Breaking Down the Real Meaning of an XDR Solution
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Over 85% of malicious traffic hides in encrypted communications. Traditional security tools miss lateral movement attacks that cost organizations an average of $4.44 million per breach. NDR is the cybersecurity approach that catches these hidden threats.
Network Detection and Response (NDR) focus on monitoring network traffic to detect, analyze, and respond to threats in real-time. It provides visibility into network activities, helping to identify malicious behaviors that might bypass traditional security measures.
Gartner defines Network Detection and Response (NDR) as a combination of machine learning, advanced threat analytics and rule-based detection to detect suspicious activities on enterprise networks.
Industry analysts project significant NDR market growth as sophisticated attacks like SUNBURST have exposed critical blind spots:
Traditional perimeter defenses, endpoint agents, and signature-based tools fail against modern threats that move laterally through networks using legitimate credentials.
NDR stands for Network Detection and Response. It refers to technologies and methodologies designed to identify and mitigate cyber threats by analyzing network data for signs of malicious activities or anomalies.
Network: Refers to the interconnected nodes that facilitate communication between devices. In cybersecurity, it’s the infrastructure where data travels. It includes Local Area Networks (LANs) within each office, where computers, printers, and servers communicate using Ethernet cables or Wi-Fi. Or Wide Area Network (WAN) connections that link these LANs together.
Detection: Involves identifying anomalies, threats, or malicious activities within the network through continuous monitoring and analysis.
Response: The action taken to neutralize or mitigate detected threats, which can include isolating devices, blocking traffic, or alerting security teams.
| Security Tool | Coverage | Major Blind Spot | NDR Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Firewall | Perimeter only | Internal lateral movement | Monitors east-west traffic |
| Antivirus | Files on endpoints | Network-based attacks | Detects fileless malware |
| EDR | Device activities | IoT and unmanaged assets | Agent-free visibility |
| SIEM | Log analysis | Real-time encrypted threats | Live traffic analysis |
"There can be no Zero Trust without visibility into what's happening inside networks." - Heath Mullins, Former Senior Analyst, Forrester
NDR is used to enhance an organization’s cybersecurity posture by filling these critical gaps and providing comprehensive network visibility.
A good Network Detection and Response platform can help you avert a range of cyber threats in real time.
Here are some of the network threats that can be kept at bay with the NDR solution.
By examining network traffic patterns and behavioral anomalies, NDR solutions identify the existence of malware and ransomware. When ransomware like WannaCry starts encrypting files, it creates distinctive network patterns – massive simultaneous file modifications, unusual backup system communications, and command-and-control server connections that NDR detects in minutes, not days.
Often orchestrated by nation-states or sophisticated cybercrime organizations, APTs are highly skilled and covert cyberattacks. Unlike signature-based tools that missed the SUNBURST campaign for months, NDR’s behavioral analysis detects the subtle indicators of APT activity: anomalous data exfiltration patterns, lateral network movement, and sustained exploit attempts that use legitimate credentials.
By monitoring network traffic for unauthorized access attempts, data exfiltration, and other suspicious behaviors that may point to a data breach in progress, NDR solutions assist in preventing data breaches. With data breaches costing an average of $4.44 million, early detection through NDR can prevent catastrophic losses.
Real-world scenario: When a privileged user suddenly accesses sensitive databases outside normal hours, downloads unusual volumes of data, or attempts to access systems beyond their role requirements, NDR immediately flags these anomalies – even when the access uses legitimate credentials and bypasses traditional access controls.
NDR IT security solutions checks email and web traffic for signs of fraudulent behavior, including phishing emails, suspicious URLs, and malware attachments. Additionally, NDR detects the network-level indicators of successful phishing attacks – such as unusual outbound communications to newly registered domains or data exfiltration attempts following email compromise.
To understand what network detection and response is, it’s essential to examine the process behind it. Network Detection and Response (NDR) uses advanced monitoring, analytics, and threat detection to protect an organization’s network against malicious activity. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how NDR works:
They constantly monitor all network traffic, gathering data such as:
This visibility across physical, virtual, cloud, and hybrid environments allows for complete coverage.
NDR security solutions use machine learning and AI-driven algorithms to identify anomalies based on baselines of normal network behavior. Unlike rules-based systems that generate thousands of false positives, modern NDR platforms significantly reduce alert noise through intelligent behavioral modeling.
For example:
This allows security analysts to spot threats that may not fit any known signatures or rules.
NDR combines threat intelligence with its behavioral analysis. Key elements include:
For example, if an encrypted file is seen going out unexpectedly to an IP address that’s been flagged in recent ransomware campaigns, it generates a high-priority alert with full context.
Not all alerts require immediate response. NDR solutions use AI-powered risk scoring that considers business impact, attack progression stage, and threat confidence levels – enabling security teams to focus on the most critical threats.
Priority Example:
With response mechanisms, NDR systems eliminate threats through:
Such automated capabilities enable faster incident resolution and reduce the potential impact on the network.
Network detection response (NDR) solutions evolve and adapt to emerging threats by learning from every detected and mitigated incident.
By refining detection capabilities and strengthening their knowledge base, Network Detection and Response systems improve network defenses over time.
Through this step-by-step process, NDR solutions build a proactive and adaptive defense that dramatically improves an organization’s capacity to identify and mitigate advanced network threats.
NDR solutions act as tireless security analysts for your network. Here’s how the advanced techniques deliver measurable results:
These technologies form the core of modern NDR solutions. Machine learning enables significantly faster threat detection compared to signature-based tools because it identifies previously unseen attacks by understanding normal behavior patterns rather than relying on known threat signatures.
Deep learning analyzes complex, multi-layered attack patterns that human analysts might miss, such as subtle data exfiltration disguised as normal business communications.
By comparing current traffic with past data, Network Detection and Response tools can find oddities that might point to a cyberattack.
An network detection response system can track the average login attempts from an IP address over time. If there is a sudden spike in attempts, it may indicate a brute-force attack. An NDR security system can monitor the average number of logins attempts from an IP address over time. If there is a sudden increase in attempts, it might mean a brute-force attack is happening.
Heuristic analysis detects threats by analyzing data for suspicious properties. In NDR solutions, heuristics extend the power of signature-based detection methods to look beyond known threats and spot suspicious characteristics found in unknown threats and modified versions of existing threats. Some network sandbox vendors position analysis of file-based malwares as a variation of network behavioral analysis.
Threat intelligence feeds are streams of data that contain information about known cyber threats. Timely and actionable threat intelligence can thus help network detection response solutions identify known threats or, if one is detected, additionally contextualize for prioritization of risk against a detected network anomaly.
The limitation of threat intel feeds is that threat intel has to be actively procured, managed, and curated so that the information is relevant and timely to the enterprise, which can be beyond the scope for all except the most security mature enterprises.
Signature-based detection techniques are dependent on specific Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) for known threats, allowing detection of those threats in the future. Although these signatures have successfully mitigated previous threats, they can no longer keep up with modern, sophisticated attack tactics.
The changing landscape of security has highlighted these methods even more. Today, nearly 75% of network traffic is encrypted — and this trend continues to increase, rendering signature-based tools ineffective by preventing content inspection that would be necessary to match certain categories of IOCs.
The response is a combination of automated and manual methods to analyze detections and determine – what happens next.
What is network detection and response’s biggest strength? Measurable security and business outcomes that justify investment:
When evaluating a Network Detection and Response (NDR) solution, focus on capabilities that deliver measurable business outcomes:
Strategic Questions:
Engage potential suppliers for demonstrations and proof-of-concept testing that includes:
Your essential guide to confidently evaluate, compare, and choose the right platform for your organization.
Unlike traditional solutions that only examine packet headers, Fidelis Network uses patented Deep Session Inspection® technology to reconstruct entire network sessions and analyze over 300 metadata attributes—providing 90% of the value of full packet capture at 20% of the cost.
Mail sensors guarantee prevention by analyzing complete messages before delivery. Unlike traditional solutions that work on packet fragments, Fidelis examines entire emails—including encrypted SMTP content—and can quarantine, block, or safely deliver based on comprehensive analysis.
The platform reduces response time from hours to seconds through automated alert correlation and unified threat intelligence. Machine learning and statistical modeling based on rich metadata help find threats in places traditional tools miss.
Organizations typically see ROI within 6-12 months through reduced breach risk, improved operational efficiency, and faster incident response. Given that the average data breach costs $4.44 million and takes 241 days to contain, NDR investment pays for itself by preventing a single major incident.
If your organization handles sensitive data or you’re concerned about advanced cyber threats, NDR can enhance your security by detecting and responding to threats within your network.
Yes. SIEM analyzes logs from past events, EDR monitors individual endpoints, but neither provides real-time visibility into network communications where many advanced threats operate. NDR complements these tools by monitoring the network layer where lateral movement, command-and-control communications, and data exfiltration occur.
It differs significantly from traditional tools of network security like firewalls and antivirus, which were basically about perimeter defenses. Traditional security tools are largely reactive in nature—they depend upon known signatures and rules to cue off threats. This contrasts with the way NDR solutions have to continuously monitor and analyze the raw network traffic to baseline what is normal; anything that doesn’t fit is likely to be malicious.
NDR uses advanced analytics, including machine learning, based on threat detection capabilities other tools miss—much of which is internal or lateral to the network. This is very key, since most modern attacks now target the internal environment rather than directly breaching perimeter defenses. Modern NDR solutions provide full real-time visibility into every inbound and outbound network activity, thereby increasing the possibility of detecting and responding to threats within an organizational setup. In so doing, these tools become a crucial extension of the conventional security arsenal for an enterprise.
A firewall controls incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined security rules, acting as a barrier.
NDR, however, focuses on monitoring network behavior to detect and respond to threats that might bypass traditional defenses like firewalls.
Yes, next-generation NDR solutions support the analysis of encrypted traffic without decryption. Nearly 75% of network traffic is encrypted, and much of it goes undetected by traditional methods of threat detection within the traffic. These might involve the out-of-band decryption method and in-depth analytics that can be leveraged by NDR solutions to track effectively encrypted communications. That enables the identification of malicious activities masquerading in these encrypted data streams and sustains the level of visibility and control an organization can retain over its networks in the face of encryption.
Leading NDR platforms use cloud-native architectures that automatically scale processing power based on network traffic volumes. Fidelis Network® provides linear cost scaling – you pay for what you use while maintaining consistent performance as your network grows.
See Fidelis in action. Learn how our fast and scalable platforms provide full visibility, deep insights, and rapid response to help security teams across the World protect, detect, respond, and neutralize advanced cyber adversaries.