The Top 15 Detection and Response (NDR) Solutions
Gartner NDR Market Guide
In recent Gartner® reports on Network Detection and Response (NDR),...
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Why Do You Need an NDR Solution?
Modern networks look vastly different than those from a decade ago: application workloads are reliant on distributed architecture, remote employees rely heavily on public and at-home networks, and a rapidly-moving global threat landscape all place increasing pressure on network engineers and security admins alike.
As a result, the firewall – once a bastion of network security – is not providing the full breadth of visibility required. It focuses solely on North-South data flows: this is traffic that traverses between devices within an internal network and the public internet. This is where NDR solutions fill the gap: they deploy sensors onto internal networks, and monitor each interaction between internal devices.
This data is built into a model of normal network behaviors, and compared and cross-referenced against other pieces of intelligence. AI models compare this data against the network’s historical model, and spot deviations. Learn about what NDR is here.
How to Choose the Correct NDR Tool
As we’ll explore shortly, there are dozens of NDR providers and tools on the market today. Choosing the correct one begins with a deep understanding of your specific network architecture, threat landscape, and compliance needs. To gain this, an analysis needs to be conducted by a few key stakeholders. A CISO, SOC manager, and/or network administration team each need their own input on current security and network management blindspots.
A key component of NDR is its ability to integrate with existing security and IT infrastructure. Start by visualizing your own networks – understand their throughput, what platform the servers are based on; whether they are on-prem or cloud-based, and the ability for current security tools to monitor the East-West traffic within them.
Finally, evaluate the resources your organization has to commit to a tool: a solution with rapid setup, automated threat detection and intuitive dashboards can be a lifeline for lean security teams, while highly-customizable options will need more manpower to operate – but can eradicate false positives on highly complex networks. Spending the time to figure out your needs is vital, otherwise you risk buying a product for its three-letter acronym alone.
What Are the Key Features of NDR?
While it’s vital to pick correctly from the available NDR solutions, it’s worth pinpointing the essential features that deliver the core capabilities
- Deep Packet Inspection (DPI): DPI analyzes the full contents of network packets—not just headers—offering detailed insight into data flows. While essential, DPI has limits: it’s resource-intensive and struggles in high-bandwidth environments or with encrypted traffic, where visibility is severely reduced.
- Metadata Analysis: Metadata offers highly scalable insight by capturing session attributes like IP addresses, ports, DNS logs, and encryption details—without diving into full packet payloads. Unlike DPI, it remains effective even in encrypted and distributed networks, making it ideal for modern environments.
- Behavioral Analysis: Instead of relying on known threat signatures alone, behavioral analysis uses machine learning to spot anomalies. Supervised models detect common threat behaviors, while unsupervised models establish baselines and flag deviations, helping uncover novel attacks.
- Threat Intelligence Integration: Linking NDR with threat intel feeds enhances detection of known IoCs and attack patterns. This context helps prioritize threats and improves incident response, especially when aligned with frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK.
- Security Stack Integration: Combining NDR with tools like EDR and SIEM lends full-spectrum visibility into a security team. Far more attacks are detected on the network, but cross-platform integration can allow for automated or immediate responses, from the initial intrusion point.
Top 15 Recommended NDR Solutions
#1. Stellar Cyber
Stellar Cyber is an Open Extended Detection and Response (Open XDR) platform. Rather than isolating its scope to network telemetry like other NDR vendors, Stellar focuses on the cohesive collection and analysis of all relevant security data. That is, network and endpoint behavior, identity protocols, and productivity apps. With all data ingested and analyzed, it also pre-analyzes alerts, grouping them into incidents and discarding false positives.
- Discovers and analyzes all assets on connected networks.
- Normalizes and analyses all data through several rounds of cross-analysis.
- Conducts Deep Packet Inspection of unencrypted packets, alongside app and network metadata behavioral analysis.
- Maps detected threats against the specific ATT&CK techniques – lending a clear understanding of attack behavior, rather than simple anomaly alerts.
Pros: MITRE ATT&CK alignment, strong threat hunting capabilities, high scalability and integration options. All features are offered under one license.
Cons: May require analyst training, works best when integrated with a pre-existing EDR tool.
#2. Sangfor Cyber Command
- Ingests network log data into a central management platform.
- Builds a baseline model of normal asset behavior.
- Compares against Indicators of Compromise within its threat intelligence.
#3. Palo Alto Networks’ Cortex
- Pulls data from network servers and any pre-deployed security tools into a central analysis and alerts engine.
- Combines endpoint and network security data before issuing alerts.
#4. Crowdstrike Falcon
Similar to Cortex, Falcon is a joint EDR and NDR tooling that takes data from the entire breadth of an organization’s endpoints, networks, users, and security tools.
- Both policy-based and behavioral threat detection.
- Delivers prioritized alerts to the relevant security admins.
- Crowdstrike shares IoCs between customers, preventing novel attacks.
Pros: Excellent visibility and logging, relatively simple deployment, and accessible dashboard.
Cons: Limited configuration options, alerting and workflow customization aren’t as in-depth as its data analysis capabilities.
#5. DarkTrace
Darktrace is a UK-based NDR solution that focuses on applying behavioral analysis to network security. It offers other plugins, like email security, which applies the same analysis to communication platforms. Popular with organizations that don’t have dedicated security teams.
- Self-learning behavioral analysis models deployed on local machines.
- Includes AI chatbot that describes alerts in plain English.
Pros: Free trial, dedicated installation and initial configuration support.
Cons: Pricey, with a lack of third-party security tool integrations; sole reliance on behavioral analysis risks a large number of false positives.
#6. ExtraHop RevealX
RevealX is a dual-purpose NDR platform that can also be used for its network performance management capabilities.
- Conducts packet capture for analysis, and offers SSL and TLS decryption.
- Both on-prem and cloud-based deployment options.
Pros: Good documentation, decryption allows it to spot encrypted malware packets.
Cons: Expensive, often relies on multiple appliances being deployed, packet decryption can represent a security concern in itself.
#7. Vectra.ai
Vectra.AI is an established NDR tool that deploys across an organization’s SaaS, public cloud, and data center networks.
- Analyzes network and identity activity via a central AI, and collates issues into alerts.
- Prioritizes alerts and shows why via the dashboard.
Pros: Vectra’s Managed Detection and Response (MDR) capabilities can support its AI with human assessment. A powerful standalone tool.
Cons: Limited integration with other security tools, lackluster training for new users, high customization and knowledge demands, quite technical dashboard.
#8. Muninn
Owned by Logpoint, Muninn is a popular NDR for medium-sized organizations that are new to inhouse network security.
- Focuses on simple deployment, with fewer switch and firewall configuration demands.
- Baselines to normal network behavior models.
- Can deploy on-prem and on air gapped networks.
Pros: Solid overview of network traffic, accessibly priced, allows for long-term raw data storage for forensics.
Cons: Relatively lightweight tool, in-depth incident analysis still needs to be performed manually.
#9. Rapid7 InsightIDR
While technically a cloud-based security information and event management (SIEM) solution, it offers robust XDR capabilities by integrating with endpoints and networks.
- Offers data aggregation at an on-premises collector, which can help adhere to strict compliance regulations.
- Relies on the MITRE ATT&CK framework as an intelligence source.
Pros:Accessible investigation tools and dashboard, rapid integration with existing security tools.
Cons: Limited dashboard customization, cloud-only availability, logs are only stored for 12 months.
#10. Arista
Arista is a giant in the networking space, and prominently focuses on provisioning large data centers, campuses, and routing environments. Their NDR represents a move from switches to security tooling. As such, it’s well-configured to handle large volumes of network data, and popular with network admins.
- Focuses on zero trust.
- Conducts Deep Packet Inspection.
- Built to deploy rapidly, within a few hours.
Pros: Offers fairly granular reporting functions, such as the ability to track individual entities’ network use over time.
Cons: No ability to configure alerts via email or SMS, or archive old data, very limited documentation.
#11. Fortinet NDR
Another established security player, FortiNDR is Fortinet’s newest product, and one of their most expensive. This tool monitors the ongoing actions of individual networks, essentially combining the functionalities of their prior FortiGate and FortiSandbox tools.
- East-West network packets are analyzed for malicious behavior and contents.
- Can deploy in air gapped networks.
- Offers guided playbooks to accelerate analyst response.
Pros: Powerful zero-day detection; basic automatic remediation options are available through the dashboard; integrates very easily with Fortinet tools.
Cons: Doesn’t provide detailed analysis, UI very basic, integration with other security providers’ tooling is lacklustre.
#12. Cisco Secure Network Analytics (StealthWatch)
While not technically an NDR, Cisco StealthWatch is considered an option for network visibility. Since it’s sometimes included in Cisco’s enterprise licensing, established Cisco companies may be tempted to use it like an NDR. However, StealthWatch’s behavioral analysis does not cover network packet contents, only their metadata.
- Offers real-time visibility and reporting into North/South traffic.
- Allows for extended data retention, aiding forensics.
Pros: Powerful Network Traffic Analysis tool, full control and customizability, decent customer support, dual-purpose for network issue troubleshooting
Cons: Requires heavy manual configuration, doesn’t provide East-West or server log analysis, features aren’t added and firmware updates are time-consuming.
#13. ManageEngine Netflow Analyzer
Like StealthWatch, ManageEngine’s NetFlow Analyzer is a more traditional network traffic analysis tool: it collects and analyzes network traffic across their individual subnetworks, segmenting and analyzing usage according to the applications, interfaces, and devices.
- Applies behavioral analysis to North-South traffic, allowing admins to find unexpected traffic flows and requests.
- Monitors and maps application protocols.
Pros: Very cost-effective, allows for experienced network admins to track traffic to and from internal networks
Cons: Isn’t strictly an NDR, as it doesn’t allow for analysis of East-West network traffic.
#14. IronDefense
A relative newcomer to the security scene, IronNet’s NDR solution – IronDefense – is a fully-provisioned NDR offering.
- Provides real-time East-West visibility.
- Offers customizable playbooks to perform fully or partially-automated responses.
Pros: Heavy focus on new features and improvements by the IronNet team. Deployment and integration are kept simple and streamlined.
Cons: Can struggle to run at pace when deployed on rapidly-scaling networks, doesn’t have the prettiest interface, junior analysts will need to be supported through the learning curve.
#15. Corelight
Given the amount of proprietary software we’ve covered already, Corelight breaks the trend by being built on open source software Zeek. Zeek is a well-established network traffic monitoring system, but it’s limited to passive log collection; in an open-source setting, admins usually deploy it with Suricata. Corelight takes this functionality and builds on it.
- Automated event analysis.
- AI-assisted ticket management allows for faster workflows.
- Sensor manager, named Fleet Manager, allows for sensor management in aggregate.
Pros: Heavy focus on flexible integration; customer service is reportedly very good.
Cons: No TLS decryption, and Fleet manager can be unwieldy, with no ability to download system logs on a continuous basis, or to apply previous policies to new sensors.
Automate Network Detection & Response with Stellar Cyber
Stellar Cyber streamlines network security like never before: its wide-ranging raw data collection reaches from layers 2 to 7, pulling every datapoint before assessing each for connected heuristics or known attack signatures. Instead of piling alerts into your analysts’ inboxes, Stellar collates individual alerts into their wider security incidents, giving analysts a head start. Finally, set response actions automatically or take remediation actions with a single click. Explore more of Stellar Cyber’s capabilities here, and begin making your network security precise and comprehensive.
