious patterns regardless of whether specific signatures match.

Beyond detection, EDR provides response capabilities. Analysts can isolate compromised hosts from the network, terminate malicious processes, collect forensic data, and remediate infections—all remotely through a central console. This transforms incident response from requiring physical access to manageable at scale.

Detection Capabilities

Behavioral detection identifies attacks based on what they do rather than what they look like. Ransomware encrypting files exhibits distinctive behaviors. Credential theft attacks follow recognizable patterns. EDR detection logic captures these patterns across varied implementations.

Machine learning models in modern EDR analyze activity for anomalies. Unusual parent-child process relationships, uncommon network destinations, and suspicious file operations all contribute to risk scores that elevate potential threats for investigation.

Integration with threat intelligence automatically identifies connections to known malicious infrastructure, file hashes associated with malware campaigns, and domains used by threat actors. This external knowledge enriches internal observations.

Using EDR Effectively

Alert management requires balancing sensitivity against analyst capacity. Too many false positives lead to alert fatigue where real threats get ignored. Too few alerts might mean attacks proceed undetected. Tuning detection rules and thresholds optimizes this balance.

Investigation workflows leverage EDR's historical data. When an alert fires, analysts can trace back through process ancestry to understand how malicious activity began. Network connection history reveals command-and-control communication. File activity shows what data was accessed.

Response actions should be proportionate and evidence-based. EDR provides powerful capabilities—network isolation, process termination, file quarantine—that can disrupt both threats and legitimate operations. Understanding what you're responding to prevents overreaction that creates business impact.

Proactive threat hunting uses EDR telemetry to search for threats that haven't triggered alerts. Query historical data for indicators of compromise, unusual patterns, or evidence of specific attack techniques. EDR's comprehensive recording enables hunts that weren't possible with traditional tools.