The vocabulary of cybersecurity sometimes resembles a jungle of acronyms. Yet understanding the nuances between EDR, SIEM, SOAR and XDR is essential: their role and mode of operation determine the depth of visibility your team has, and the speed with which it can react. Before exploring each brick, let's remember that these tools are not mutually exclusive; they complement each other to form the defensive fabric of a modern Security Operations Center (SOC) and a coherent defense.
EDR: The terminal sentinel
L'Endpoint Detection & Response is placed as close as possible to the terminal. It records every process execution, every memory call, every outgoing connection, then reacts within seconds: isolating the workstation, deleting a malicious binary or even restoring an encrypted file. EDR excels in proximity: we know exactly how the threat is installed on the host. Its weakness lies in this same proximity: outside the terminal, it sees nothing.
SIEM: memory and alert engine
Visit Security Information & Event Managementis not concerned with a single host, but with the long term and the breadth of the enterprise. It collects logs from servers, firewalls, SaaS or business applications, stores them for months and applies correlations to detect weak signals. Where an EDR closes a door as soon as it is slammed, a SIEM spends its time leafing through the logbook: it tracks down a badge used in two countries at the same time, spots a dormant account that resurfaces the day before an audit. The essential difference is twofold: the EDR acts quickly but locally, while the SIEM sees far and wide but remains passive - it alerts without touching the system.
SOAR: the answer orchestrator
When the EDR reports an intrusion and the SIEM shows that an admin account has been reused everywhere, the Security Orchestration, Automation & Response enters the scene. Its role is to convert the alert into action: enrich an IOC via a Threat Intel service, block a domain on the proxy, deactivate the user in the directory, then log everything in the ITSM. No previous tool does this natively, so SOAR weaves the thread between immediate detection (EDR) and global context (SIEM). But, by comparison, it also inherits their constraints: it depends on the quality of EDR data, the relevance of SIEM rules and, above all, the ability of the SOC to maintain these playbooks. Without this discipline, automation can quickly become a maze of broken scripts.
XDR: extended and correlated vision
Extended Detection & Response starts from the EDR database: same agent, same speed in capturing telemetry. However, it decides to open up the perimeter: it also ingests network flows, messaging logs, cloud identities, and sometimes even events already collected in the SIEM. It then applies a native correlation - lighter to implement than that of a SIEM - and proposes SOAR-style direct actions: cut off an account, impose MFA, forbid a hash on all workstations. It can thus be seen as an extended EDR: the instinct of an EDR to block quickly, the transverse view of a SIEM to understand, and a touch of automation inherited from SOAR to react without coding complex playbooks.
Conclusion:
Since none of these bricks alone covers the entire defense cycle, the real challenge is to assemble them seamlessly. That's what phishiaSOC is all about: exploiting the granularity of your EDR, extending the horizon of your SIEM, injecting an XDR layer to gain correlation and, where relevant, automating key actions without imposing the burden of a full SOAR. By adapting the combination to the maturity and constraints of each customer, phishiaSOC gives you the right scope at the right time - and, above all, the panoramic view you've been missing to anticipate the next attack.
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