28 Mar EDR vs XDR: The Key Differences
And is the newer XDR worth the price?
– Aimei Wei, Chief Technical Officer, Stellar Cyber
San Jose, Calif. – Mar. 27, 2024
While Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Extended Detection and Response (XDR) both represent crucial tools in today’s cybersecurity arsenal, it can be hard to distinguish between them. EDR is older – primarily focused on the endpoint level, it monitors and collects activity data from laptops, desktops, and mobile devices. This was a considerable advancement from the antivirus program. EDR primarily uses end-user behavior analytics (EUBA), which spots potentially threatening suspicious patterns.
XDR, on the other hand, is much newer than EDR, and extends beyond just endpoints. It integrates data from multiple security layers — including email, network, cloud, and endpoints — providing a more comprehensive view of an organization’s security posture. Alongside this, a unified response approach allows security teams to address threats across the entire IT ecosystem rather than in isolation. This article will address the key differences between modern EDR and XDR solutions – and whether the newer XDR is worth the price.
What is EDR?
Keeping employees and workflows connected is integral to the day-to-day success of your organization. As more and more businesses seek to unlock greater degrees of efficiency, the number of internet-connected devices continues to skyrocket — estimated to hit 38.6 billion by 2025. The growing quantity of devices has already had severe ramifications on enterprise security, epitomized by Verizon’s 2023 malware threat report, which found endpoint-installed malware was directly responsible for up to 30 percent of data breaches.
EDR solutions take an approach that prioritizes endpoint protection within enterprise threats. This is achieved in a multi-faceted way — first by monitoring and collecting data from endpoints, and then analyzing this data to detect patterns indicative of attack, and sending relevant alerts to the security team.
The first step involves telemetry ingestion. By installing agents on each endpoint, the individual usage patterns of every device are registered and collected. The hundreds of different security-related events collected include registry modifications, memory access, and network connections. This is then sent to the central EDR platform for continuous file analysis. Whether on-premises or cloud-based, the core EDR tool examines each file that interacts with the endpoint. If a sequence of file actions matches a pre-recognized indicator of attack, the EDR tool will classify the activity as suspicious and automatically send an alert. By bringing suspicious activity and pushing alerts to the relevant security analyst, it becomes possible to identify and prevent attacks with far greater efficiency. Modern EDRs can also initiate automated responses according to predetermined triggers.
What is XDR?
XDR is an evolution from EDR. EDR systems can challenge resource-strapped organizations. Maintaining an EDR system demands significant investments of time, finances, bandwidth, and personnel. A more distributed workforce and an increasing array of devices and access locations cause more visibility gaps, further complicating the detection of advanced threats. XDR focuses the capabilities of your security system.
XDR integrates threat data from previously isolated security tools — such as EDR — across an organization’s entire technology infrastructure. This leads to more efficient threat hunting and response capabilities. An XDR platform gathers security telemetry from endpoints, cloud workloads, networks, and email systems. XDR provides key contextual insights that help security teams understand the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by attackers.
Its extended detection offers a comprehensive view of security incidents and streamlines threat investigation, enhancing the overall effectiveness of cybersecurity teams. See our guide for successful XDR implementation with your current security framework.
XDR vs EDR
Whereas EDR specifically targets endpoint-level threats, XDR better meets the current needs landscape. It integrates data from endpoints, network traffic, cloud environments, and email systems, allowing it to detect more complex, multi-vector attacks that might bypass endpoint-only security measures.
While EDR is fairly resource-demanding, XDR’s comprehensive approach implements an integrated security strategy. Thereby, XDR reduces the administrative burden on security teams by providing deeper context and enhanced detection capabilities.
The XDR vs EDR comparison below details 10 differences to help determine which solution best suits your own use case.
| EDR | XDR | |
| Primary Focus | Identifying endpoint-based threats. | Integrating cross-channel threat detection. |
| Data Sources | Endpoint device data – including file activity, process execution, and registry changes. | From cloud access logs to email inboxes, data is collected from endpoints, network, cloud, and communication channels. |
| Threat Detection | Based on endpoint behavior that matches pre-established indicators of attack. | Correlates data across multiple layers of the IT environment for more accurate behavioral analytics. |
| Response Capabilities | Automatically isolates affected endpoints; deploys agents to infected endpoints. | Takes immediate contextualized action, such as snapshots of business-critical data at early signs of a ransomware attack. |
| Analytics and Reporting | Streamlines data investigation, maps malicious events with the MITRE ATT&CK framework. | Uses threat intelligence feeds to flag unusual behavior, to create prioritized and actionable reports. |
| Visibility | High visibility into endpoint activities. | Broad visibility across different IT components. |
| Complexity | Less complex, focused on endpoints. | More complex; integrates various data sources. Requires streamlining of data ingestion across stakeholders, APIs, and policies. |
| Integration with Other Tools | Only endpoint-oriented tools. | High integration with a wide range of security tools. |
| Use Case | Organizations focusing on endpoint security. | Organizations seeking a holistic security approach. |
| Incident Investigation | Deep investigation at the endpoint level. | Broad investigation capabilities across the security ecosystem. |
EDR Pros
When EDR was first introduced to the cybersecurity landscape, its new level of pinpoint accuracy augmented existing security capabilities.
Better than Antivirus
Traditional antivirus solutions are effective only against known malware strains. EDR’s proactivity detects and shuts down zero-day threats before a full-scale breach.
A forensic team can also use its automated investigation capabilities to determine the extent of a previous attack. This detailed insight enables more effective remediation strategies, including isolating infected endpoints and reverting systems to their pre-infection state.
Integrates with SIEM
Security information and event management (SIEM) solutions supplement EDR analytics with additional context from across your IT landscape, further addressing threats.
Can Guarantee Insurance Compliance
With increasing cyber threats, cyber insurers often require customers to employ more in-depth protection than antivirus — making EDR adoption necessary.
EDR Cons
While EDR still provides viable cybersecurity for some organizations today, we must investigate its suitability in a changing security landscape. The following are common challenges faced by EDR-driven teams.
1. False Positives
EDR solutions, particularly those relying on weak heuristics and insufficient data modeling, can generate a high number of false positives. This can overwhelm security teams and disguise actual threats.
2. High Resource Demands
EDR systems demand a skilled team for effective implementation. Deep visibility into endpoint activities and generate detailed data on potential threats requires thorough maintenance.
EDR solutions also require continuous management. This involves adapting the system’s configurations and parameters to match the changing threat landscape and organizational IT changes, which is difficult given ingrained remote and BYOD policies.
3. Critical Delay
Immediate solutions are increasingly essential; relying on cloud-based responses and timely intervention is far from practical.
The current EDR frameworks predominantly rely on cloud connectivity, which introduces a critical lag in protecting endpoints. Malicious attacks can infiltrate systems, pilfer or encrypt data, and erase their tracks in mere seconds.
XDR Pros
As the newest iteration of EDR, XDR provides a number of day-to-day advantages to your security teams.
1. Comprehensive Coverage
XDR integrates and analyzes data from a variety of sources, including endpoints, networks, cloud environments, and email systems. This comprehensive view enables detection of complex, multi-vector attacks that might bypass endpoint-only security solutions, which is key for confronting sophisticated cyber threats.
2. Advanced Threat Investigation
An inundation of alerts can easily overwhelm an organization’s security system. Skilled security analysts must assess each incident, conduct investigations, and determine the appropriate remediation steps — which is highly inefficient and time-consuming.
To enhance the effectiveness of analysis, XDR security solutions now incorporate artificial intelligence (AI). AI autonomously investigates and contextualizes alerts, to provide detailed insights that expedite the response process. A well-trained AI system is both more efficient and more easily scaled.
XDR Cons
Despite its wide-reaching benefits, there are a few things to keep in mind when approaching XDR.
Knowing Your Data Demands
As with any cloud-based tool, an XDR system requires a thorough understanding of your logging and telemetry data needs in order to gauge storage requirements.
1. Single Vendor Reliance
Vendor-specific XDR solutions can lead to an over-reliance on that vendor’s ecosystem. This reliance restricts an organization’s ability to integrate diverse security products, potentially impacting its long-term strategic security planning. Additionally, the effectiveness of these XDR solutions is often contingent on the vendor — because the true potential of XDR lies in the collaboration of multiple solutions.
Therefore, the value of XDR depends on the comprehensiveness of other vendors’ technologies.
Bring Your Own EDR
XDR maximizes your cybersecurity resources. Stellar Cyber’s Open XDR removes the vendor lock-in that limits this strategy and supports your enterprise in achieving deeply customized XDR protection — without asking you to start from scratch. Combine your EDR with Stellar’s OpenXDR, and benefit from over 400 out-of-the-box integrations, enhancing your pre-existing visibility with application log data, cloud, and network telemetry — without manual actions.
Find out how Stellar Cyber’s XDR can support next-gen SecOps today.
– Aimei Wei is the chief technical officer at Stellar Cyber.
About Stellar Cyber
Stellar Cyber’s Open XDR Platform delivers comprehensive, unified security without complexity, empowering lean security teams of any skill level to secure their environments successfully. With Stellar Cyber, organizations reduce risk with early and precise identification and remediation of threats while slashing costs, retaining investments in existing tools, and improving analyst productivity, delivering an 8X improvement in MTTD and a 20X improvement in MTTR. The company is based in Silicon Valley. For more information, visit https://stellarcyber.ai.