What is NDR (Network Detection and Response)?

NDR’s Definition and How it Protects Businesses From Cyber Threats

Network Detection and Response has quickly established itself as the leading method for identifying hackers in networks at an early stage, before any damage is caused. Network Detection and Response is thus becoming an increasingly central pillar of a modern cybersecurity architecture.

Network Detection and Response is a cybersecurity strategy and set of technologies designed to detect and respond to cyber threats and attacks within a computer network. It focuses on monitoring network traffic and analyzing it in real-time to identify suspicious or malicious activities. NDR solutions are proactive in nature, aiming to provide a quick and effective response to potential security incidents.

Key components of Network Detection and Response include:

1. Network Traffic Analysis (NTA): NDR solutions monitor and analyze network traffic, looking for abnormal patterns, anomalies, or indicators of compromise. This involves examining packets and flows of data to identify potential threats.

2. Intrusion Detection System (IDS): NDR often incorporates an IDS, which is responsible for identifying and alerting on suspicious or malicious activities within the network. The IDS examines network traffic for known attack signatures or behavioral patterns commonly associated with attacks.

3. Behavioral Analysis: NDR systems may employ behavioral analysis to establish a baseline of normal network behavior and detect deviations that might indicate a potential security breach.

4. Threat Intelligence Integration: NDR solutions often integrate with threat intelligence feeds, which provide information about known malicious IPs, domains, and other indicators of compromise. This integration enhances the detection capabilities and allows for more accurate identification of threats.

5. Real-Time Alerts and Response: When suspicious or malicious activity is detected, NDR systems generate real-time alerts to notify security teams. Rapid response is essential to mitigate the impact of attacks and prevent further damage.

6. Forensic Analysis: NDR solutions may offer forensic capabilities, allowing security teams to investigate incidents after they occur. This helps understand the nature of the attack, identify the entry point, and implement measures to prevent similar attacks in the future.

The main goal of Network Detection and Response is to provide organizations with increased visibility into their network traffic and the ability to detect and respond to cyber threats swiftly. By identifying threats at an early stage and responding effectively, NDR can significantly reduce the risk of data breaches, downtime, and other negative consequences of cyber attacks.

NDR solutions support rapid investigation, internal visibility, intelligent response, and enhanced threat detection across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments. Detecting attacks at the network layer works extremely well because it is very difficult for threat actors to hide their activities.

NDR and Other Enterprise Security Solutions

SIEM Solutions

Lean, efficient and powerful: by collecting lots of data without further insights, SIEMs can be bulky and expensive. In addition, they often require lots of in-house cyber security knowledge and resources to manually analyze the data and create threat detection rules. Hence, it is evident that NDR is a more valuable way to protect organizations. NDR can, in fact, make your SIEM smarter if your cybersecurity strategy includes the requirement to preserve your SIEM solution. ExeonTrace turns your SIEM, like Splunk, Elasticsearch, or ArcSight, into a powerful alarm system for your network. Replace manual analysis and rule creation with ready-to-go detection algorithms.

Other NDR Providers

To deal with expanding attack surfaces of increasingly complex IT environments, network detection and response (NDR) solutions have undoubtedly become a crucial part of a robust cyber architecture. However, there are significant differences in NDR solution’s detection technologies and analysis capabilities. While most traditional NDR providers rely on deep packet inspection, more future-proof approaches such as ExeonTrace use metadata analysis.