Avoid These Five Pitfalls of EDR Deployment

I've spent over 30 years working in cybersecurity, dedicating much of that time to securing various organizations' assets, responding to countless cyber incidents, and uncovering the causes behind the chaos.

This journey has revealed a surprising truth. Breaches don't typically occur because of subpar technology, security controls, or advanced hacking techniques. The real culprit is often the mundane yet critical misconfigurations of security tools that leave organizations vulnerable. Over the past few years, endpoint detection and response (EDR) misconfigurations have been the root cause of numerous breaches.

Deploying a robust EDR solution is crucial for protecting your organization's digital infrastructure. FortiEDR is a powerful tool in this battle, offering real-time protection, detection, and response capabilities. However, the efficiency of any EDR tool is deeply contingent on its correct deployment. Missteps in the deployment and ongoing management processes can nullify its effectiveness and may actively contribute to security vulnerabilities. Below are five common pitfalls organizations face when deploying an EDR solution and tips for avoiding these issues.

Pitfall #1: The Incomplete Deployment

One common oversight is failing to install your EDR collector on all hosts. This lapse can be dire, as unmonitored hosts are often the epicenter of cyber compromises. These vulnerable nodes can serve as the initial breach point, enabling threat actors to establish a stronghold within your network and remain unnoticed. To prevent this, ensure comprehensive coverage by installing collectors on every host across your organization.

With FortiEDR and FortiXDR (extended detection and response), every bundle contains attack surface reduction features like device discovery. These enable users to find unprotected and rogue devices on their networks and push the security client to them. In the case of discovered IoT devices, you can create communication control policies for them to reduce the attack surface, given that an agent can't be pushed to most of these devices.

Pitfall #2: The Neglected Security Policy

Another critical error is neglecting to set your security policy for prevention. Many EDR tools have different policies, and each can be deactivated or activated one at a time. It's not unusual for organizations to disable prevention settings during tuning or testing phases, like in development environments, and forget to re-enable them. This leaves your system in simulation mode. And even though a good EDR solution should still trace and report malicious activity, the solution will not block it. While tracing and reporting provide valuable insights for eradication and remediation, prevention is paramount. Always double-check your security policies to ensure that prevention settings are active post-testing.