EDR Vs. Antivirus – What’s the Better Solution for Your Business?

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Endpoint security is the backbone of any organization. No enterprise can afford to risk its sensitive data stored on endpoints at the hands of hackers as it impacts the company and its clients adversely. Also, since enterprises have vast numbers of endpoints dedicated to their employees, it puts their devices and data at risk.

What is an Endpoint?

Endpoints are the end-user devices, such as laptops, smartphones, desktops, servers, tablets, or any entry point to your organization’s network. In other words, any device or system connected to a company’s network is considered an endpoint.

Post-2020, more employees are working from different remote locations than ever, accessing the same network resources. It gets nearly impossible for enterprises to keep an eye on all their endpoints from a single point of view. In turn, the security risk against their network increases multifold -giving attackers more ways to break into the network. Managed EDR solution help in Quickly identifying and stopping threats.

Significance of AV & EDR in Endpoint Security

Both Antiviruses and Endpoint Detection and Response (famously known as EDR) are solutions to protect endpoints against cyber threats. However, both solutions are designed differently in their functions and offer different levels of protection. Without further ado, let us dive straight into the differences between EDR vs. Antivirus and understand which one of these endpoint security solutions is the right choice for your business and can protect your organization from cybersecurity breaches.

Let’s start with Antivirus and learn if it’s adequate for absolute cybersecurity.

Antivirus as a Solution

AVs have been the traditional security solution for endpoints for decades. It’s probably the oldest endpoint security solution that’s also relevant to today’s cyber security needs. Antivirus solutions are designed to identify malicious viruses, software infections, or codes that have infected your endpoints.

Key Features of an Antivirus

The primary function of an Antivirus is to detect and delete the viruses to protect endpoints.

AV detects an attack using varied methods to spot potential malware infections, like Signature-based detection (identifies known threats based on signatures), Anomaly detection (identifies malware based on malicious activities), and Rootkit detection.
An Antivirus runs regular scans to monitor and spot any unusual behavior on your computer. However, you lack a closer look into your network.

Who needs an Antivirus?

Freelancers or individual professionals who don’t manage a team can rely on Antivirus to secure their computers from worms and viruses.

Businesses having a full-fledged team of experienced security experts and a full stack of advanced security tools and resources required to detect and combat APTs can keep AV as an additional endpoint security solution.

EDR as a Solution

EDR offers multi-layered, integrated protection to your endpoints. It’s an advanced cybersecurity solution that identifies the origin point of an attack and the reason why it is spreading. Not just that, but an EDR solution offers remedies to stop that attack by following advanced cybersecurity practices like MITRE ATT&CK-based detection and isolating the affected endpoint from the network.

Where Antivirus can be considered as a basic endpoint security plan, an EDR system is a further advanced solution that protects your enterprise’s endpoints where Antiviruses tend to fail. Unlike an Antivirus, an EDR addresses, isolates, and blocks cyber-attacks as soon as a threat manages to penetrate your company’s network and infect your endpoints.

Key Features of an EDR

An Endpoint Detection and Response solution spots and flags potential cyberattacks and malicious incidents to block them in time! It enables the security team to focus only on the most-effective actions, saving time.
EDR solutions offer Threat Hunting Support to hunt down and respond to advanced security threats that the organization’s IT teams could not detect or block. Fully managed EDR service providers such as ACE Cloud Hosting also offer protection against APTs, Trojan malware, and Ransomware which are hard to be detected.
Data aggregation and enrichment are also key features of an EDR tool. The practice helps differentiates between real threats and false positives by aggregating data from multiple endpoint sources.
If you go for managed EDR, you also enjoy real-time incident response in the same console. With an integrated incident response, you track out-of-the-box behavior patterns in real-time and have enough time to combat the cyberattack before it hits your network.
Managed EDR solutions help isolate and quarantine malicious or infected items. It uses sandboxing to ensure a file’s safety while not deranging the user’s device.

With all the listed unparalleled security benefits of EDR, enterprises get enhanced security posture, improved visibility into the network, automated remediation, and contextualized threat hunting.

Who needs an EDR solution?

Any enterprise that caters to an industry that deals with sensitive data or confidential client information must have a managed EDR service provider to rely upon.
SMEs which cannot maintain a full-fledged IT team for endpoint security due to its high monetary cost should instantly deploy a managed endpoint security solution. Managed EDR brings advanced technologies for threat hunting and seasoned security experts for your company’s endpoint security at a fraction of the cost.
All business models operating on the WFH scenario or having most of their employees working from remote locations are highly recommended to have EDR tools. It will ensure both the company’s and its employees’ safety.

If your business doesn’t have its core service in security or technology, you might lack the knowledge and expertise in cybersecurity that an effective EDR solution can offer.

EDR Vs. Antivirus – The Limitations

Since Antivirus is a traditional way of combating cyber threats, it can work for self-employed individuals and freelancers as they don’t have a team or a vast network that needs a close eye. However, an Antivirus often fails to predict a security breach that uses advanced viruses and worms to slide into your business’s network. Hence, for scaling businesses and SMEs who want to advance in the modern, digital world full of harmful entities with ill intentions, an AV seems to be an outdated option.

One of the many reasons Antivirus isn’t enough as an endpoint security solution is, having a signature-based threat detection method. It means AV can only recognize threats that are already known with the help of codes, special symbols, and previous behavior patterns. On the contrary, an EDR tool is a sophisticated choice for SMEs who want to offload their security teams and Chief Technical Officials of such cumbersome tasks.

EDR Or Antivirus – The Verdict

After the in-depth comparison we’ve made in the blog, it’s quite clear that Antiviruses have a few limitations that can leave loopholes in your network. Traditionally Antivirus software could have been enough to protect against threats to your organization’s endpoint security. EDR, however, provides the next level of protection to your endpoints that are very much required to survive in a world full of threats and hackers.

For SMEs and large businesses that have their endpoints scattered to different locations, connecting to a common network, there’s a dire need to opt for a fully managed EDR service. Only having Antivirus or an EPP solution will not suffice.

Choose ACE to Get Managed EDR with Antivirus

Advanced EDR solutions like ACE Cloud Hosting include Antivirus under their umbrella of managed EDR services. ACE is the industry leader for cyber security that offers dynamic managed EDR with EPP (Endpoint Protection Platform) that includes an Anti-malware solution with additional advanced security measures. Ace Cloud Hosting comes with over a decade of experience to help protect your organization’s endpoints and provide the best-in-class security.

In a nutshell, Managed Endpoint Detection and Response by ACE does everything the best Antivirus solutions do – and much more! Book your free consultation worth $500 today, and stay ahead of endpoint attackers.