Cyber attacks are evolving, with attackers increasingly targeting cloud environments and embedded systems rather than traditional endpoints.
Small businesses, constrained by limited resources, are particularly vulnerable as they adopt cloud services and connected devices without adequate security measures.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) is a powerful security solution, enhancing visibility and detection across the entire IT infrastructure.
This article explores how XDR addresses common challenges with infrastructure visibility and how Defiance XDR™ delivers complete visibility for small businesses.
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Cyber Criminals Are Shifting Their Attack Strategies
Attackers are moving beyond endpoints to exploit cloud systems and embedded devices, driven by two key factors:
- The value of data stored in these environments.
- The ease of exploitation due to misconfigurations or poor monitoring.
Cloud platforms like Microsoft 365 and AWS host critical business data, making them prime targets. Meanwhile, embedded systems—such as IoT devices—often lack robust security, offering attackers an unguarded entry point.
For example, Russian threat actors have used phishing via Signal, WhatsApp, and compromised Ukrainian government emails to target EU officials, exploiting OAuth vulnerabilities to steal tokens and bypass multi-factor authentication.
Similarly, the rise in ransomware targeting cloud workloads and connected devices shows that cybercriminals adapt to where businesses are most exposed.
This shift is significant because cloud and embedded systems are harder to monitor and more expensive to log than traditional endpoints.
Meanwhile, endpoints have benefited from years of security focus, with tools like antivirus and endpoint detection and response systems widely deployed.
How This Is Impacting Small Businesses
Small businesses face heightened risks from this shift due to their limited resources and security infrastructure. Many rely on cloud services like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 to streamline operations, but they often can’t afford premium monitoring features.
This leaves them blind to threats like OAuth token theft, where attackers gain unauthorized access to cloud accounts. A phishing campaign targeting EU officials could easily pivot to a small business with weak email security, leading to data breaches or ransomware.
IoT devices, such as smart cameras or networked printers, further complicate the picture. These devices are common in small businesses but are rarely secured properly.
A threat report released from Zscaler showed IoT malware attacks increased 400% in the first half of 2023 compared to 2022. With limited IT staff and budgets, small businesses struggle to detect or respond to these threats, risking financial losses and downtime.
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The Visibility Gap In Traditional IT Security
Traditional security tools like EDR and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) were designed for simpler times. EDR focuses on endpoints, such as laptops and servers, while SIEM aggregates logs but often relies on reactive, rule-based detection.
These tools operate in silos, failing to provide a unified view of today’s complex IT environments, which include remote workforces, cloud platforms, and connected devices.
The 2025 Enterprise Data Security Confidence Index surveyed 530 cybersecurity leaders on data security, uncovering troubling gaps in visibility, security, and AI readiness.
A staggering 82% of security teams have trouble identifying and classifying sensitive data. In addition, 53% of these teams do not have real-time visibility, resulting in delays of days or even weeks to find sensitive data assets.
This fragmentation is a critical weakness.
Attackers don’t stay on one system—they use an endpoint as a starting point to move laterally to cloud services or network devices.
Siloed tools make it hard to connect these dots, delaying detection and response.
For instance, an attacker might compromise an employee’s laptop, then pivot to a cloud server hosting sensitive data. EDR might flag the endpoint activity, but without integration with cloud monitoring, the full scope of the attack remains hidden.
This visibility gap leaves organizations exposed, especially as threats grow more sophisticated.
Key Challenges In Achieving Infrastructure Visibility
Achieving comprehensive visibility is tougher than ever due to several modern challenges:
Fragmented Tools And Lack Of Integration
Many businesses, especially small businesses, rely on a patchwork of security tools that fail to communicate effectively, creating a fragmented security posture that attackers exploit.
Disparate tools—covering endpoints, cloud, and networks—require significant expertise and time to integrate, as they aren’t necessarily built to communicate with each other. Differing data formats, protocols, and vendor-specific systems make it a “nightmare” to achieve a unified view.
This fragmentation leads to manual, error-prone processes for correlating events across systems, delaying threat detection and response.
Without integration, security teams must manually piece together alerts from separate systems, such as an EDR tool flagging endpoint activity and a cloud monitoring tool reporting unusual API calls.
This process is time-consuming and prone to oversight, especially under the pressure of limited staff. Fragmented tools result in either ineffective security solutions that can’t be implemented properly or rapidly gro,wing expensive setups as businesses hire experts to bridge the gaps.
For example, an attacker compromises an employee’s laptop and uses it to access a cloud server. An EDR tool might detect the endpoint breach, but without integration with cloud monitoring, the security team misses the lateral movement, allowing the attacker to exfiltrate data.
Siloed tools make it difficult to correlate those events as related to the attack, increasing the risk of missed threats.
XDR solves this by providing a unified platform that integrates data from endpoints, cloud services, and network devices into a single, cohesive view.
Limited Cloud Logging And Paywall Barriers
Paywall barriers create a significant visibility gap, particularly for organizations with limited resources. Cloud platforms like Microsoft 365 and AWS charge based on usage metrics, such as the number of rules implemented or events monitored.
This cost-per-usage model forces SMBs to make tough budgetary decisions, often limiting the scope of their monitoring to stay within financial constraints.
For example, a small business might forego advanced logging tiers to save costs, preventing them from tracking suspicious activities. The dynamic and distributed nature of cloud systems—spread across multiple servers, regions, and APIs—further complicates detection.
Unlike traditional endpoints, which generate structured logs, cloud workloads produce complex, scattered data that requires robust analysis tools to interpret.
Without access to premium logging, SMBs face prolonged incident response times, increasing the risk of data breaches or ransomware.
To address this, many SMBs turn to third-party services or Managed Service Providers (MSPs), which can negotiate discounts on cloud logging tools.
However, this adds complexity and cost, diverting resources from other critical security needs.
XDR offers a practical solution by providing a unified platform that bypasses the limitations of paywall-restricted logging. Unlike traditional cloud tools that charge per rule or event, XDR consolidates monitoring across endpoints, cloud, and networks without usage-based restrictions.
This allows SMBs to achieve comprehensive visibility within a reasonable budget, tracking activities across their entire cloud environment, such as unusual API calls or unauthorized access attempts, without needing expensive add-ons.
Blind Spots In Network Devices And Embedded Systems
Network devices and embedded systems, such as IoT devices, are increasingly critical to business operations but remain largely invisible to traditional security tools.
Attackers are pivoting toward these assets because they are less monitored and often lack the robust protections found on endpoints like workstations and servers.
As embedded systems and IoT devices become business-critical—think networked printers in an office or sensors in a manufacturing facility—they attract more attention from attackers.
A compromised IoT device can serve as an entry point, allowing cybercriminals to infiltrate broader networks and access sensitive data or systems.
Smaller organizations have a smaller footprint for security, meaning they can’t afford specialized tools or dedicated staff to monitor network devices and IoT systems. This makes them “softer targets” compared to enterprises with multiple layers of backups and experts.
For instance, a small healthcare clinic using IoT-enabled medical devices might not realize an attacker has gained access until sensitive patient data is exfiltrated.
XDR addresses these blind spots by extending monitoring capabilities to network devices and embedded systems, integrating their telemetry into a centralized platform.
Unlike EDR, which is limited to endpoints, XDR collects data from IoT devices and network appliances, enabling security teams to detect anomalies such as unusual traffic patterns or unauthorized access attempts.
For example, XDR could flag a networked printer sending unexpected data to an external server, preventing a breach before it escalates.
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How XDR Enhances Visibility And Detection Across The IT Infrastructure
Complex IT environments typically mean security teams face dealing with fragmented tools, evolving threats, and limited resources.
XDR integrates data from across the entire infrastructure—endpoints, cloud services, networks, and embedded systems—into a single platform.
Below, we explore how XDR achieves this and the practical benefits it offers security teams.
1. Data Integration In XDR: A Unified View Of The Infrastructure
Modern attacks don’t stay in one place.
An attacker might compromise an endpoint, pivot to a cloud server, or exploit an unsecured IoT device. Without integrated visibility, these movements go unnoticed.
XDR ensures security teams see the full scope of activity, enabling faster and more informed responses.
Imagine a phishing email compromises an employee’s laptop, which is then used to access a cloud-based CRM system. A traditional endpoint-only tool might catch the initial breach but miss the cloud activity.
XDR correlates these events, providing a complete view of the attack.
XDR tackles the challenge of fragmented security data by collecting and integrating information from endpoints (e.g., laptops, servers), cloud services (e.g., AWS, Microsoft 365), and network devices (e.g., routers, IoT sensors) into one cohesive platform.
Traditional tools often operate in silos, leaving visibility gaps that attackers exploit.
XDR eliminates these blind spots by:
- Consolidating Data: It gathers logs, alerts, and telemetry from all sources, creating a real-time, holistic picture of the IT environment.
- Normalizing Formats: XDR standardizes data from different vendors into a unified format, making it easier to analyze and correlate events across systems.
- Correlating Events: By linking activities across domains, XDR reveals attack paths that span multiple systems—something siloed tools struggle to do.
2. Enterprise Threat Intelligence Keeps You Ahead of Emerging Threats
Threat intelligence is a cornerstone of XDR’s effectiveness.
By integrating high-quality, up-to-date intelligence feeds, XDR platforms identify indicators of compromise (IOCs) and track attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).
If a new ransomware variant surfaces, XDR’s threat intelligence can identify its patterns—like encrypted files on an endpoint or suspicious cloud uploads—enabling early detection and response, even for SMBs with limited expertise. (ENTER A STAT)
A proactive approach helps organizations stay ahead of emerging threats:
- Real-Time Updates: XDR uses global threat intelligence to recognize known malware, phishing campaigns, and vulnerabilities as they emerge.
- Behavioral Insights: Beyond signatures, it analyzes attacker behavior to detect new or unknown threats.
- Targeted Protection: For cloud workloads (e.g., unusual API calls) and embedded systems (e.g., anomalous IoT traffic), threat intelligence flags subtle signs of compromise that legacy tools miss.
3. Enhanced Threat Detection And Response
Traditional solutions often require security teams to piece together alerts manually, a slow and error-prone process. Consider an attacker who compromises an endpoint and uses it to scan a network for vulnerabilities.
A siloed tool might flag the endpoint issue but miss the network activity.
XDR correlates these events instantly, revealing the reconnaissance attempt and enabling rapid intervention, potentially saving hours of response time.
XDR’s ability to correlate data across systems in real time dramatically enhances threat detection and response to connect the dots automatically.
- Faster Detection: By analyzing events across endpoints, cloud, and networks simultaneously, XDR spots threats in minutes rather than hours or days.
- Greater Accuracy: It reduces false positives by contextualizing alerts, ensuring teams focus on real dangers.
- Comprehensive Scope: XDR detects multi-stage attacks that traditional tools miss due to their narrow focus.
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4. The Role Of AI And Machine Learning In XDR
AI and machine learning (ML) are integral to XDR, enabling it to detect threats that traditional rule-based systems overlook. These technologies analyze vast amounts of data to identify patterns and anomalies, adapting to new attack methods.
For example, a zero-day exploit encrypting files across endpoints might evade traditional antivirus software. XDR’s ML detects the abnormal encryption patterns, stopping the attack before it spreads.
- Pattern Recognition: AI spots subtle signs of compromise, like unusual login times or data transfers, that don’t match known signatures.
- Anomaly Detection: ML flags deviations from normal behavior, such as an employee’s account accessing files it has never accessed before.
- Continuous Learning: By evolving with new data, XDR stays effective against zero-day exploits and insider threats.
AI vs. AI
It’s not just defenders using AI—attackers leverage it too.
From crafting sophisticated malware to launching AI-generated deepfake phishing campaigns, the bad guys are innovating.
While XDR can’t directly counter social engineering, its AI-driven detection keeps pace with technical threats, making it a critical tool in today’s AI-versus-AI battlefield.
5. Practical Benefits For Security Teams
XDR streamlines security operations, delivering measurable advantages for teams—especially those at SMBs with limited staff and budgets.
A small business with a two-person IT crew can use XDR to manage their entire environment—endpoints, cloud, and IoT—from one screen, responding to a breach as efficiently as a larger enterprise.
- Reduced Alert Fatigue: XDR filters out noise and prioritizes genuine threats, cutting down the flood of irrelevant alerts that exhaust teams. For example, it might ignore a routine update but flag a sudden spike in outbound traffic as potential data exfiltration.
- Improved Incident Prioritization: AI-driven insights highlight the most critical incidents, helping teams respond to high-risk threats first.
- Centralized Management: A single console replaces multiple dashboards, simplifying monitoring and speeding up decision-making.
- Impact: Security teams waste less of their time on false positives. XDR reclaims that time, letting lean teams focus on real threats without drowning in complexity.
How Defiance XDR™ Secures Small Businesses
Defiance XDR™ is built for small businesses, delivering an enterprise-grade security solution without the complexity or the price tag. We integrate endpoint, infrastructure, and cloud monitoring into one platform, consolidating SIEM and scanning tools.
This eliminates the fragmentation of managing multiple vendors, a common pain point for resource-strapped businesses.
Defiance XDR™ works seamlessly with existing systems, offering a single point of contact for security events. Our vulnerability scanning and log retention ensure comprehensive visibility, covering blind spots like network devices and cloud platforms.
By monitoring every layer of the IT ecosystem, Defiance XDR™ enables proactive threat detection and response, keeping small businesses secure against modern attacks.
$35/MO PER DEVICE
Enterprise Security Built For Small Business
Defy your attackers with Defiance XDR™, a fully managed security solution delivered in one affordable subscription plan.
Article by
Joshua is a diversely-skilled cybersecurity professional with over a decade of cybersecurity experience previously working for the Department of Defense.
