Understanding Defender for Endpoint – A Deep Dive for IT Admins

How to leverage the power of Microsoft’s cloud-based security solution for your organization

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a comprehensive, cloud-based security solution that helps you protect your endpoints from advanced threats. It combines endpoint protection, endpoint detection and response (EDR), threat intelligence, and automated investigation and remediation capabilities to help you prevent, detect, and respond to cyberattacks. In this blog post, we will explore some of the key features of Defender for Endpoint, show you some real-world examples of how it can help you identify and stop malicious activities, and provide you with some tips on how to set up and optimize the configuration for different environments

Endpoint Protection

Defender for Endpoint provides endpoint protection capabilities that leverage the power of the cloud and artificial intelligence to protect your devices from malware, ransomware, exploits, and other threats. It uses a combination of signature-based and behaviour-based detection methods, as well as cloud-delivered protection, to provide real-time and offline protection. It also integrates with Microsoft Defender Antivirus, Microsoft Defender Firewall, and other Windows security features to provide a unified and seamless security experience.

Signature-based detection: Defender for Endpoint uses the latest threat intelligence from Microsoft and third-party sources to identify known malicious files and processes. It also uses machine learning and heuristics to detect new and emerging variants of malware.

Behaviour-based detection: Defender for Endpoint monitors the behaviour of processes, files, and network activities on your devices and alerts you of any suspicious or anomalous activities that indicate a possible compromise. It also uses advanced techniques such as memory analysis, kernel-level sensors, and sandboxing to detect and block advanced threats such as fileless malware, credential theft, and living-off-the-land attacks.

Cloud-delivered protection: Defender for Endpoint leverages the power of the cloud to provide fast and accurate protection. It uses cloud-based analytics and big data to analyse billions of signals from millions of devices and identify new and emerging threats. It also uses cloud-based protection engines to deliver real-time and offline updates to your devices, ensuring that they are always protected with the latest security intelligence.

Endpoint Detection and Response

Defender for Endpoint provides endpoint detection and response capabilities that help you gain visibility and control over your endpoints. It collects and analyses rich data from your devices, such as process information, network activities, registry changes, file modifications, and user actions. It then uses advanced analytics and threat intelligence to correlate and prioritize the data and generate alerts for any suspicious or malicious activities. It also provides you with rich tools and insights to help you investigate and respond to the alerts, such as:

• Attack surface reduction: Defender for Endpoint helps you reduce the attack surface of your endpoints by providing you with recommendations and actions to harden your devices and prevent common attack vectors. For example, it can help you enable application control, disable unnecessary services, restrict user privileges, and apply security policies.
• Threat and vulnerability management: Defender for Endpoint helps you identify and prioritize the vulnerabilities and misconfigurations on your endpoints that could expose them to attacks. It also provides you with remediation options and guidance to help you fix the issues and improve your security posture.
• Incident response: Defender for Endpoint helps you respond to incidents and contain threats on your endpoints by providing you with automated investigation and remediation capabilities. It can help you isolate infected devices, collect forensic data, kill malicious processes, remove malicious files, and restore normal operations.

Real-world examples of threat detection and response

To illustrate how Defender for Endpoint can help you detect and respond to real-world threats, let’s look at some examples of how it can help you identify and stop some common attack scenarios.

Ransomware attack: Defender for Endpoint can help you detect and block ransomware attacks by using behaviour-based detection and cloud-delivered protection. It can alert you of any suspicious activities that indicate a ransomware infection, such as file encryption, process injection, registry modification, and network communication. It can also help you prevent the ransomware from spreading to other devices by isolating the infected device, killing the ransomware process, and removing the ransomware payload. It can also help you recover your files by restoring them from the cloud or from a backup.

Credential theft attack: Defender for Endpoint can help you detect and stop credential theft attacks by using memory analysis and kernel-level sensors. It can alert you of any attempts to access or dump credentials from memory, such as using tools like Mimi Katz, or to steal credentials from web browsers, such as using tools like LaZagne. It can also help you prevent the attackers from using the stolen credentials by blocking network communication, disabling the compromised accounts, and resetting the passwords.

Lateral movement attack: Defender for Endpoint can help you detect and prevent lateral movement attacks by using network analysis and threat intelligence. It can alert you of any suspicious network activities that indicate a lateral movement attempt, such as using tools like PS Exec, WMI, or PowerShell, or exploiting vulnerabilities like Eternal Blue or Zero logon. It can also help you stop the lateral movement by blocking the network traffic, isolating the affected devices, and patching the vulnerabilities.

Setup requirements for IT admins

To use Defender for Endpoint, you need to meet the following requirements:

• License: You need to have a valid license for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, which is available as a standalone product or as part of Microsoft 365 E5 or Microsoft 365 E5 Security plans.
• Devices: You need to have devices that run a supported operating system, such as Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 R2 or later, macOS, Linux, Android, or iOS. You also need to have the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint agent installed and enabled on the devices.
• Portal: You need to have access to the Microsoft Defender Security Centre portal, which is the web-based interface where you can manage and monitor your devices, alerts, incidents, reports, and settings.

Tips for optimizing configuration for different environments.

Depending on your organization’s size, complexity, and security needs, you may want to customize and optimize the configuration of Defender for Endpoint to suit your environment. Here are some tips to help you do that:

Roles and permissions: You can use role-based access control (RBAC) to assign different roles and permissions to different users and groups in your organization. For example, you can assign the security administrator role to users who can manage and configure the security settings, the security operator role to users who can investigate and respond to alerts and incidents, and the security reader role to users who can view the security reports and data.

Policies and profiles: You can use policies and profiles to apply different security settings and configurations to different groups of devices. For example, you can use device groups to group devices based on criteria such as location, department, or function, and then apply different policies and profiles to each device group. You can also use configuration profiles to configure specific settings for devices, such as enabling or disabling certain features, setting exclusions, or customizing notifications.

Alerts and notifications: You can use alerts and notifications to keep track of the security status and events on your devices. You can customize the alert severity levels, the alert notification methods, and the alert suppression rules to suit your preferences and needs. You can also use the Microsoft Defender Security Centre portal, the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint mobile app, or the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint APIs to view and manage the alerts and notifications.