Managed XDR: What It Is, How It Works, and Why You Should Switch to It

Managed extended detection and response (XDR) provides a number of advantages over endpoint protection for enterprise systems. It’s fast becoming a critical safeguard in today’s dynamic threat landscape, where many organizations have an increasing number of endpoints to protect.

Managed XDR goes beyond mere endpoint protection, instead providing protection for your entire information technology (IT) infrastructure. This includes firewalls, routers, and cloud storage as well as endpoints. It’s more comprehensive, and it brings everything together onto one screen so your security team can better manage the needs of your organization. It works through data collection, threat detection and analysis, but it also learns from the threats it encounters. It has many advantages for business, including reduced costs and increased connectivity.

Understanding Managed XDR

Managed XDR is a next-generation security solution that consolidates data across the organization to create a single, integrated security window. It offers a lot more than traditional endpoint security. It can protect your whole network and all of the systems that operate on it. It combines security information and event management (SIEM) with endpoint protection to provide a more comprehensive solution for a security landscape that is rapidly growing more complex with the addition of more and more gadgets to our work and personal lives. It offers enhanced threat detection, with fewer blind spots than traditional endpoint detection.

How It Works

Imagine a large building filled with security cameras. Somewhere in that building there will be a security office filled with television monitors, each one connected to a different camera feed. Managed XDR can be thought of as being a cybersecurity version of that security office. It unifies all resources into a single dashboard, and it’s monitoring everything simultaneously, ready to raise the alarm if a threat is detected.

It does this by gathering data from a range of sources on your network, including endpoints, email, cloud-hosted applications, and network traffic. Then it uses advanced techniques based on machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze that data for the presence of threats. If it detects a threat, it analyzes the origin, nature, and potential consequences of that threat. Then it responds by initiating counter-threat measures. After the threat is neutralized, the managed XDR tool employs machine learning again to learn from the encounter. It will adapt in order to better protect your network and endpoints from other threats like the one it just encountered.

Why You Should Switch to Managed XDR

Managed XDR solutions have become more popular in cybersecurity settings, now that increased work-from-home rates and increased complexity in the security space are making endpoint solutions obsolete. They have a number of benefits for businesses with complex cybersecurity needs. It pulls data from many different sources across a network, so it can provide a more contextualized picture of what your security landscape looks like. Managed XDR provides security for everything on your network that an attacker can use to his or her advantage, including endpoints, cloud storage, firewalls, and emails. It eliminates the need to use multiple tools for security, since it brings all of your organization’s data and threat detection together onto one dashboard. It also tends to have a lower cost of ownership because of its ability to pull together data from multiple sources and offer a single, integrated view of your security outlook.

Because they rely on machine learning and AI, managed XDR solutions also provide the ability to automate repetitive security tasks. This can free up the time and resources of human beings on your security team so they can tackle more complex tasks that require human skill and creativity. This boosts productivity and can even save you money by making your workers more productive. And you don’t have to sacrifice security – managed XDR tools can still flag suspicious behavior. In fact, they’ll be more likely to flag suspicious behavior when performing routine repetitive tasks than a human would doing those same tasks.

If you’re looking to improve your organization’s cybersecurity with a tool that can take on emerging threats, you need to consider managed XDR. It can take a lot of the pressure off your cybersecurity staff by making their jobs easier and allowing them to automate routine tasks. It can even help you save money while improving security for a complex network of devices, digital traffic, and cloud storage. Don’t wait any longer – look into switching to managed XDR today and get your organization the protection it needs.