What is Managed EDR (MEDR)?

Managed Endpoint Detection and Response (MEDR) is an online service that monitors your endpoints 24/7 for security threats and lets you respond to them quickly to protect your systems and confidential data.

Modern organizations with remote work cultures and BYOD(Bring-Your-Own-Devices) policies face even more cybersecurity risks as it increases the attack surface. One weak link is enough for cybercriminals to enter your system and disrupt your operations.

To eliminate these risks, you need advanced endpoint security solutions, such as managed EDR. It continuously works to detect, analyze, and respond to threats and improve your security posture.

In this article, we will discuss what managed EDR is, the common threats it addresses, how it works, challenges in implementing MEDR, some MEDR best practices, and how to choose the right MEDR solution for your business.

What is Managed EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response)?

Managed EDR (MEDR) is a software solution that you can use to identify and secure endpoints, such as desktops, servers, mobile devices, laptops, etc., in your network. It helps you monitor your endpoints continuously to detect and address security vulnerabilities and threats to safeguard your systems and data.

Managed EDR comes with capabilities, such as threat-hunting and incident response to secure your endpoints even without an in-house security team. It provides complete visibility into device activities, enhances incident detection, and improves your security posture.

There is a hot debate about managed EDR vs MDR. Managed endpoint detection and response (MEDR) focuses mainly on detecting and responding to threats that target endpoints. On the other hand, managed detection and response (MDR) is about detecting and responding to threats across various systems, devices, cloud services, and endpoints.

Need for MEDR

In BYOD and remote work settings, employees use a variety of devices that could have vulnerabilities. They may use unsecured Wi-Fi, such as public Wi-Fi to connect to your network. Apart from increasing the attack surface, these vulnerable devices and connections add up to security risks.

If attackers manage to find these vulnerabilities, they would not take long to exploit them. It could lead to cyberattacks, such as phishing, ransomware, data theft, zero-day exploits, and fileless attacks. This disrupts your operations and impacts your reputation and finances.

Many businesses, especially smaller companies, struggle to hire in-house security teams due to limited budgets. So, securing their assets from advanced threats and complying with regulatory standards becomes difficult for them.

Managed EDR offers a comprehensive solution to all these challenges. It combines advanced technologies like behavioral analytics, real-time monitoring, and AI-based threat detection. It monitors your endpoints like desktops, laptops, mobile devices, and servers continuously. It helps identify suspicious activities, investigate incidents, and neutralize threats immediately to prevent or minimize the impact of security breaches and downtimes. MEDR manages your complete endpoint detection and response activities while you can focus on core operations without worries.

Key Features of Managed EDR

Managed EDR combines advanced technology with expert oversight to offer a secure environment for your business. Its comprehensive endpoint protection detects and responds to threats before they become a security hazard to secure your data, finances, and reputation. MEDR tools come with many advanced features to solve your cybersecurity challenges.

Here are some features of managed EDR that you must look out for:

• Automated Incident Response: Managed EDR offers automated incident response capabilities to find and respond to security incidents quickly to secure infected endpoints and prevent malware from spreading. It ensures your business faces the least disruption in operations to minimize the damages.

• Endpoint Protection: Managed EDR utilizes real-time monitoring, behavioral analysis, and machine learning to provide complete visibility into your endpoints. You can track activities, control your systems, and identify vulnerabilities across your IT environment. It defends your endpoints and business from emerging threats.

• Advanced Threat Detection: Managed EDR offers advanced threat detection capabilities, such as machine learning, threat intelligence, and behavioral analysis. It uses global databases to detect known and unknown cyber threats, spot unusual activities and unauthorized access, and adapt quickly to new threats.

• Reporting: Managed EDR generates audit trails and reports on threats it has detected, your responses to threats, and your current security posture. With this information, you can understand the type of attacks MEDR can eliminate and how it improves your defenses over time.

• Expert-led Security: Managed EDR solutions combine human and machine capabilities. Cybersecurity experts lead MEDR efforts and act as your team extension to analyze, investigate, and respond to threats. They keep monitoring your endpoint activities and update detection algorithms to protect your devices and data from advanced threats. They also assess and correct your endpoint security posture regularly.

• Scalable and Flexible: Managed EDR solutions scale up or down with your business. The software secures your endpoints across various environments, such as hybrid, cloud, and on-premises from known and unknown threats. It offers customized solutions to meet your security needs and adapts to your changing threat scenarios.

• Threat Hunting: It is the core feature of managed EDR that allows security experts to search for hidden risks, threats, and vulnerabilities seated deep in your systems. Managed EDR detects and eliminates these security risks from your system before they can harm your business.

• Compliance Support: Businesses must strictly adhere to data privacy regulations. Managed EDR provides documentation and audit logs and helps enforce data security policies. This eases your way to comply with frameworks, such as GDPR, PCI DSS, and HIPAA.

Common Threats Addressed by Managed EDR

Managed EDR addresses multiple threats, such as malware, ransomware, phishing attacks, insider threats, unauthorized access attempts, and data theft. It monitors your endpoints continuously and offers advanced capabilities to detect, investigate, and respond to cyber threats in real-time. This deeply protects your systems across on-prem, hybrid, and remote environments.

Let’s discuss the threats in detail to understand how managed EDR addresses these in real-time.

• Malware and Spyware: These are malicious programs cyber attackers use to infiltrate systems, steal information, spy on users, and disrupt operations. Traditional antivirus software may not be enough to detect and remove advanced malware and spyware.

Managed EDR uses behavioral analysis and ML algorithms to detect advanced malicious programs. It monitors endpoint activities and system processes to spot unusual behavior, find and quarantine infected files, and eliminate risks.

• Ransomware: This is advanced malware that encrypts your files and asks for a ransom in exchange for the decryption key to give back access. Since you cannot access your systems during this process, it stops your operations until the issue is resolved. This impacts your service deliveries, frustrates customers, and harms your finances.

Managed EDR monitors your systems continuously to detect early signs of ransomware, such as sudden spikes in data usage, unusual encryption in your files, etc. MEDR first isolates the affected endpoints and then removes the malware using advanced capabilities and expert guidance to restore your data and access.

• Zero-day Attack: In this type of cyber attack, the attacker exploits the vulnerabilities in a software solution before developers can fix them. Since there is no fix currently available, the developers have zero days to patch it. This is also the reason why zero-day attacks are difficult to detect, address, and prevent.

With managed EDR, you get anomaly detection and advanced threat intelligence to identify and address suspicious activities and unusual patterns that may indicate a zero-day attack.

• Phishing Attacks: Phishing attacks happen via deceptive emails to trick users into downloading malware into the system and giving out sensitive information.

Managed EDR analyzes URLs, email attachments, and file downloads to spot malicious behavior. The solution detects a malicious link and blocks the users from opening it to prevent security mishaps. It also records incidents to help improve security policies and employee awareness.

• Fileless Attacks: Fileless attacks are malware that execute malicious code in your system’s memory and are not saved on the hard disk. This allows fileless malware to bypass traditional antivirus software. Staying hidden, the malware keeps on compromising systems, applications, software, and protocols to carry out malicious activities.

Managed EDR uses behavioral analysis to monitor the system for unusual activities, instead of surface-level scanning. It detects and stops these attacks before they harm your applications and protocols.

• Advanced Persistent Threats: Advanced persistent threats (APTs) are stealthy attacks that enter a network and remain undetected for a long period. These steal data and gain unauthorized permissions to confidential systems and data to prepare themselves for larger attacks.

Managed EDR monitors your endpoint activities for APTs, such as unauthorized access attempts, lateral movement, etc. It offers advanced tools to isolate the compromised endpoint and neutralize threats.

• Insider Threats: Insider threats are security risks by someone from within your organization with access to important data and systems. They intentionally (due to revenge or corporate espionage) or unintentionally (due to carelessness or accidents) compromise sensitive data.

Managed EDR tracks user activities across endpoints to identify unusual behaviors and unauthorized access to sensitive files. It also detects suspicious data transfers and responds to these threats immediately to prevent data breaches.

• Distributed Denial of Service Attacks: Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks flood a network or application with excessive traffic to disrupt normal operations.

A managed EDR system identifies and eliminates unusual traffic spikes to keep systems operational. It lets businesses get to the attack source and execute a long-term defense mechanism.

How Does Managed EDR Work?

Managed EDR protects your business from threats proactively by using advanced technologies and cybersecurity experts. Yes, it detects, investigates, and responds to unusual activities on endpoints, but how?

Let’s find out how managed EDR works step-by-step:

• Endpoint Monitoring: Managed EDR monitors your endpoints, such as desktops, laptops, mobile devices, and servers continuously. It records activities, including application use, authentication attempts, event logs, and other essential information. It tracks unusual patterns in application behavior, file access, and network connections that could indicate security risks.

• Threat Detection: Managed EDR uses advanced solutions, such as AI and ML, threat intelligence, and behavioral analysis to identify advanced threats. These tools investigate endpoint activities to identify suspicious activity and eliminate the threat instantly.

• Threat Containment: After a managed EDR solution detects a threat, it immediately isolates the affected endpoints from the network to contain the risk and prevent malware from spreading. This minimizes the damage without affecting your operations.

• Expert Guidance: Managed EDR works with cybersecurity experts who think outside the box to secure your business from cyberattacks and manage its security posture. These professionals investigate threats to determine how severe the attack is and the impact of these attacks on your business. Experts do this to identify the root cause of the attack and prepare strategies to address it.

• Incident Response: Once experts detect and understand the threat, they create a solid incident response plan. It includes how to remove malware, restore affected systems, and execute security fixes to prevent future incidents. Managed EDR teams handle these actions remotely to eliminate risks and improve defenses.

• Wide Visibility: Managed EDR lets you visualize all your endpoints, incident reports, and real-time updates in its dashboard. The report outlines the detected risks, actions taken, remediation techniques used, and the impact of the threat. This lets you stay informed on what is happening and make better security strategies.

Benefits of Managed EDR for Businesses

Cybercriminals are constantly finding new targets and innovative ways to attack them. Take, phishing attacks, ransomware, APTs, and fileless malware for example. To stay safe, you need proactive security measures, such as managed EDR to address these risks.

Below are some points to understand the benefits of managed EDR for your business with modern IT infrastructure:

• Wider Coverage for Endpoints: The attack surface becomes larger with remote work and Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) settings in organizations. The devices, systems, and connectivity in these settings could have vulnerabilities and risks, which attackers look out for.

With managed EDR, you can secure all the endpoints, including mobile devices, servers, desktops, and laptops connected to your network, no matter where your employees work from.

• Threat Detection: Cyber threats operate silently and can bypass traditional antivirus software. Managed EDR has advanced technologies like behavioral analysis and machine learning that help you detect unauthorized access and unusual activities across endpoints. It promptly detects and neutralizes threats before they harm your business operations or reputation.

• Customized Solutions: You can customize a managed EDR solution to meet your unique needs, such as attack surface, remote workforce, BYOD policies, etc. This flexibility keeps you protected from various cyber threats.

• Mitigating Cyber Risks: Cyberattacks harm your organization’s reputation and lead to legal procedures and heavy penalties. Managed EDR acts as a shield to protect your organization from threats and their harmful impacts.

• Incident Response: Speed and continuous monitoring are necessary to keep detecting and responding to threats as they happen. Managed EDR monitors your organization continuously for security threats and unusual activities. This makes it easier to respond to incidents in real-time and get your resources to safety.

• Regulatory Compliance: Businesses must adhere to strict data protection regulations, such as HIPAA or GDPR, else they may face penalties and other legal risks.

Managed EDR provides detailed audit logs to help you maintain compliance. It shows that you use strong cybersecurity measures to protect sensitive data and have actual records to prove it.

Challenges of Implementing Managed EDR

Deploying managed EDR in your organization can be complex. You may face multiple challenges, from security threats to scalability, compatibility, cost, and more while implementing managed EDR. Let’s discuss some of these challenges in detail, so you can prepare for solutions and ensure an error-free and smooth deployment.

• Planning: The initial setup of a managed EDR system can disrupt current business operations if not planned correctly.
• Scalability: Not all managed EDR solutions offer scalability. If your security needs grow, it will be hard to manage security posture for increasing endpoints.
• Cost: The implementation cost can be super high, which may not suit small businesses. It includes setup, license, and ongoing management costs.
• Cyber Threats: Hardly a day passes by when you don’t hear about cyber attacks.  To stay safe from stealthy and persistent cyber attacks, you need to use advanced solutions. But if your MEDR cannot protect your business from modern attacks, how can you rely on it?
• Incompatibility: Sometimes, incompatibility issues arise between a MEDR solution and your organization’s existing systems, such as cloud resources, on-premise setups, and legacy applications. And when that happens, the MEDR may not be able to cover all your endpoints, causing gaps and inefficiencies.
• Employee Resistance: Not everyone in your organization will be happy with the new change due to skill gaps, personal preferences, or anything else. MEDR experts sometimes suggest security measures to take immediately to prevent mishaps. But not everyone will be up for this, especially if it is outside working hours or due to lack of resources. This will disrupt workflow and productivity.

Managed EDR Best Practices

Managed EDR comes with advanced solutions and expert guidance to improve your organization’s security posture. If you want to make the most of your MEDR, here are some of the best practices you must follow to ensure it aligns with your business and security goals.

• Security Objectives: Define your security objectives first before you deploy a managed EDR solution. Consider points like the key assets you want to protect, the types of threats you face frequently, compliance requirements, and the type of IT infrastructure.

• Proactive Threat Hunting: Create a solid and proactive threat-hunting strategy to identify unusual behaviors, investigate anomalies, and use human expertise to improve decision-making and your organization’s security posture.

• Monitor 24/7: Cyber attackers don’t follow business hours and holidays. Set your Managed EDR to provide 24/7 monitoring service to detect threats immediately before any harm comes to you. Set up automated responses, employ experts in incident response, and use real-time threat intelligence to beat attackers.

• Improve Employee Awareness: Employee awareness is necessary to ensure everyone follows cybersecurity best practices and prevent cyber threats. Offer training programs where you can include how to recognize phishing attacks and avoid unsafe links, the different types of attacks, the importance of reporting suspicious activities promptly, and more.

How to Choose the Right Managed EDR Service?

You need a powerful MEDR solution to detect, investigate, and respond to advanced security incidents in real-time. It must complement your requirements and budget. So, choosing the right managed EDR service for your security needs is important. For this, you must take some important steps before you choose a MEDR tool.

Consider the below points to make your final decision:

• Outline your needs: Before finalizing a managed EDR service, outline your specific security requirements. Consider the size of your IT team, the types of threats you are more likely to face, 24/7 monitoring and response, and compliance requirements. When you understand the needs clearly, you can shortlist managed EDR services that meet your security goals.

• Check for functionalities: Find out if the managed EDR service you choose offers functionalities like advanced threat detection, threat hunting, forensic investigation, faster incident response, etc. Look out for a provider that combines advanced technology with human experts to offer the best service.

• Evaluate integrations: Check how well a managed EDR service integrates with other security features, such as firewalls, cloud environments, extended detection and response (XDR), security information and event management (SIEM) tools, etc.

• Deep visibility: A good MEDR tool should monitor network connections, user behavior, malware attempts, login activities, DNS requests, and file modifications to provide comprehensive visibility across systems.

• Compliance: Check if the tool complies with GDPR, HIPAA, NIST Cybersecurity Framework, and ISO 27001. It is necessary if your business operates within highly regulated industries. This will protect your data and save you from legal risks.

• Pricing: Check whether the managed EDR provides a single pricing option or multiple tiers based on varying features. Also, you need to look for the number of endpoints it can monitor and the features it includes in the pricing ranges. Match your requirements and budget to decide which tools benefit your organization at an affordable rate.

SentinelOne for Managed Endpoint Detection and Response

SentinelOne’s MDR is an advanced and reliable security solution that offers wide coverage for your systems and endpoints. It detects threats and responds to them proactively with threat-hunting expertise and expert-led guidance. This industry-recognized MDR works 24x7x365 to prevent threats and safeguard your data. Here are its core features:

• End-to-end coverage: Apart from endpoints, SentinelOne’s MDR monitors your cloud workloads, identities, networks, applications, and other systems around the clock for cyber threats. SentinelOne has a global team of security experts that can detect signs of compromises and abnormalities in your network to help protect your systems and data.
• Ongoing advisory: With a team of expert threat services advisors, SentinelOne offers ongoing advisory and customized service integrations. This helps you maximize your ROI and stay protected from advanced persistent threats.
• AI capabilities: The MDR uses a powerful AI-based Singularity™ Platform to deliver sustainable speed for detecting, containing, and responding to threats. Experience more signals and actionable results with less noise and fewer false positives or negatives.
• Supplemented DFIR: You can combine SentinelOne’s MDR with DFIR and Breach Readiness to get higher protection from various types of cyber threats, vulnerabilities, and risks. Digital Forensic Investigation and Incident Response (DFIR) lets you investigate each threat extensively to get to its root cause and remediate it faster. Also, prepare your organization for data breaches with SentinelOne’s Breach Readiness services that include tabletop exercises, Purple Teaming, knowledge building, etc.

Take a demo to see SentinelOne’s MDR in action.

Conclusion

Unlike traditional antivirus software, managed EDR keeps on learning with machine learning capabilities. It monitors suspicious behavior and unusual activities to detect threats and responds automatically to them. It also isolates infected systems and endpoints immediately to stop threats from spreading and prevent data breaches and attacks.

With managed EDR’s speed, intelligence, and expertise, you can detect and stop attacks before they harm your endpoints and disrupt business operations. It neutralizes threats proactively even without an in-house security team and keeps your business resilient against cyber attacks.

So, if you are looking for an advanced managed EDR solution that offers advanced features, is cost-efficient, and complements various security needs, SentinelOne’s Managed EDR is a good option. Take a demo to know more.

FAQs

1. What is EDR, and how does it work?

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) is a cybersecurity solution that companies use to protect their endpoints and other systems from threats. It works by monitoring your endpoints, cloud services, on-premise devices, and other systems continuously.

EDR uses advanced capabilities such as AI and ML algorithms, behavior analysis, etc., to identify suspicious activities and threats. If it detects any threat, it alerts you immediately and helps you respond to threats quickly.

2. How does Managed EDR integrate with existing Cybersecurity Infrastructure?

Managed EDR is designed to augment your existing security stack, such as SIEM, firewalls, and legacy AV software. It takes existing defenses to the next level with continuous monitoring, automated threat detection, and expert-guided incident response. With integration, blind spots disappear and visibility into networks and endpoints is enhanced, ensuring your cybersecurity solutions work in concert to keep your business safe.

3. How does Managed EDR enhance incident recovery and business continuity?

Managed EDR not only identifies threats, but also accelerates incident recovery to keep business running smoothly. Through endpoint isolation and the provision of accurate forensic data, it facilitates fast remediation and minimizes downtime. Expert teams power the recovery and roll out strategic remediations, so systems are restored quickly while fortifying defenses against future threats, which is the secret to keeping business running smoothly without interruption.

4. What are the most prevalent misconceptions about Managed EDR?

One misconception is that Managed EDR is only for large enterprises; in reality, its architecture is scalable to serve organizations of any size. Another myth is that it replaces existing security solutions—instead, it enhances them by adding advanced threat detection and proactive response. Also, some believe Managed EDR is too difficult, but existing solutions are designed with ease of use and integration into existing systems.

5. How does the future of Managed EDR shape up with new technologies emerging on the horizon?

The evolution of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cloud computing is defining the future of Managed EDR. These technologies are enhancing threat detection, predictive analytics, and automated response, making it possible for more integration with other security platforms. As cyber threats are continuously changing, Managed EDR solutions will also keep evolving, making them to be strong and adaptable in protecting businesses from a changing threat landscape.