A new buzzword is in the market.
In an ever-changing cybersecurity environment, organizations must adapt their security tech stack to better secure themselves. As environments get more complicated, open XDR has emerged as an advanced detection and response tool companies should consider.
What is XDR?
XDR stands for eXtended Detection and Response and combines traditional detection and response with network traffic analysis and other telemetry sources from traditional security information and event management (SIEM) systems.
By leveraging telemetry and security data from multiple security sources, including traditional endpoint detection and response tools, organizations are better equipped to detect anomalous behavior and understand how and if a compromise may have happened.
The most important thing to understand about XDR is that it comes from a single source manufacturer. This can cause many obstacles, but can also help organizations minimize the number of security devices that should be combined with XDR. – And that is the main difference between traditional XDR and “open XDR.”
By leveraging telemetry and security data from multiple security sources, organizations are better equipped to detect anomalous behavior and understand how and if a compromise may have happened.
What are the main components of XDR?
MXDR solutions vary by vendor, but many leverage analytics and data from several back-end and front-end components. These include:
- Firewalls (virtual and on-premises)
- Network data
- Endpoint data
- Cloud services
- Email systems
- Endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools
- Identity and access management solutions
- Intrusion and prevention systems
- Cloud access security brokers (CASB)
Every XDR solution is different, and organizations should consider how XDR tools will integrate into their environments.
What is open XDR?
Open XDR, also referred to as “everything XDR” or “hybrid XDR,” is a vendor-agnostic approach to XDR that integrates a customer’s existing security environment, incorporating all their security tools as part of its data collection and analysis. It’s dubbed “open” XDR because it takes an open approach, aggregating data from all sources. Traditional, or native, XDR, on the other hand, offers an all-in-one platform and does not integrate with third-party vendors.
As a relatively new solution, open XDR varies widely across the different vendors offering the approach.
How does open XDR work?
Open XDR, unlike traditional XDR solutions that only incorporate data from a vendor’s native technology stack, is designed to ingest security data from all sources available. These solutions often use AI-powered data analysis to derive the correct security insights.
Open XDR takes advantage of an organization’s existing EDR or SIEM tool, aggregating data across on-prem., cloud, and hybrid sources. It’s not designed to replace any specific technology and instead sits atop a company’s security stack, centralizing data collection and analysis.
Five benefits of open XDR
- Centralized security data rather than drawing from many sources
- Streamlined detection and response with faster reaction time
- Scalability to onboard new security tools and technologies
- Decreased use of resources – saving both money and time
- Continuous security tool optimization to catch false positives
The main benefit of the open XDR workflow is that it collects security logs and alerts from any source and not from one specific single manufacture. The alerts/logs are normalized and the data is enriched trough threat intelligence and incident correlation. This correlation process can lead to optimized automation and response with AI and ML.
XDR architecture
The benefits of open XDR
- Open XDR takes SecOps to the next level, shifting a time and resource-consuming, manual, and inefficient process that uses siloed tools to one that delivers fast detection, investigation, and remediation with automation through a consolidated and AP-powered platform.
- Open XDR tightly integrates with all existing tools, centralizing and correlating security data from the entire attack surface into incidents with centralized incident response capabilities.
- Open XDR consolidates multiple security tools, providing a comprehensive and efficient security incident detection and response platform that combines elements of SIEM, SOAR, EDR, NDR, user and entity behavioral analysis (UBEA), and a threat intelligence platform in a cloud-native platform.
Interested in learning more about how open XDR can benefit your security operations? Speak to an expert today!
