EDR & EPM: Merging Reactive and Proactive Approach

Have you ever wondered how some organisations handle their cybersecurity posture better? 

A robust enterprise architecture is achievable when firms combine reactive and proactive approaches to protect networks.

Reactive strategies help lower the probability of security breaches. However, they alone are not enough to protect against threats. Enterprises must fuse these strategies with a contemporary proactive approach for the highest possible threat protection.

How would you get your organisation to do this? How do you build a resilient posture?

The answer resides in implementing Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM)!

Well, the clue is in its name. By limiting admin privileges on endpoints, EPM solutions restrict malware from gaining a foothold in enterprise systems and networks. EPM restricts unauthorised application execution using blacklisting and adds extensive, fine-grained application control to allow required applications to run with standard user rights. If an unauthorised application isn’t known-good, it doesn’t run… simple.

Read this blog to discover how reactive and proactive strategies can strengthen your organisation’s security mechanism. 

Reactive vs Proactive Approach

Reactive Approach

As the name suggests, organisations implement security controls in a reactive strategy after a breach or threat incident occurs. This strategy is focused on incident response, remediation, and recovery. It relies on deploying patches, performing post-breach forensic analysis, and setting up security system rules to prevent well-known attack patterns. Some of its tactics include firewalls, spam filters, and disaster recovery plans.

Although many companies still rely solely on reactive cybersecurity, this approach has significant drawbacks. One such drawback is the slow response to threats, which leaves several days or hours of downtime, exposure risk loss data and financial loss.

40% increase in Malware from January to March 2024

Proactive Approach

On the contrary, proactive cybersecurity is about stopping threats before they become an issue. The main goal of a proactive approach is to address potential threats before they cause harm. Some tactics used in proactive strategies are least privilege policy, threat hunting, and continuous system monitoring.  

Advantages of being Proactive about Cybersecurity

Risk-Control: Emphasises identifying, assessing, and mitigating potential threats before they impact an organisation.

Threat Prevention: Includes deploying advanced threat detection technologies and maintaining a robust security posture.

Reactive Security Built-In: Be prepared to react when something goes wrong, minimising downtime.

Adaptive: Monitor changes in cyber threats and update.

Iterative development: Security protocols are continuously iterated and refined based on the evolving threat landscape and vulnerabilities.

Operationalising EPM: A Proactive Approach in Cybersecurity

The standard EPM deployment process typically follows these steps:

1. Server and Vault Setup: Set up the required servers and tamper-proof vault where the administrators will have their secure credentials stored.

2. Endpoint Agent Installation: Install the Sectona EPM agent on your endpoints through automated push. The agent scans each endpoint, and with the account privilege, it is scanned, creates an application directory, and applies policies.

3. Policy Configuration: Configure Application elevation and blocking policies per user group at the Active Directory level. The agent receives these policies from the server and applies them to the endpoint application list.

4. Alerts and Reports Customization: Modify the pre-set alert and report settings to monitor and control privileged activities amongst your elevated applications.

Here’s how EPM contributes to a proactive security posture:

 1. Minimised Attack Surface: By restricting administrative privileges to only those users who genuinely need them, EPM reduces the number of potential entry points for attackers.

2. Least Privilege Principle: The solutions enforce the Principle of Least Privilege (POLP), which means users are granted only the access necessary to perform their job functions.  

3. Prevention of Unauthorised Software Installation: Helps prevent malicious software from being installed by controlling which applications and software can be installed or executed on an endpoint.

4. Reduced Risk of Privilege Escalation: Can identify and block unauthorised privilege escalation attempts. They prevent threats from escalating privileges to gain more extensive system control.

5. Centralised Policy Management: EPM solutions enable the management of privilege policies for all endpoints in one place, which means security policy will be applied consistently to all.

6. Enhanced Visibility and Monitoring: EPM gives you visibility into privilege usage and privilege changes, which means security teams can monitor for any unusual activities (e.g., unauthorised changes of privilege efforts to access sensitive resources).

7. Compliance and Auditing: EPM satisfies compliance requirements through detailed audit trails and reports on usage and privilege changes.

8. Mitigation of Insider Threats: It also helps guard against insider threats, where insiders (employees) intentionally or unintentionally misuse their rights/privileges and cause a security risk.

Integrated Defence: Merging the “Reactive & Proactive” Approach

To illustrate how reactive and proactive approaches work together, let’s take the example of an enterprise hit by advanced ransomware, which dropped a sophisticated malware variant on one of its employees’ endpoints.

Then,

Antivirus is a primary line of defence. It detects and removes malware if its signature is in the antivirus’s database.

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) is a second-line defence solution that is more proactive than antivirus. It monitors and records endpoint activities and detects unknown malware through deep behaviour analysis using AI and ML. EDR can provide increased visibility, intelligence, and endpoint control even after malware is found in the environment. It provides a fast response and blocks existing surrounding malware from being executed/spread.

The most vital and often overlooked layer is Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM). It eliminates user and application privileges by ensuring just-in-time access. This feature of EPM also stops ransomware’s self-propagation. EPM discovers, manages, and enforces access to the local admin account and policy-based Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for the admin.

In this way, as malware breaches progress, EDR and EPM work together. EDR monitors post-attack activity, leveraging information from EPM for enrichment. Meanwhile, EPM ensures only trusted applications are running and restricts distrusted ones.  

In short, antivirus stops known attackers from running with an early block. EPM prevents unknown attackers by having the least privileged and rotating credentials. EDR detects threats and responds fast in real-time by hunting evidence of threats and remotely quarantining endpoint processes. They are all needed in today’s world to complement one another and secure against sophisticated attackers.

Access the World of Possibilities with Sectona’s Proactive Approach

As threat actors target organisations of all sizes, from large enterprises to governments, the mix of reactive and proactive approaches becomes essential to attain even basic levels of protection for digital assets. Sectona EPM delivers a solid foundation for monitoring and managing endpoint privileges and reducing the attack surfaces and unauthorised access.

How Can Sectona EPM Help?