[eBook] Why Autonomous XDR Is Going to Replace NGAV/EDR

For most organizations today, endpoint protection is the primary
security concern. This is not unreasonable – endpoints tend to be
the weakest points in an environment – but it also misses the
forest for the trees. As threat surfaces expand, security
professionals are harder pressed to detect threats that target
other parts of an environment and can easily miss a real
vulnerability by focusing too hard on endpoints.

This is why pairing tools such as next-generation antivirus
(NGAV) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) has become a
popular, if flawed, choice. Fortunately, newer technologies and
security methods offer much greater prevention and detection
capabilities. This is the key argument of a new eBook (download here^[1]) offered by XDR provider
Cynet.

The eBook, titled Why Autonomous XDR is Going to Replace
NGAV/EDR, starts with a look at how NGAV and EDR tools can
defend an organization with the “assume breach” mentality –
expecting a breach to occur and protecting endpoints from extended
breach incidents.

Aside from some important strengths, however, this combination
has some serious limitations, such as blind spots, a lack of
remediation capabilities, and the resources required to operate
such a system.

This inevitably leads to adding more tools to close these gaps,
which in turn creates a more complex stack that requires more
people and resources to operate properly.

The result is that instead of better protection, adding so many
more tools often results in worse security.

Instead, the eBook posits that autonomous extended detection and
response (XDR) tools, which include endpoint security, can expand
the protection scope to networks, user behaviors and add automated
response capabilities.

Instead of focusing on a single endpoint (or even a cluster of
endpoints), XDR platforms give organizations full visibility over
their environments, letting them react much faster and effectively
when a threat emerges.

Some of the reasons why XDR is a better solution include:

• It offers more comprehensive prevention and
  detection. Instead of relying on a series of individual
  defenses, XDRs can expand their radius by including a variety of
  tools (including NGAV and EDR) such as user and entity behavior
  analysis, network traffic analysis, and deception technology.
• Automated response offers higher levels of
  security. Another key component of XDRs is their ability
  to automate responses and response flows to reduce both resolution
  time and resource constraints. Moreover, it expands automated
  remediation to the entire environment, not just a single
  endpoint.
• It can add affordable MDR services. For
  organizations with resource constraints, building an effective
  security stack is a challenge. Managed detection and response (MDR)
  offers a solution by giving organizations access to much-needed
  security support. MDR teams that support XDRs have the benefit of
  using the same tool and offering much greater visibility and
  automation.
• It simplifies operations. One of the biggest
  downsides of a large security stack is that it can become overly
  complex and overstuffed. A major advantage that an XDR provides is
  that it consolidates a number of security tools into a single,
  unified platform.
• It lowers the access barrier for any security
  team. Most importantly, XDRs reduce the cost of security
  significantly while providing tools that support even the most
  resource-constrained security teams. Instead of spending on
  multiple licenses and services, organizations simply need one.

You can read more by downloading the whitepaper here^[2].