What is Threat Detection and Response (TDR)?

Threat Detection and Response (TDR)

Threat Detection and Response (TDR) is the discipline of continuously identifying, analyzing, and responding to cyber threats across the attack lifecycle. Modern TDR combines analytics, threat intelligence, automation, and response workflows to reduce exposure time and prevent business-impacting incidents.

TDR refers to the integrated processes and technologies used to detect malicious activity, investigate potential threats, and execute containment and remediation. Unlike point solutions, TDR represents an operational model that unifies detection and response across endpoints, networks, cloud environments, identities, and external threat surfaces.

When Threats Move Faster Than Your Defenses

Adversaries now operate at machine speed, exploiting fragmented visibility and delayed intelligence. Traditional security tools often detect threats only after compromise has occurred. Effective TDR shifts organizations from reactive response to preemptive defense by operationalizing early signals, real-time intelligence, and automated response.

Security teams must be able to detect threats that evade traditional controls, validate risk quickly, and coordinate response actions across tools, teams, and environments.

TDR vs. EDR vs. XDR vs. NDR vs. MDR

As security teams evaluate threat detection capabilities, they’re often confronted with a growing alphabet soup of acronyms—EDR, NDR, XDR ITDR, MDR—each addressing a specific slice of the threat landscape. While these solutions play important roles, they typically operate within defined domains or delivery models and rely on specific threat detection tools. Threat Detection and Response (TDR) is broader by design: it represents the end-to-end operating model that unifies detection, investigation, and response across tools, data sources, and environments. The comparison below clarifies how these approaches differ in scope, focus, and limitations—and why modern organizations are increasingly adopting TDR as the foundation for faster, more coordinated, and preemptive cyber defense.

Capability	Primary Coverage	Signals Analyzed	Response Model
EDR	Endpoint detection and response	Endpoint processes, files, memory; strong at post-execution malware detection	Endpoint isolation, process kill, local remediation
NDR	Network detection and response	Traffic flows and packet metadata; effective for lateral movement detection	Network blocking, segmentation, traffic controls
XDR	Extended detection and response	Correlated endpoint, network, email, identity, and cloud telemetry	Cross-domain response via integrated security tools
ITDR	Identity threat detection and response	Auth events and privilege changes; strong for credential abuse and account takeover detection	Account lockdown, credential resets, session termination
MDR	Managed detection and response	Combines automated with human-led triage and analysis	Provider-led investigation and response as a service
TDR	End-to-end attack lifecycle	End-to-end attack lifecycle approach with internal telemetry and external threat intelligence	Unified, automated response across SOC workflows

How does threat detection work?

A mature TDR approach delivers measurable outcomes: reduced dwell time, faster containment, lower breach impact, and improved operational resilience. By unifying early detection with intelligent response workflows, organizations shift from reactive incident handling to proactive, risk-driven defense.

Threat detection works by collecting signals, analyzing behavior, and identifying indicators of compromise (IOCs) or indicators of attack (IOAs) that suggest malicious activity.

Core detection mechanisms

Signature-based detection

Matches known malicious patterns (hashes, domains, IPs, YARA rules). Strong for known threats, weaker for novel variants.

Behavior-based detection

Flags anomalous behaviors (unusual process chains, privilege escalation, lateral movement). Effective against zero-days and living-off-the-land tactics.

Threat intelligence-led detection

Uses external and internal intelligence to identify emerging threats, campaigns, infrastructure, and adversary TTPs.

Correlation and analytics

Correlates across telemetry sources (SIEM, EDR/XDR, email, IAM, cloud logs) to reduce false positives and increase confidence.

Typical TDR detection workflow

1. Ingest signals (logs, alerts, intel, network/endpoint/email telemetry).
   
2. Normalize and enrich (context, identity, asset criticality, threat intel).
   
3. Correlate events into incidents.
   
4. Prioritize by risk, likelihood, and business impact.
   
5. Escalate to investigation and response workflows.
   

CTA: Want earlier, higher-confidence detection from the earliest external signals? Request a demo

How does Threat Response work?

Threat response is the coordinated execution of technical and operational controls designed to contain active threats, eradicate adversary footholds, and restore secure operations—while minimizing dwell time and business impact. Effective threat response relies on tight integration between detection systems, identity controls, endpoint tools, network enforcement points, and automated workflows.

Core Phases of Threat Response

Mean Time to Respond (MTTR) measures how quickly security teams move from confirmed threat detection to effective containment and remediation. High-performing security teams establish MTTR metrics and continuously refine them to identify operational bottlenecks, reduce dwell time, limit blast radius, and improve overall cyber resilience.

Containment

Containment immediately disrupts adversary activity, preventing lateral movement. Actions include isolating endpoints, disabling accounts, revoking sessions/tokens, blocking malicious domains/IPs, and enforcing segmentation. These mitigate MITRE ATT&CK tactics like Lateral Movement (TA0008) and Command and Control (TA0011). Fast containment is the single most important driver of MTTR reduction.

Eradication

Eradication removes the attacker and eliminates persistence, involving deleting malware, terminating malicious processes, removing persistence mechanisms, closing exploited vulnerabilities, rotating credentials, and revoking unauthorized privileges. This maps to ATT&CK tactics like Persistence (TA0003), Privilege Escalation (TA0004), and Defense Evasion (TA0005). Failure to eradicate completely often causes repeat incidents and prolonged MTTR.

Recovery

Recovery restores systems and services to a trusted state while validating integrity. Teams reimage or restore systems from clean backups, re-enable access using least-privilege controls, and closely monitor telemetry for signs of reinfection. Recovery activities mitigate Impact (TA0040) techniques by reducing downtime, preventing data loss, and ensuring operational continuity without reintroducing risk.

Post-incident hardening

Post-incident activities focus on improving future response performance. Security teams refine detections, tune response playbooks, adjust identity and access policies, close control gaps, and patch systemic weaknesses identified during the incident. Mapping lessons learned back to MITRE ATT&CK enables organizations to measurably improve coverage and shorten MTTR in future events.

Automation and orchestration

Automation and orchestration are critical to consistent, scalable threat response. SOAR platforms and pre-approved playbooks reduce manual decision-making, minimize analyst error, and enable response actions to execute at machine speed. High-maturity programs automate containment and remediation for well-understood threat classes such as phishing, credential abuse, and commodity malware, reserving analyst effort for complex investigations.

Best practices for reducing MTTR

When threat response is treated as a disciplined operational capability—rather than a series of ad hoc actions—organizations achieve faster containment, lower impact, and more resilient security operations. Security teams seeking to reduce MTTR should prioritize:

• Continuous measurement of MTTR, time-to-contain, and response consistency
• Standardized response playbooks aligned to common ATT&CK techniques
• Tight integration between detection, identity, endpoint, and network controls
• Clear escalation and ownership models to eliminate response delays
• Automation for high-confidence threats to reduce manual intervention

Threat Detection and Response in Practice

Threat Detection and Response (TDR) is most effective when applied across real-world attack scenarios that span multiple control planes and evolve rapidly. The following examples illustrate how detection, investigation, and response operate together to reduce exposure time and prevent escalation.

Phishing and credential theft

Detection begins with identifying malicious domains, lookalike infrastructure, and abnormal authentication behavior. Rapid response includes email quarantine, credential resets, session revocation, and policy enforcement to prevent account takeover and lateral movement.

Malware and endpoint compromise

Threats are detected through suspicious process execution, file modification, and outbound connections. Response actions include endpoint isolation, process termination, malware removal, credential rotation, and expanded hunting across similar assets.

Identity-based abuse and suspicious access

Detection focuses on anomalous login patterns, privilege escalation, and misuse of access tokens. Response includes account suspension, access revocation, least-privilege enforcement, and validation of downstream system access.

Ransomware and pre-impact indicators

Early indicators such as lateral movement, credential dumping, and infrastructure staging enable response before encryption. Containment isolates affected systems, disables compromised identities, and blocks malicious infrastructure to limit business impact.

These scenarios highlight how effective TDR shifts organizations from reactive incident handling to proactive containment—reducing MTTR and limiting blast radius.

Dataminr’s Threat Detection and Response

As threats accelerate and attack surfaces expand beyond the enterprise perimeter, effective TDR increasingly depends on real-time, external threat intelligence that complements internal telemetry. Intelligence-driven TDR enables security teams to detect threats earlier, validate risk faster, and prioritize response based on adversary intent and potential impact.

Modern TDR programs integrate real-time intelligence with SIEM, SOAR, EDR/XDR, and identity platforms to transform raw signals into decision-ready context. This approach reduces alert fatigue, accelerates investigations, and enables automated or orchestrated response at machine speed.

By unifying detection and response across internal controls and external threat signals, organizations can shift from reactive incident response to preemptive cyber defense—shrinking MTTR, limiting exposure, and improving operational resilience.