XDR in cybersecurity: What it is and why it matters – ExpressVPN

Extended detection and response (XDR) is a cybersecurity framework designed to help organizations keep up with complex, multi-stage attacks. As threats move across endpoints, networks, cloud services, and identities, XDR brings security data together to help teams see attacks earlier and respond more effectively.
This article explains what XDR is, how it works, its benefits and limitations, and why it matters for cybersecurity today.
XDR is a centralized cybersecurity platform that detects, investigates, and responds to threats across an organization’s entire IT environment. It continuously collects and correlates telemetry (ongoing, time-based, system-generated data) from endpoints, networks, cloud services, email, and other systems.
Rather than looking at each system separately, XDR connects the dots between these different data points. This helps security teams spot attacks that might otherwise go unnoticed because the activity is spread across multiple places.
There are two common types of XDR:
Both types aim to give security teams clear, actionable information and make it easier to respond quickly to threats.
Modern cyberattacks have grown increasingly sophisticated and difficult to detect. Instead of targeting a single system, attackers often move across endpoints, networks, and cloud services, progressing through multiple stages of the kill chain (common stages of a cyberattack). At the same time, network architectures have grown more complex, spanning on-premises systems, cloud environments, and remote users.
In siloed setups, security tools operate independently, each covering only a specific area. This fragmentation scatters alerts and data across multiple platforms, making it difficult for security teams to get a complete view of an attack or connect related events.
By monitoring multiple environments at once and correlating security signals across them, XDR can help address this problem, enabling teams to detect threats earlier and respond faster.
XDR is commonly offered as a cloud-based service that brings together multiple security technologies in one platform. Here’s how XDR typically detects and responds to threats across an organization’s environment.
XDR collects and correlates different types of security data, including:
To gather this data, XDR integrates with a wide range of security tools and systems, including:
After collecting data, XDR applies advanced analytics and machine learning algorithms to identify patterns that match known threats or highlight unusual activity as it happens. By comparing current data against historical activity and established baselines, XDR can detect anomalies like strange user actions or irregular system processes that could signal a breach.
XDR also incorporates threat intelligence from multiple sources (whether from the provider itself, third parties, or community networks) that supply continuously updated information on emerging attack tactics and techniques.
The machine learning models within XDR keep improving by learning from new data, making the system smarter and more accurate over time.
When XDR detects a confirmed threat, it can trigger responses based on predefined policies. These actions can include:
This can help contain and mitigate threats quickly, even before a human analyst intervenes.
Many XDR solutions use frameworks like the MITRE ATT&CK® knowledge base, which categorizes the tactics and techniques commonly used by cyber attackers. Mapping detected activities to the ATT&CK framework can help security teams quickly understand the attack’s techniques and tactics, locate the affected systems, and develop a targeted response.
Thanks to its ability to bring together a variety of security signals and user identities into a single view, XDR gives security teams a clearer, more connected understanding of threats. This visibility lays the groundwork for several important benefits:
The main drawback to XDR is that it’s primarily reactive rather than proactive. XDR excels at identifying and responding to active threats, but it doesn’t help to fix the vulnerabilities that might let them through. To achieve comprehensive protection, your organization will likely need to combine XDR with other proactive security processes and tools.
These are XDR’s main limitations and some ideas for how to address them:
When combined with proactive processes and tools, XDR can focus on detecting and responding to threats in real time, while the other measures can reduce the vulnerabilities these attacks want to exploit.
Here’s a comparison of how XDR relates to other common cybersecurity tools and technologies.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Extended Detection and Response (XDR) are both important technologies used to detect and respond to threats, but they operate at different levels. EDR focuses on monitoring and protecting individual endpoint devices such as laptops, desktops, and servers.
XDR builds on EDR by collecting and correlating security data from many sources, including endpoints, networks, cloud services, and email. This provides broader visibility and more coordinated detection and response across the entire IT environment.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) are both cybersecurity solutions but have differing levels of scope and involve the use of different types of data. SIEM has a narrower focus, mostly relying on log data from network sources. XDR, meanwhile, involves a broader range of security data from endpoints, networks, and cloud environments.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is focused on policy enforcement. It’s meant to classify and protect sensitive data by preventing unauthorized access, sharing, or transfer across systems, networks, and devices. It helps keep data secure based on predefined policies.
In contrast, Extended Detection and Response (XDR) is focused on the behavior of malicious actors. Its purpose is to help detect, investigate, and respond to cyberattacks by following attack chains across the environment. While DLP focuses specifically on data security, XDR monitors for a wide range of threats. This includes threats that may try to exfiltrate data but also other malicious activities such as credential theft.
Yes, it’s possible to integrate Extended Detection and Response (XDR) with existing security tools. This is a core function and benefit of many XDR platforms, allowing users to layer XDR on top of their existing security stack rather than having to replace it.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) is particularly useful in industries that manage large amounts of sensitive or high-value data, operate under strict regulatory requirements, or face broad, complex attack surfaces. Sectors like financial services, healthcare, government, retail and e-commerce, and information technology and telecommunications commonly adopt XDR.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) improves threat detection by taking a much broader view of security incidents and attacks than other security solutions. While many traditional tools detect threats independently on individual devices or networks, XDR looks for threat signals across numerous endpoints and platforms at the same time.
Yes. A virtual private network (VPN) can encrypt data and secure remote access to the company network, while XDR monitors for threats and coordinates detection and response. They serve different purposes but complement each other in a layered security strategy.
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Michael Pedley
Michael Pedley is a writer at the ExpressVPN Blog. With over 15 years of experience in content creation and digital publishing, he knows how to craft informative, useful content, with thorough research and fact-checking to back it up. He strives to make complex cybersecurity topics accessible and understandable to the broadest audiences. In his spare time, Michael likes writing fiction, reading murder mystery novels, and spending time with his family.
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