The field of cybersecurity has more acronyms than ever before, further highlighting the complexity and growth of the IT landscape as it expands between on-premises and cloud environments.
The threat detection and response (TDR) category has seen significant growth with the emergence of endpoint detection and response (EDR), which focuses on workloads; network detection and response (NDR), which helps with network activity; and extended detection and response (XDR), which advances both EDR and NDR and includes SIEM capabilities.
We've now reached the threat detection and response (CDR) stage, which moves threat detection and response tools to the cloud to combat suspicious and malicious activity, including malware, credential theft, insider threats, and more.
How is CDR different from EDR, NDR and XDR?
CDR includes some elements of EDR, NDR, and XDR but with a focus on cloud threats. The most significant difference between CDR and the other three is its reliance on the cloud architecture itself, which provides a barrier to automated, software-based security control applications.
A hallmark of CDR is automation through cloud service provider services and APIs. CDR also focuses on large-scale event processing and automated risk analysis through machine learning and analytics.
Here are other key differences between CDR and other TDR options:
Comprehensive focus. CDR encompasses all aspects of cloud security visibility to facilitate detection and response across an interconnected cloud fabric. To this end, CDR is very similar to XDR, which combines EDR and NDR with SIEM to provide a more comprehensive set of detection, response, and control capabilities. CDR covers cloud workloads of all types—virtual machines, containers, and serverless—as well as cloud networks, storage nodes, and more. Automated detection and response. The cloud, as a software-defined infrastructure, has many available APIs and opportunities to automate detection and response capabilities. CDR continuously evaluates network traffic and workload events in real time, and sends alerts to a central console. CDR can trigger automated response actions to quarantine workloads, adapt network access controls, isolate assets and network zones, and even tear down and rebuild workloads from approved images. Cloud-centric threat monitoring and reporting. The cloud offers endless configuration options and controls, which are often misconfigured and easily attacked. CDR continuously assesses the configuration of the cloud itself—beyond just the assets deployed there—to provide up-to-date reports on the risks posed by poorly configured services and assets. Cloud-specific workload protection. In traditional data centers, EDR focuses primarily on endpoints and physical and virtual servers. In the cloud, workloads can be virtual machines, containers, or serverless, meaning the attack surfaces and patterns are different from traditional on-premises infrastructure models. CDR tools ingest these workload models to uncover cloud-specific attack patterns, such as identity and access management privilege escalation, cloud API abuse, and more. Cloud Big Data Processing. A common challenge in cloud event management is the sheer amount of data produced and how to manage and filter it. Using machine learning models, CDR platforms and services sort through the less relevant data and correlate the most important information to provide insights into cloud attacks. Given the speed of cloud changes and deployment, CDR services must be able to quickly analyze and alert as well.
In many ways, CDR mirrors a range of other TDR services, but the cloud is a different environment that requires a different level of focus on visibility and API-driven automation. Accordingly, here are the key differences between CDR vs. EDR, NDR, and XDR.
Dave Shackelford is the Founder and Principal Consultant at Voodoo Security; SANS Analyst, Instructor, Course Author; and Technical Director of GIAC.
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