XDR a necessity, despite confusion

The global study highlights the successes, barriers, challenges, and hesitations organizations are experiencing when deploying or considering an XDR strategy. Despite uncertainty, the research suggests nearly a third of participants believe an XDR strategy goes beyond endpoint detection, with over half believing they don’t have the resources for proper implementation. 

According to the report, 78% of respondents believe wider adoption of XDR strategies and solutions is critical to mitigating risk and improving resiliency. Further demonstrating this, the majority (72%) have already deployed an XDR strategy at their organization and another 20% are planning to implement one in the next 12 months. 

However, as XDR’s popularity has skyrocketed, confusion about what it is, who benefits from it, and how organizations can successfully implement it is growing. 

Key findings from the report include: 

Across the board, research indicates general confusion on XDR’s value proposition. 

This latest research indicates  general confusion about what XDR is and why organizations need it. When asked to define XDR, only 47% of IT leaders could identify the true definition: a strategy for deepening threat visibility and accelerating threat detection and response by correlating endpoint data with higher fidelity network telemetry and other data sources. 

IT leaders agree that XDR goes beyond the endpoint. 

When discussing the different building blocks in their XDR tech stacks, there were a wide variety of answers. However, nearly a third of IT decision makers with XDR saw network detection and response (NDR) (32%) and security information and event management (SIEM) (31%) as top components to their strategy. 

XDR is incorrectly perceived as a resource-heavy solution. 

According to the research, 24% of respondents believe that using XDR would require an organization to overhaul or replace components of its current network security strategy and solutions. Another 56% believe they don’t have enough staff or in-house expertise to oversee implementation. 

“As the buzz around XDR skyrocketed in 2022, single-vendor solutions muddied the waters when it came to explaining what it is and how it works,” said Jeff Costlow, CISO at ExtraHop. “XDR is not a single solution – it’s a strategy that allows security teams to choose the best products for their organization without the fear of vendor lock-in. The key to XDR success lies in strong, purpose-built integrations that take the tools in your tech stack today to offer complete end-to-end visibility that will help stop sophisticated attacks in their tracks.”