By PJ Bradley

Any organization, regardless of the size or industry, needs to protect its data and other digital assets against attacks and accidental damage. Each business is different, and has different needs, desires, and resources available to fight cyberthreats. It is vital not only to employ measures and solutions to protect your organization, but to put in the research to ensure they are the right measures and solutions for your organization.

Endpoint detection and response (EDR) and data detection and response (DDR) are two types of cybersecurity tools built to protect an organization’s assets. Before making the decision to invest in one of these tools, it is crucial to understand the differences between them in order to determine if either one is a good fit for you and your organization.

Defining EDR

EDR is a helpful cybersecurity tool that is designed to identify and respond to threats at an organization’s endpoints. Using advanced functionalities such as real-time monitoring and analytics, these tools can detect potentially risky behaviors and activities on enterprise devices. With deeper visibility into endpoint activities, organizations can decrease response time on threats and mitigate risks efficiently and proactively.

By detecting and responding to potential threats at endpoints, including sophisticated attacks that might slip past more traditional security measures, EDR empowers security and IT teams to hunt and investigate threats. Continuous monitoring and data collection can help security professionals gain insight into the baseline behaviors of users within an organization, identify deviations from the norm, and analyze user behavior to improve security.

By identifying possible threats by comparing endpoint data to information from threat intelligence organizations, EDR tools are constantly updating their own understanding of what risky or suspicious activity looks like. They use this information to automatically respond to threats based on predefined rules.

Why You Might Need EDR

There are a number of reasons that an EDR tool might be an important part of your organization’s security strategy. Companies can benefit from many standard features of an EDR solution, including:

• Real-time monitoring and threat detection backed by reliable threat intelligence, behavioral analysis, and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
• Help with endpoint visibility and asset management to decrease the burden of these tasks on security and IT teams.
• Automated incident response and threat containment capabilities, isolating compromised endpoints to enable investigation of incidents.
• Advanced analytics helping security teams to identify patterns, detect unknown threats, and obtain visibility into their risk profile.
• Threat hunting abilities aiding security teams in proactively searching for potential threats to the organization and its assets, bolstering and fortifying the overall security posture of the company.

Defining DDR

In contrast with EDR, which protects endpoints, DDR is “designed to address the long-standing challenges with protecting data” in all its forms. Data is often the most valuable asset that organizations have in their possession, especially those such as legal and financial institutions that process and handle sensitive client data. Data in motion and at rest must be protected with advanced methods like DDR.

Traditional data protection tools might focus on the content of data, but this is not a reliable indicator of whether the data in question is sensitive or likely to cause significant damage. The more important factor in determining the risk profile of data is its lineage: where does the data originate, and how has it been edited, shared, and combined in its lifetime? Data from one source may be highly likely to be valuable customer information, while data from another source may be more likely to be publicly available, and therefore in need of less protection.

Why You Might Need DDR

Any organization will have some form of sensitive data that must be protected against the threat of attacks and accidental leaks. Some companies—such as legal firms, financial institutions, and government bodies—may possess vast amounts of extremely important and valuable information. These organizations are responsible for building an effective defense against threats like phishing and ransomware.

Implementing a DDR solution can help an organization in many aspects of data protection, such as:

• Maintaining compliance with regulatory standards in place to enforce data privacy and security.
• Taking a data-centric approach to cybersecurity. 
• Obtaining visibility into data lineage for use in improving security and other operations.
• Detecting suspicious behaviors related to data in order to proactively recognize potential attacks.
• Decreasing the chance of threats like IP theft, business disruptions, loss of reputation, and regulatory penalties.

Conclusion

While EDR and DDR are both useful tools for detecting and responding to threats, it is important to understand the differences between the two before implementing either one. Your organization may have needs and resources that lend themselves more to either EDR or DDR, depending on a number of factors like budget, staffing, and prioritization of cybersecurity initiatives. In any case, it is crucial to know what EDR and DDR are, what capabilities they have, and what benefits your organization can gain from them. 

PJ Bradley is a writer on a wide variety of topics, passionate about learning and helping people above all else. Holding a bachelor’s degree from Oakland University, PJ enjoys using a lifelong desire to understand how things work to write about subjects that inspire interest. Most of PJ’s free time is spent reading and writing. PJ is also a regular writer at Bora.