Breaking Down the Real Meaning of an XDR Solution
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Discover effective techniques for detecting ransomware on your network. Learn practical steps
Today’s advanced threats move faster and cost more—average data breach costs exceed $3.8 million—while defenders struggle under a deluge of siloed alerts and high false-positive rates. This fragmented visibility means breaches often go undetected for months, giving attackers ample time to exfiltrate data, escalate privileges, and inflict major damage.
When incidents aren’t spotted quickly, dwell time soars and organizations face skyrocketing response costs and reputational fallout. Manual log gathering across endpoints, networks, and cloud platforms is laborious and error-prone, analysts drown in noise, and critical context—like whether a suspicious login matches known ransomware IPs—is too often missing. Every minute wasted hunting through disparate consoles is a minute attackers can use to dig in deeper.
A unified XDR solution like Fidelis Elevate compresses mean time to detection and resolution by bringing visibility, correlation, and automation into one platform. By integrating network, endpoint, cloud, and deception telemetry; automatically correlating related events; and embedding real-time threat intelligence, Elevate transforms the incident response lifecycle from reactive chaos into a streamlined, data-driven workflow.
Gaining a single pane of glass across endpoints, networks, and cloud services lets you spot anomalies the moment they emerge—and correlating those events in real time means you’re no longer hunting in the dark. By breaking down tool silos, you empower your team to detect threats faster and with greater precision.
Effective incident response depends on seeing the earliest evidence of threats across the entire attack surface. If endpoint, network and cloud telemetry aren’t correlated, attackers can hide in blind spots or use compromised credentials to blend in. Fragmented tools make this worse: 87 percent of organizations lack full visibility, and 64 percent cite “too many manual processes” and disparate tools as reasons threat detection is slow. Without unified insight, attacker dwell time remains high, giving adversaries ample time to exfiltrate data and pivot.
How it’s typically done:
Analysts manually collect logs from firewalls, endpoints, servers, and cloud services, then piece together timelines. They may use SIEMs or threat intelligence portals, but correlating events across layers is labor-intensive. Missed context delays detection and leads to duplicate or false alerts.
Fidelis Elevate solution:
Fidelis Elevate’s XDR automatically maps your cyber terrain—integrating network, endpoint, cloud, and Active Directory data—so you get real-time, risk-aware visibility everywhere. By fusing NDR (network detection) with EDR (endpoint detection) and deception telemetry, Fidelis detects stealthy threats that one-layer tools miss. During the detection and analysis phase of incident handling, Elevate can instantly correlate an anomalous network login with unusual endpoint behavior, dramatically reducing blind spots and shrinking attacker dwell time.
Analyst time is valuable. Manual triage of alerts drives up operational cost and delays response—a vicious cycle in which critical incidents can linger unchecked. High false-positive rates are common when using multiple point tools: security teams typically see dozens or hundreds of alerts daily, and may ignore the one true signal. Every minute wasted digging through noise is a minute attackers can persist.
How it’s typically done:
Teams set up correlation rules or SIEM filters, or rely on threat-intel lookups to validate alerts. However, these manual processes are static and brittle. Analysts often must jump between consoles to piece together evidence, which is slow and error-prone. Even modern SOAR playbooks require upfront tagging of alerts, forcing teams to stitch together a complete threat picture by hand.
Fidelis Elevate solution:
Elevate’s analytics engine uses AI/ML to chain together related events and surface only high-fidelity incidents. Alerts from network and endpoint sensors are automatically merged if they share indicators or timing, and enriched with MITRE ATT&CK tags, risk scores, and user identity info. For example, a suspicious admin login can be immediately joined to a malware alert on an endpoint and a firewall change, elevating the incident’s priority without manual intervention and letting analysts focus on real threats.
In the detection phase, knowing what you’re up against is as important as seeing that something happened. Without context, even genuine alerts may not be addressed in time. Threat intelligence provides that context—identifying, for example, that an observed IP was tied to recent ransomware attacks—drastically shortening response decisions and reducing the risk of underestimating a threat.
How it’s typically done:
Security teams add TI feeds to SIEMs or query intel platforms after the fact. This manual lookup process is slow and inconsistent, causing teams to overlook subtle signals or delay response until more evidence arrives.
Fidelis Elevate solution:
Elevate integrates threat intelligence directly into the IR workflow. Its engine attaches known IOCs/IOBs to alerts in real time and cross-references events with attacker TTPs via MITRE ATT&CK. An alert for unusual PowerShell execution can be automatically flagged as high-risk if it matches ransomware intel, prompting immediate investigation and ensuring critical threats don’t slip through or sit unnoticed.
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Prioritizing the right alerts and assembling evidence instantly are critical to cutting mean time to resolution. A streamlined workflow automates scoring and data gathering so analysts can focus on high-impact incidents rather than wading through noise.
Once threats are detected, triaging incidents quickly is crucial to cutting down MTTR. Slow triage lets adversaries probe deeper; organizations containing breaches within 30 days save over $1 million compared to longer incidents. Prioritizing the right incidents first can have massive financial impact.
How it’s typically done:
Analysts manually sort alerts by severity or affected assets using matrices or playbooks, rely on intuition or historical hunts, and navigate siloed data—often unaware what colleagues have already triaged.
Fidelis Elevate solution:
Elevate automatically scores and “stars” incidents based on risk factors (e.g., credential compromise, high-value target) then routes them to the correct playbook or team. By combining detection and response across cloud, endpoints, networks, and apps, Elevate lets required actions (isolate host, reset credentials) start immediately, so teams focus on a handful of high-fidelity alerts instead of paging through dozens of noise.
When an incident is declared, investigators must quickly assemble evidence and understand the attack chain. Every second spent gathering logs or switching tools is a second attackers can hide or resurface. Gaps in data collection during detection hurt containment later.
How it’s typically done:
Teams pull logs from firewalls, load packet captures, image endpoints, and email back and forth to locate root causes. Misaligned data formats and time skew cause delays in clean-up.
Fidelis Elevate solution:
Elevate continuously records network packets, endpoint memory and disk snapshots, and Active Directory changes. When a threat is detected, it can instantly sever suspect network traffic and capture forensic images without manual intervention. All relevant logs are timestamped and correlated in one UI, saving hours of effort and ensuring thorough eradication.
In this datasheet, you’ll find how Fidelis Elevate® works with:
Isolating compromised assets in seconds and executing consistent cleanup steps are the hallmarks of a resilient response. Coordinated playbooks eliminate gaps between teams and environments, preventing attackers from slipping through or resurfacing.
Uncontained attacks can cascade through an environment. Containing a breach in 30 days versus 64 days can save over $1 million. Every minute an attacker remains active raises the risk of data exfiltration, ransomware encryption, or reputation damage.
How it’s typically done:
Administrators manually quarantine hosts, revoke access, or reconfigure firewalls across multiple consoles and clouds—steps requiring approvals and prone to error, allowing lateral movement.
Fidelis Elevate solution:
Elevate’s automated playbooks isolate systems at warp speed once an incident is verified. It can segregate affected network segments, block malicious connections, throttle cloud interfaces, or disable compromised instances on AWS/Azure/GCP simultaneously, ensuring attackers cannot jump to new targets.
Containment is only half the battle. Eradication—the removal of malware, backdoors, and vulnerabilities—must be complete or the attack will recur. Incomplete eradication often leads to repeat breaches.
How it’s typically done:
Remediation involves manual anti-malware scans, patching, credential resets, and system rebuilds—processes taking days and leaving operations degraded.
Fidelis Elevate solution:
Elevate’s orchestration engine executes cleanup actions automatically—pushing patches, disabling vulnerable services, rolling back malicious registry changes, and revoking certificates as soon as a breach is confirmed. This automation fixes known issues immediately, reducing repeat infections and keeping the network clean.
During an active incident, clear coordination is essential. Miscommunication can lead to duplicated efforts or missed steps, and consistent reporting saves time post-incident by capturing lessons learned.
How it’s typically done:
Incident tracking often relies on ticketing systems or spreadsheets, leaving analysts without real-time updates on containment status or task ownership.
Fidelis Elevate solution:
Elevate includes built-in case management, linking alerts, evidence, and tasks in a single console. Each incident case tracks the full workflow—detection through resolution—and because Elevate spans network, endpoint, and cloud, all teams share the same “source of truth,” ensuring smooth handoffs and no missed steps.
Moving beyond manual restores and ad-hoc fixes, automated recovery workflows restore systems in minutes—and baked-in reporting tools capture lessons learned to harden your defenses. This ensures each incident makes you stronger and more prepared for the next one.
The final stretch of the incident response lifecycle is restoring business operations. The longer recovery takes, the higher the operational and downtime costs. Automated tools can significantly reduce MTTR, limiting data loss and revenue impact.
How it’s typically done:
Recovery typically involves manual system restores, server rebuilds, and audits—labor-intensive and error-prone tasks that strain budgets and operations.
Fidelis Elevate solution:
Elevate automates recovery workflows—patching vulnerabilities, restoring systems from clean images, re-enabling services, and triggering IaC rollbacks or secure replicas in cloud environments. Automated playbooks handle routine recovery steps so analysts focus on high-level cleanup, compressing the recovery phase from days to minutes and preventing human error.
Incident response is cyclical: the NIST IR cycle emphasizes lessons learned and continuous improvement. Shockingly, up to 67 percent of organizations are hit again within a year, often because root causes weren’t fully addressed. Thorough post-incident reviews and defense updates are critical to break this cycle.
How it’s typically done:
Teams hold post-mortem meetings and update playbooks, but inconsistent documentation and incomplete capture of attack details can leave the same paths open.
Fidelis Elevate solution:
Elevate records every step of an incident—login activity, network flows, eradication actions—providing a complete audit trail. Security leaders export reports on phase durations, discovered artifacts, and remediation steps. This intelligence feeds back into enhanced rules and playbooks, so if attackers reuse tactics later, the platform’s adaptive analytics catch them faster, making each cycle stronger and more resilient.
Implementing a robust XDR solution is a strategic move to master the incident management lifecycle. Fidelis Elevate can cut detection time by a factor of nine and automatically stop threats across network and endpoints. To experience these capabilities firsthand, contact the Fidelis team or schedule a demo of Elevate. See how Fidelis Elevate’s unified XDR platform—the only one combining network NDR, endpoint EDR, deception, and AD security in one console—can transform your incident response workflow, reduce dwell time, and strengthen your overall cyber resilience.
Contact us or request a personalized demo to learn how our XDR solution streamlines each incident response phase and empowers your SOC team.
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