Endpoint Detection & Response: Top Five Things You Need to Know

In an age where enterprise security breaches are increasingly commonplace, it’s important to assess the state of your organization’s endpoint security solution. Common set-and-forget endpoint security products offer a basic level of protection, but are not necessarily equipped for the onslaught of advanced targeted attacks. This is where the next generation of endpoint security comes into play: endpoint detection and response. But what exactly is endpoint detection and response? Here are the top five things you should understand about endpoint detection and response to bolster your business’ threat prevention.

1. What is endpoint detection and response?
   Endpoint detection and response is a comprehensive, proactive endpoint security solution designed to supplement your existing defenses. This advanced endpoint protection measure shifts your security from a reactive threat approach to one that can detect and prevent threats before they even reach your organization. According to Gartner, “Organizations investing in EDR (endpoint detection and response) tools are purposefully moving from an ‘incident response’ mentality to one of ‘continuous monitoring’ in search of incidents that they know are constantly occurring.”
2. How does it work?
   McAfee’s endpoint detection and response solution focuses on three essential elements for effective threat prevention: automation, adaptability, and continuous monitoring.
   • Automation: Our solution invokes logic to create traps and triggers that are set on various parameters. Once an indicator of attack (IoA) is detected, our endpoint security solution prompts specific user-defined actions to properly handle each event.
   • Adaptability: Once administrators are alerted to an IoA, the endpoint solution triggers an adaptive response based on the type of attack detected.
   • Continuous monitoring: This persistent technology sets triggers and alerts for each attack, keeping you up to date with every event.
3. How does this solution complete the threat detection lifecycle?
   Don’t think of endpoint detection and response solely as an enhancement to your endpoint protection strategy—it is the link to completing your layered security solution. This critical technology strengthens your endpoint security solution and includes essential technologies such as antivirus and application control, but it also helps you manage and remediate data threats more effectively overall.
4. Why do you need endpoint detection and response?
   Data breaches hit a peak of 1,540 in 2015—a drastic 46% spike from the previous year’s record. As attacks become more targeted and focused on evading detection, organizations need easy-to-use tools that detect attacks before they strike. Basic endpoint security solutions alert IT to a breach and provide a great deal of data, yet sifting through mounds of information slows the time to remediation. Endpoint detection and response increases your security efficiency while capturing detailed information, allowing your team to act swiftly and with purpose.
5. What is McAfee’s offering?
   McAfee Endpoint Threat Defense and Response is an endpoint security solution that combines behavior-based protection with continuous visibility and powerful insights to rapidly detect, contain, investigate, and eliminate advanced threats at patient-zero. Fewer components, shared intelligence, deep integration, and unified workflows decrease the effort required to investigate, correct, and update protection, providing more time for security analysts to focus on what matters most.