Antivirus is no longer enough.
You need EDR and XDR.

EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) is a security solution that continuously observes every business endpoint, Windows and Mac computers, Linux and Windows servers, mobile devices, analysing how processes behave rather than just matching file signatures. Unlike traditional antivirus it detects unknown threats through behavioural analysis and machine learning, and it can respond on its own: isolate the compromised endpoint, terminate malicious processes and roll back the changes.

EDR protects individual endpoints. XDR (Extended Detection and Response) extends detection to network, email, cloud and identities, and correlates the signals from every source. A sign-in from an unusual country followed by an abnormal download on an endpoint is an attack that EDR alone would only half see: XDR reconstructs the full chain and responds on every front, including blocking the account or forcing the user to re-authenticate.

EDR and XDR are technologies; MDR (Managed Detection and Response) is a service. A SOC (Security Operations Center) watches over the platform 24 hours a day, 365 days a year: it separates false positives from real threats, investigates and acts, isolating the affected systems and containing the attack. The vendor provides it in two tiers. Standard: continuous monitoring, automatic mitigation, isolation, manual response to critical incidents, incident analysis and recommendations. Advanced: adds full remediation, including recovery from backups and remote actions on the affected systems. Which one, and with which engagement rules, we define in the project: a service designed to measure for the Customer, not a price-list package. It is the choice for those who need continuous coverage without building an in-house SOC.

No. Antivirus relies on known signatures and only blocks malware that has already been catalogued. Modern threats run in memory without writing files (fileless), abuse legitimate operating system tools (living off the land) and, increasingly, never touch the endpoint at all: they steal a session or a token and use valid credentials. Only behavioural analysis across endpoints and identities can catch them.

It depends on the service you choose. With managed EDR/XDR our team reads the alerts during business hours: it analyses them, closes false positives, investigates the real cases and refines the rules. Out of hours the automations do the work, isolating the endpoint, terminating malicious processes, blocking the compromised account and sending a notification, and the case is picked up when we reopen. If you need continuous coverage there is MDR: a SOC active 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, which investigates the alerts and acts to contain the attack. Service levels and scope are written into the contract: no generic promises on a web page.

According to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025, an average of 241 days pass between the start of a breach and its containment, 158 of them just to notice it. With continuous monitoring and automatic correlation from EDR/XDR those times shrink dramatically and first containment is automatic: endpoint isolation, termination of malicious processes and rollback of changes.

On three tracks. The first is the native Microsoft stack: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Defender XDR, with Microsoft Entra identity protection, for those who already have a Microsoft 365 tenant and want identities, endpoints and cloud in a single console. The second is Bitdefender GravityZone, the platform of a European vendor with EDR, XDR and identity protection, qualified by ACN (the Italian National Cybersecurity Agency) at QC2 level in the cloud services catalogue for the public sector. The third is Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, from a vendor headquartered in Switzerland: EDR, XDR and 24/7 MDR on a single platform that also integrates backup, disaster recovery and patching, so recovery after an attack is part of the response. Acronis has a data centre in Italy, takes the GDPR into account in its security policies and is aligning its artificial intelligence governance with the EU AI Act; Switzerland is recognised by the European Commission as a country with an adequate level of data protection. We name them here and not in the rest of the page because the choice starts from your requirements, existing stack, data processed, regulatory obligations, and not from a commercial preference.

Yes, and it is one of the four ways we work. Full service: we design, activate and manage. Architecture only: we define policies, thresholds and integrations, which your internal IT then implements. Consulting only: audit of the existing configuration, platform choice, NIS2 requirements. Management only: we take over the EDR/XDR you already have, very often an active licence that was never really configured, and make it do its job.

They are a necessary part, not the whole perimeter. Article 21 of the NIS2 Directive requires, among other things, incident handling, business continuity, supply chain security and multi-factor authentication. EDR and XDR cover detection and first response and produce the evidence, timelines, indicators of compromise and logs, needed for the incident response process and for notifications to the national CSIRT within the prescribed deadlines. We design the rest together, starting from an assessment.

Yes. Automated attacks do not pick by size: the Clusit Report 2026 shows that Italian companies of every size are among the primary targets. EDR/XDR platforms scale from one site to fifty, the service adapts to those without an IT team as much as to those with one, and the cost of an unmanaged incident, ransomware, data exfiltration, operational downtime, far exceeds the investment in protection.