What Do All These TLAs Mean?
The IT world is chock full of three-letter acronyms—TLAs, for short.
If IT and cybersecurity jargon wasn’t an alphabet soup to begin with, there’s always a new TLA being added to the conversation. EDR and MDR were first to the detection and response party. Now, XDR and MXDR are hopping onto the guest list.
What do all these TLAs mean, and what’s the difference between them? More importantly, why should you care, and what should it mean for your organization?
Let’s Start With the “-DR”
These cybersecurity solutions/products are all about threat detection and response at their cores. As the technology that makes up these “-DR” products has evolved, so have the names to differentiate the products.
EDR, MDR, and XDR focus on detecting cyberthreats and cyberattacks, then taking an action based on the perceived threat, for example, quarantining the affected endpoint, sending alerts, and/or providing remediation.
The differentiators for EDR, MDR, and XDR include what’s being monitored, who’s doing the monitoring, and how threats are remediated.
Simplifying EDR, MDR, and XDR
Building Blocks: What Is EDR?
EDR is a next-generation cybersecurity product that goes beyond the capabilities of a standalone firewall or anti-virus software.
Whereas firewalls and anti-virus software historically rely on user-initiated scans and existing virus definitions, EDR scans your devices and network in real-time to detect cyberthreats, quarantine endpoints, alert system administrators, and, when possible, remove cyberthreats.
The key differentiator for EDR is that it monitors your endpoints for malicious behavior rather than relying on existing virus definitions. Think zero-day attacks — EDR can help detect cyberthreats before virus software definitions are updated.
EDR Vs. MDR
Think of MDR as a natural successor to EDR. Rather than changing the functionality of an EDR product, MDR adds expert monitoring, detection, and remediation as a service.
EDR is an advanced cybersecurity solution. While it provides the tools, monitoring, and alerting for cyberthreats, it still relies on a human to ultimately take action on an alert. If you’re a small or medium-sized business, you may not have the staff or expertise to respond to threats in real-time, even if you have EDR implemented.
With MDR, your EDR solution is monitored by a Security Operations Center (SOC) that can step in and take action when needed. In addition to the EDR product, think of MDR as having a team of cybersecurity experts on staff that can swiftly step in when needed.
What Is XDR?
The newest iteration of “-DR” products, XDR expands on the capabilities of EDR to include protection for more than just endpoints. Using special integrations, XDR applies threat detection and response to your entire IT ecosystem, including things like cloud applications and firewalls.
Taking a multilayered approach to EDR, XDR centralizes your threat data behind a dashboard, which provides greater transparency for your internal IT team or SOC. XDR solutions can include SOAR tools to provide more advanced threat detection elements, like AI-based threat hunting, event correlation, automatic threat response, and advanced analysis. XDR solutions can add operational value to an organization with network traffic statistics, change tracking, and historical event analysis.”
Additionally, in researching EDR solutions, you may come across MXDR, which like MDR and EDR, is a managed service version of an XDR solution.
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As a Managed Services Provider, High Touch specializes in providing holistic, multilayered cybersecurity solutions for businesses. Detection and response solutions are essential to any organization’s cybersecurity plan.
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