HOW DOES BEHAVIORAL EDR ANALYTICS WORK IN CYBERSECURITY?
Cybersecurity attacks have become more sophisticated, which warrants innovative ways to prevent them. One emerging proactive method involves the use of behavioral analytics. Learn more about behavioral EDR (endpoint detection and response). Know how it can augment your existing cybersecurity methods.
Behavioral EDR Analytics Defined
Behavioral EDR analytics analyzes patterns, activities, and trends among programs and users. It establishes a profile of a user’s typical habits. It is how behavioral analysis detects a deviation from the user’s normal pattern.
For instance, a user who normally downloads 300 MB of files suddenly starts downloading gigabytes of data. Your cybersecurity system would detect this behavioral change and alert the security team.
Behavioral EDR relies on algorithms, machine learning, and statistical analyses to find deviant behavior from established patterns. The sudden change may indicate a threat and launch an investigation to find that threat.
In behavioral EDR analytics, the process requires tracking the users of your cybersecurity system. It usually looks for potential insider threats. These often include unhappy employees, rogue staff, or cyber attackers with access to your system. Even applications, servers, and devices connected to the system get analyzed.
Reasons Behavioral EDR Analytics Is Important in Cybersecurity
Behavioral EDR analytics matter to any organization that wants better to improve its cybersecurity. It works by recognizing hackers based on their habits and preferences. They might disguise themselves to penetrate your system. However, their real behavior will betray them.
Studies showed that over 80% of data breaches start with a compromised privileged account. It is because hackers usually pretend to be one of your system’s users. If they succeed, they can destroy your system and prolong downtime. What’s worse is they ruin your reputation. But to do this much damage, the hacker’s behavior will stray from your legitimate users’ typical behaviors. That’s when behavioral EDR can detect the anomaly.
Hackers will try to wreak havoc on your system, but every attempt will give you a clue to what they are trying to do. It is why behavioral EDR works because it helps you find these clues and prevent the attack. Detecting it early can help your cybersecurity team intervene.
It does not matter if you have a small internal IT team. You can automate behavioral analytics in detecting and stopping potential threats. You will still have time to intervene before it’s too late.
Benefits of Behavioral EDR
Behavioral analytics’ biggest benefit is it detects threats that would otherwise remain undetected. These threats are usually benign to systems that are not developed to detect them in the first place. Even if you have a system in place that reports potential threats, those reports are not enough. They usually do not include what behaviors are suspicious, what files were involved, and when the anomaly happened.
If you use behavioral EDR, your security team can spot suspicious human behaviors much quicker. These may include guessing a password and leaking sensitive data as a privileged user. Suspicious behaviors may also include unknowingly downloading malware through a phishing scam. These behaviors may come from hackers or insiders who used legitimate tools or malware appearing to be legitimate.
Behavioral EDR involves using tools that do more than detect anomalous behaviors. It helps determine whether a behavior is anomalous enough to launch an investigation. Otherwise, you’d be wasting time.
A victim of a phishing scam may access your system using their legitimate access details. It might not raise any alarm in the process. However, behavioral analytics will alert you to that user’s unusual behavior. It is so your security team can cut off that person’s access until the issue is investigated and resolved.
Behavioral EDR users have learned to appreciate how accurate and timely its threat hunting process is. It correlates all the detected anomalies into one incident report to raise the alarm. It allows your IT team to find that threat and investigate it right away. No time gets wasted and the damage gets isolated before it grows too big.
Another benefit from using behavioral EDR is it helps restore endpoint control. The International Data Corporation (IDC) reports that 70% of data breaches start on endpoint devices.
There is a high number of endpoints in a modern network setup. It makes it difficult to fend off sophisticated attacks from every single endpoint device. But an EDR solution allows you to have better control over all your endpoints.
Xcitium Behavioral EDR
Are you looking for a behavioral EDR solution now? Xcitium can help you with our EDR services.
Here at Xcitium, you can expect our EDR solutions to detect security incidents, investigate such incidents, and contain them at the affected endpoint. You can also expect us to restore the endpoints to their pre-infection condition. Do you want to try it? Contact Xcitium today!
