Security

Review: WatchGuard EDR Tool Blends with Existing Tech to Bolster Network Security

Endpoint detection and response is a key feature necessary to create a zero-trust environment.

Carlos Soto is an award-winning reviewer and journalist with 20 years of experience covering technology and business within various sectors and industries.

The continuing increase in cyberattacks is fueling the push for federal agencies to create zero-trust environments. According to Verizon’s 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report, the public sector reported nearly 3,000 cyber incidents in 2021, with more than 75 percent of them committed by external threat actors.

Zero trust is mandated for federal agencies today, although it is not a simple solution to implement and cannot be delivered as a single product. The concept builds on the idea that every device, user and network flow must be authenticated and authorized before it’s permitted on the network.

This makes endpoint protection a critical component in the long road to zero trust, because it can authenticate users, actions, credentials and endpoint hardware. It won’t provide zero trust on its own, but it’s a necessary component.

The WatchGuard EDR endpoint detection and response tool is designed to integrate with any network regardless of complexity. Once in place, it automates many security processes and checks, reporting and acting on its findings by itself or as part of a growing zero-trust infrastructure.

How These Cybersecurity Tools Can Prevent Attacks

WatchGuard EDR installs on top of any existing anti-virus solution and adds a full stack of capabilities, including a zero-trust application service and a threat hunting service. The tool’s key functions are automated to ensure that it does not contribute to network complexity or sprawl.

Key features include protection against zero-day attacks, which WatchGuard EDR achieves by watching for suspicious user or application behavior.

It also supports threat hunting by providing a detailed log of all endpoint, user and application actions so that IT staff can look for anomalies or threats that may slip past the automatic protection.

WatchGuard EDR supports efforts to stop attacks without a malware component by providing visibility and monitoring of behaviors — critical when stopping attacks that are using valid credentials.

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How Your Agency Can Bolster Existing Cybersecurity Tools

WatchGuard offers protection beyond the standard scanning and known-threat protection embedded inside most EDR platforms. In fact, WatchGuard EDR’s advanced capabilities seamlessly add zero-trust elements to endpoint protection.

Even if a user’s or app’s credentials are valid, WatchGuard EDR will block entry to the network if the user or app is not behaving normally.

WatchGuard EDR’s very modern user interface makes it easy to use, simple and quick to deploy, and even easier to manage. In testing the software, I was able to use that interface to centralize IT security management for all endpoints, physical and virtual.

Getting to zero trust won’t be a quick fix for any agency, but WatchGuard EDR can be a big step in that journey. It adds continuous monitoring capabilities to a network’s sometimes-overlooked endpoints while integrating easily with all existing and future protections.

SPECIFICATIONS

APP TYPE: Endpoint protection platform
OS COMPATIBILITY: Android, Linux, macOS, Windows
LICENSE TYPE: Subscription
LICENSE QUANTITY: 1 endpoint device
LICENSE PERIOD: 3 years
INSTALLATION: Local

WatchGuard Features the Top Characteristics of Effective EDRs

Some of the most stringent IT security today relies on a layered approach where traditional, signature-based techniques are heavily bolstered by advanced features and services like those offered by a smart endpoint detection and response platform.

Adding an EDR line of defense brings a layer of automation and detection that drives the response to, containment of and remediation of any attack.

Yet, not all EDR platforms are built the same. To effectively drive cybersecurity protection for laptops, computers, virtual machines, applications and servers — including endpoint protection for a wide range of Internet of Things devices — an EDR product must have certain key capabilities:

1. Lightweight Technology

Large agent-based technologies bog down networks with large chunks of code, adding more complexity to security. The same truth applies to EDR. To be effective, it should be lightweight. WatchGuard EDR is light enough to install on top of existing anti-virus solutions.

2. Easy to Use

The right user interface makes a huge difference in effectiveness. Modern IT professionals don’t want to mess with old console-like interfaces and likely are not trained to do so. WatchGuard EDR has a very modern interface that is suitable for use by both seasoned professionals and those new to the IT workforce.

EXPLORE: How endpoint detection and response can help agencies against attacks.

3. Robust Continuous Monitoring

WatchGuard EDR offers continuous monitoring that prevents the execution of unknown processes while protecting users from advanced threats, zero- day malware, ransomware, phishing, rootkits and in-memory exploits. It can also act as a valuable component in a zero-trust strategy.

4. Automation

WatchGuard EDR offers automatic detection and response for targeted attacks and in-memory exploits. It also provides intrusion detection system, firewall, device control, URL and content filtering capabilities.

5. Key Additional Security Features

WatchGuard EDR can be integrated into a network of zero-trust protections, something that most EDR tools don’t offer. In addition, it provides threat hunting assistance as part of a managed service that can drive intense and continuous behavioral analysis. This might be an extra feature, but it could be critical in a highly secure network.

Illustration by John Lanuza