Thank you to my partner Enrique Salem for debate and feedback. If you're thinking about security, I'd love to meet you. Historically, there have been four big categories in security: cloud (evolving from networks prior), identity, email, and endpoint. In every generation, each of these categories has supported at least one really big winner. Over the last decade, new threat vectors have illuminated gaps in the armor, leading to a proliferation of security point products.

Today's cyber security technological evolution milestones in the context of effective detection and response are the endpoint detection and response (EDR), Manage Detection and Response (MDR), and Network Detection and Response (NDR). However, these all solutions are running independently and missing the correlated high level processed alert to which Extended Detection and Response (XDR) is a solution that emerged, rather than adding another tool, XDR aims to change this security landscape and enable a more compelling activity of the security stack. What problem does XDR solve? Attackers often target endpoints, but they also target other layers of the IT domain in the corporate network, such as email servers and cloud systems, and they may bounce between layers or hide in the interface between them to evade detection. XDR solves both problems at once.

A year ago, NOV Inc. was in the middle of evaluating a new security product to help with securing its globally distributed workforce, spread across more than 60 countries. The oilfield equipment maker was considering deploying an extended detection and response (XDR) solution from SentinelOne -- and as part of the evaluation, NOV deployed the XDR platform across a company it had recently acquired. "Immediately" after deployment, SentinelOne's Singularity XDR detected and halted a cyberattack in progress against the acquired company, said NOV chief information security officer John McLeod -- and then remediated the attack, as well. "This was all done during the pandemic lockdown, in a country on the other side of the globe, where we didn't speak the same language," McLeod said in an email. Perhaps unsurprisingly, NOV ended up becoming a customer.