Extended Detection and Response
One view of your environment instead of five disconnected security tools, built on Microsoft Defender and watched by our in-house SOC.
What Is XDR?
Extended detection and response, or XDR, is a security platform that gathers activity from endpoints, identity systems, email, and cloud applications and correlates it into a single view.
Older security setups often treat each of those areas as a separate tool with its own alerts and its own console. An attacker moving from a phishing email to a compromised endpoint to a cloud account can slip through the gaps between those tools. XDR ties the signals together so a security team sees the full path of an attack, not just fragments of it.
What Sentinel Blue's XDR Includes
Our XDR service is built on Microsoft Defender, bringing four core Defender products into one correlated view.
Defender for Endpoint
Device level protection, detection, and response across laptops, desktops, and servers.
Defender for Office 365
Protection against malicious email, links, and attachments across mailboxes and collaboration tools.
Defender for Identity
Detection of compromised accounts, privilege escalation, and suspicious authentication activity.
Defender for Cloud Apps
Visibility and control over how cloud applications and SaaS tools are used across your organization.
Across those four sources, the platform provides a unified incident queue, automatic attack disruption to contain in-progress threats, cross-product threat hunting, and threat analytics tied to real attack patterns rather than isolated alerts.
Who Needs XDR?
A few situations tend to bring organizations to an XDR conversation.
Running separate, disconnected security tools that do not share information
Struggling to tell which alerts across endpoints, email, and identity matter most
Needing faster investigation and response without building a SOC from scratch
Preparing for CMMC or another framework that expects real detection and response capability
XDR, SIEM, or SOC?
These terms get used loosely, but they describe different pieces of a security program.
| Term | What It Is | What It Needs |
|---|---|---|
| XDR | A platform that unifies detection and response across endpoints, identity, email, and cloud apps | Analysts to monitor, investigate, and act on what it surfaces |
| SIEM | A platform, such as Microsoft Sentinel, that collects and correlates log data across a broader environment, including XDR signals | Tuning, use cases, and analysts to make sense of the volume it collects |
| SOC | The team and process that watches, investigates, and responds to what XDR and SIEM surface | People, procedure, and a clear escalation path, not another platform |
Buying XDR without a SOC behind it is common, and it usually means alerts pile up with nobody reviewing them. Sentinel Blue pairs its XDR deployment with its own analysts instead of leaving the platform to run unattended.
A Platform Alone Is Not a Security Program
A detection platform is only as good as the team watching it. Sentinel Blue runs its own in-house Security Operations Center, so the alerts your XDR deployment generates get reviewed by our analysts, not routed to a separate vendor.
Sentinel Blue is also a CMMC Third-Party Assessment Organization with CMMC Certified Assessors on staff. That matters for XDR specifically, because several CMMC and NIST 800-171 requirements around monitoring and incident response are the ground XDR and a SOC cover together.
For organizations that also need a broader SIEM layer, we support Microsoft Sentinel alongside our XDR work, so detection across your Microsoft environment and your wider infrastructure stays connected instead of split across two engagements.
XDR gives you the signals. It does not, by itself, satisfy a compliance framework or guarantee a fast response. Our role is to make sure those signals are being watched and that your documentation reflects the program you are running.
Win-Tech
Win-Tech is an AS9100-certified aerospace machine shop and defense manufacturer in Kennesaw, Georgia. Sentinel Blue migrated Win-Tech to GCC High, addressed manufacturing-specific security risks, and guided the team to CMMC Level 2 certification on the first try.
"We have always been impressed with Sentinel Blue, from the help desk to special projects to the SOC team and everyone in between." Allison Giddens, Co-Owner, Win-TechRead the Win-Tech Case Study →
XDR FAQ
Extended detection and response, or XDR, pulls security signals from endpoints, identity, email, and cloud applications into one platform instead of monitoring each separately. It correlates that activity into incidents so analysts can investigate a full attack instead of piecing together isolated alerts.
XDR unifies detection and response across a defined set of security products, such as Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Office 365, Identity, and Cloud Apps. A SIEM, such as Microsoft Sentinel, collects and correlates log data across a broader environment, including signals from XDR itself. Many organizations run both together.
No. XDR is a detection and response platform. A Security Operations Center is the team that watches what it surfaces, investigates alerts, and decides what to do about them. Sentinel Blue pairs its XDR deployment with its own in-house SOC rather than leaving the platform to run unmonitored.
Sentinel Blue builds its XDR on Microsoft Defender, unifying Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Office 365, Defender for Identity, and Defender for Cloud Apps into a single incident view, along with automatic attack disruption, cross-product threat hunting, and threat analytics.
No single tool creates CMMC compliance on its own. XDR supports several technical requirements around detection and incident response, but your organization still needs documentation, governance, and other controls to meet the full framework. Sentinel Blue is a CMMC Third-Party Assessment Organization, so we know where XDR fits in that larger picture.
Ready for One View Instead of Five?
If your organization is running disconnected security tools or needs a monitored XDR deployment backed by real analysts, talk with Sentinel Blue.