Managed Extended Detection & Response: Unified Visibility Across Every Attack Surface
Petronella Technology Group's Managed XDR Suite delivers fully managed Extended Detection and Response across endpoints, networks, cloud environments, email systems, and identity platforms. Backed by a 24/7 U.S.-based Security Operations Center and our AI security agent Eve, PTG provides the continuous threat monitoring, rapid incident response, and compliance-ready reporting that businesses across Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, and Research Triangle Park depend on to stay protected.
BBB Accredited Since 2003
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Founded 2002
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2,500+ Clients Served
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919-348-4912
Endpoint Detection • Network Detection • Cloud Security • Email Protection • Identity Monitoring • SIEM • SOAR • 24/7 SOC
What Is Extended Detection and Response?
XDR Defined
Extended Detection and Response, commonly abbreviated as XDR, is an evolved approach to cybersecurity that unifies threat detection, investigation, and response across an organization's entire digital estate. Rather than relying on isolated point solutions that each guard a single layer of the infrastructure, XDR consolidates security telemetry from endpoints, network traffic, cloud workloads, email gateways, and identity and access management systems into a single correlated platform. The term "extended" reflects the broadening of detection beyond the endpoint, which was the sole focus of earlier Endpoint Detection and Response solutions. XDR platforms ingest data from every security-relevant source in your environment and apply cross-layer analytics, behavioral modeling, and threat intelligence correlation to identify threats that no single tool could detect on its own. This holistic approach is particularly important as modern cyberattacks rarely confine themselves to one layer. An attacker might begin with a phishing email, compromise a user's credentials, escalate privileges through an identity system, move laterally across the network, and exfiltrate data from a cloud storage service. Only a platform that sees all of these layers simultaneously can connect these disparate events into a coherent attack narrative and trigger an effective response.
Why Managed XDR Matters for Your Business
Deploying an XDR platform is only half the equation. The technology must be continuously monitored, tuned, and operated by experienced security analysts who can interpret the data, investigate genuine threats, and execute response actions when incidents occur. This is what distinguishes a managed XDR service from a self-managed product. Petronella Technology Group's Managed XDR Suite provides the technology platform together with the 24/7 human expertise required to operate it effectively. For organizations across Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, and the Research Triangle Park, building an internal Security Operations Center capable of staffing around-the-clock monitoring requires a minimum of six to eight full-time analysts, each earning between $90,000 and $150,000 annually in the Triangle market, plus the cost of SIEM licensing, threat intelligence subscriptions, and forensic tooling. PTG's managed approach delivers enterprise-grade security operations at a fraction of the cost of building an in-house SOC, while eliminating the hiring challenges created by the nationwide cybersecurity talent shortage. Whether your organization employs twenty people or several thousand, the threats you face are the same advanced persistent threats, ransomware campaigns, and business email compromise attacks that target the largest enterprises. Managed XDR ensures that your security posture matches the sophistication of the adversaries targeting your data.
Comprehensive Coverage Across Every Attack Vector
PTG's Managed XDR Suite provides detection and response capabilities across the five critical security domains that define a modern organization's attack surface.
Endpoint Detection & Response
Continuous monitoring of workstations, laptops, servers, and mobile devices captures process execution, file system changes, registry modifications, and memory-based attack indicators. PTG deploys lightweight agents across every endpoint in your environment, including remote and hybrid worker devices, to detect ransomware execution, fileless malware, living-off-the-land binary abuse, and credential harvesting tools. When a threat is confirmed, automated response actions can isolate the affected endpoint from the network within seconds, preventing lateral movement while the SOC team conducts a full forensic investigation. Endpoint telemetry is correlated with network and identity data to provide the full context of how an attack began and how far it progressed.
Network Detection & Response
Deep packet inspection sensors deployed at strategic network locations examine the full content of network traffic, not just headers and metadata. This capability is essential for detecting threats that bypass endpoint controls, including lateral movement between systems, command-and-control communications hidden within legitimate protocols, data exfiltration disguised as normal traffic, and reconnaissance activity that precedes an active attack. Network detection is particularly critical for protecting devices that cannot run endpoint agents, such as IoT devices, medical equipment, industrial control systems, printers, and legacy infrastructure. PTG's network sensors identify anomalous traffic patterns, DNS tunneling, encrypted channel abuse, and protocol misuse that indicate an active compromise.
Cloud Detection & Response
Cloud-native API integrations provide visibility into security events across Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft 365 environments. PTG monitors identity and access management events, configuration changes, data access patterns, storage permission modifications, and administrative actions that could indicate account compromise, insider threats, or misconfiguration-based exposure. Cloud telemetry is correlated with on-premises endpoint and network data to detect hybrid attack chains that span both environments. This cross-environment correlation is what distinguishes XDR from legacy cloud security monitoring, which typically operates in isolation from the rest of the security stack.
Email Detection & Response
Email remains the primary initial access vector for the majority of cyberattacks. PTG's email security layer scans every inbound, outbound, and internal message for phishing links, malicious attachments, business email compromise indicators, and social engineering tactics. Advanced analysis identifies sophisticated spear-phishing campaigns that evade traditional email filters by using legitimate domains, clean sender reputations, and time-delayed payload delivery. When suspicious messages are identified, automated quarantine actions prevent delivery while the SOC team analyzes the threat and determines whether additional accounts have been targeted. Integration with identity monitoring detects when a compromised email account is being used to send internal phishing messages.
Identity Detection & Response
Identity systems, including Active Directory, Azure AD, Okta, and other identity providers, are increasingly targeted by attackers seeking to escalate privileges and move laterally across environments. PTG's identity monitoring detects anomalous authentication patterns, impossible travel scenarios, privilege escalation attempts, dormant account reactivation, and service account abuse. By correlating identity events with endpoint, network, and cloud telemetry, the XDR platform can distinguish between a legitimate administrator performing maintenance and an attacker using stolen credentials to access sensitive systems. Identity-based attacks, including Kerberoasting, pass-the-hash, and golden ticket attacks, are detected through behavioral analytics that identify deviations from established user patterns.
Eve: AI-Powered SOC Intelligence
Eve is PTG's proprietary AI security agent that operates within the SOC to accelerate threat detection and reduce analyst workload. Eve processes millions of security events daily using machine learning models trained on real-world attack patterns, building behavioral baselines for every user, device, and application across each client environment. She identifies subtle anomalies that rule-based detection systems miss, including low-and-slow data exfiltration, living-off-the-land techniques that blend with legitimate administrative activity, and multi-stage attacks that unfold over days or weeks. Eve augments human analysts rather than replacing them, surfacing the fraction of events that genuinely deserve human investigation and providing contextual enrichment that accelerates the triage process.
XDR vs. EDR vs. MDR: Understanding the Differences
Organizations evaluating security solutions often encounter overlapping terminology. This comparison clarifies how Extended Detection and Response relates to Endpoint Detection and Response and Managed Detection and Response.
| Capability | EDR (Endpoint Detection & Response) | MDR (Managed Detection & Response) | XDR (Extended Detection & Response) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scope of Visibility | Endpoints only: workstations, laptops, servers | Varies by provider; typically endpoints plus limited network or cloud | Endpoints, network, cloud, email, and identity systems unified in a single platform |
| Data Correlation | Correlates events within a single endpoint | Basic cross-source correlation depending on tools used | Cross-layer correlation connects events from all five security domains to reconstruct full attack chains |
| Detection Approach | Signature-based plus behavioral analysis on endpoints | Depends on underlying technology; often EDR-centric | Behavioral analytics, machine learning, and threat intelligence applied across all telemetry sources simultaneously |
| Response Capabilities | Endpoint isolation, process termination, file quarantine | Analyst-directed response; actions limited to supported tools | SOAR-automated playbooks execute containment across endpoints, network, cloud, email, and identity layers within minutes |
| Managed Operations | Typically self-managed; requires in-house analysts | Yes, 24/7 SOC included by definition | PTG provides 24/7 U.S.-based SOC with Eve AI augmentation and SOAR automation included |
| Compliance Reporting | Limited endpoint audit logs | Basic incident reports; compliance mapping varies | Automated compliance evidence generation mapped to CMMC, HIPAA, PCI DSS, NIST 800-171, SOC 2, and more |
| Network & IoT Coverage | None; cannot protect agentless devices | Limited; depends on whether NDR is included | Deep packet inspection covers all network-connected devices including IoT, medical equipment, and legacy systems |
| Best For | Organizations with existing SOC staff who need endpoint tooling | Organizations wanting outsourced monitoring with basic tool coverage | Organizations wanting unified, fully managed security operations across their entire IT environment |
PTG's Managed XDR Suite combines the breadth of XDR visibility with the operational depth of a fully staffed, U.S.-based SOC, delivering the protection of all three approaches in a single managed service. For businesses across the Triangle, this eliminates the need to evaluate, purchase, and integrate multiple overlapping solutions.
What Powers the Managed XDR Suite
The XDR platform integrates leading cybersecurity technologies into a unified security operations engine managed entirely by PTG.
Managed SIEM (Security Information and Event Management)
PTG's fully managed SIEM collects, normalizes, and stores security event logs from every source in your environment, including firewalls, endpoint agents, cloud services, identity systems, email gateways, and custom applications. The SIEM serves as the central nervous system of the XDR platform, providing the log aggregation and long-term retention required for both real-time threat detection and historical forensic investigation. PTG handles all aspects of SIEM management: deploying and maintaining log collectors, writing and tuning detection rules, managing storage and retention policies, and ensuring that log ingestion keeps pace with your environment's growth. Organizations that attempt to manage their own SIEM consistently report that the operational burden of maintaining detection rules, parsing custom log formats, and managing data volumes consumes more analyst time than actual threat investigation.
SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response)
SOAR automation enables the XDR platform to execute response actions in seconds rather than the minutes or hours required for manual response. When the platform detects a confirmed threat, pre-approved automated playbooks can isolate compromised endpoints, block malicious IP addresses at the firewall, disable compromised user accounts, quarantine malicious email messages, and initiate forensic data collection, all without waiting for a human analyst to log in and take action. PTG builds custom SOAR playbooks tailored to each client's environment and risk tolerance, ensuring that automated actions align with your organization's change management policies and business continuity requirements. Complex or ambiguous situations are automatically escalated to senior SOC analysts for human decision-making, maintaining the balance between speed and precision that effective incident response requires.
Vulnerability Detection and Prioritization
Continuous vulnerability scanning identifies security weaknesses across all endpoints, servers, network devices, and cloud resources regardless of location. Unlike traditional vulnerability management programs that generate overwhelming lists of CVEs ranked solely by CVSS score, PTG's approach prioritizes vulnerabilities based on actual exploitability, the presence of known exploit code in the wild, the criticality of the affected asset to your business, and whether the vulnerability is being actively targeted by threat actors in your industry. This context-driven prioritization ensures that your IT team remediates the vulnerabilities that genuinely matter first rather than chasing high-severity scores on low-risk systems. Vulnerability data is integrated into the XDR detection engine, automatically increasing alert priority for attacks targeting known weaknesses in your environment.
Threat Intelligence and Proactive Threat Hunting
PTG's SOC team conducts proactive threat hunting operations that go beyond waiting for alerts. Using threat intelligence feeds, industry-specific indicators of compromise, and insights from Eve's behavioral analytics, threat hunters actively search for evidence of adversary activity that may have evaded automated detection. Hypothesis-driven hunts investigate specific attack techniques that are trending in your industry, search for indicators associated with newly disclosed vulnerabilities, and examine historical telemetry for signs of compromise that may have occurred before the latest detection rules were deployed. Threat hunting findings are fed back into the detection engine as new correlation rules, continuously improving the platform's ability to detect similar threats automatically in the future.
From Assessment to Continuous Protection
PTG's structured onboarding process transitions your organization to fully managed XDR protection without disrupting daily operations.
Environment Discovery
PTG maps your complete IT infrastructure, identifying every endpoint, server, network device, cloud workload, SaaS application, and identity system that requires monitoring. This assessment defines the scope of sensor deployment and ensures zero blind spots across your attack surface.
Sensor Deployment
Endpoint agents, network detection sensors, cloud API connectors, email security integrations, and identity monitoring hooks are deployed across your environment. Deep packet inspection nodes are positioned at strategic network locations to capture and analyze all traffic flows.
Baseline and Tuning
Eve learns your environment's normal behavioral patterns and builds baselines for users, devices, and applications. The SOC team writes and tunes detection rules specific to your infrastructure, maximizing detection signal and eliminating the false positives that cause alert fatigue.
24/7 Managed Operations
U.S.-based SOC analysts monitor your environment around the clock, investigating alerts, executing response playbooks, conducting proactive threat hunts, and providing monthly executive reporting. Your environment is continuously protected and your compliance evidence is continuously generated.
Managed XDR Mapped to Your Regulatory Requirements
PTG's XDR platform generates compliance evidence as a natural byproduct of security operations, mapping security events and controls to the frameworks that govern your industry.
CMMC / NIST 800-171
Satisfies continuous monitoring requirements across CMMC Level 2 control families including Audit and Accountability (AU), Incident Response (IR), Risk Assessment (RA), and System and Information Integrity (SI). Log retention, access monitoring, and incident response documentation are generated automatically and mapped to the 110 security requirements in NIST SP 800-171 Rev 2.
HIPAA
Addresses technical safeguard requirements under the HIPAA Security Rule, including access controls, audit controls, integrity controls, and transmission security. XDR monitoring covers all systems that store, process, or transmit electronic Protected Health Information, with audit logs retained according to HIPAA's minimum six-year retention requirement.
PCI DSS
Supports PCI DSS v4.0 requirements for network monitoring, access tracking, vulnerability management, and incident detection and response. The XDR platform monitors cardholder data environments continuously, generates the audit trails required by Requirement 10, and provides the intrusion detection capabilities mandated by Requirement 11.
SOC 2
Continuous monitoring evidence directly supports Trust Services Criteria for Security (CC6, CC7), Availability (A1), and Confidentiality (C1). PTG's platform generates the monitoring logs, incident records, and response documentation that auditors evaluate during SOC 2 Type II examinations, reducing audit preparation effort significantly.
FFIEC / GLBA
Meets the examination expectations of federal financial institution regulators for cybersecurity program management, including continuous monitoring of information systems, anomaly detection, incident response program documentation, and periodic vulnerability assessment. XDR audit trails satisfy the record-keeping requirements under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act Safeguards Rule.
GDPR
Supports the data protection and breach notification requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation by providing continuous monitoring of systems that process personal data of EU residents, automated breach detection with documented response timelines, and audit trails that demonstrate appropriate technical measures under Article 32.
Trusted by Businesses Across the Triangle Since 2002
Petronella Technology Group has protected organizations across Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary, Apex, and Research Triangle Park for over two decades. Our team combines deep local knowledge of the Triangle business landscape with enterprise-grade security operations capabilities. When you partner with PTG for managed XDR, you work directly with security professionals who understand your industry, your compliance obligations, and the threat landscape specific to North Carolina organizations, not a faceless SOC in another time zone reading from a generic playbook.
Call 919-348-4912 to speak with a security advisorManaged XDR Suite: Questions & Answers
What is XDR and how does it differ from EDR?
EDR, or Endpoint Detection and Response, monitors individual endpoints such as laptops, workstations, and servers for signs of malicious activity. XDR, Extended Detection and Response, broadens this scope by correlating security data from endpoints, network traffic, cloud workloads, email systems, and identity platforms into a unified detection and response platform. While EDR can tell you that a suspicious process executed on one laptop, XDR can connect that event with the phishing email that delivered the payload, the credential theft that followed, the lateral movement across the network, and the data exfiltration attempt in the cloud, giving your security team the full attack narrative rather than a fragment of it.
What is the difference between XDR and MDR?
MDR, Managed Detection and Response, refers to a service model where a third-party provider operates security monitoring on your behalf. XDR refers to the technology platform that unifies detection across multiple security domains. The two terms describe different dimensions of the same problem: MDR answers the question of who operates your security, while XDR answers the question of what technology they use. PTG's Managed XDR Suite combines both, delivering the unified multi-domain technology platform of XDR with the fully staffed, 24/7 SOC operations of MDR in a single integrated service.
How quickly can PTG deploy the Managed XDR Suite?
Most deployments are completed within one to two weeks, depending on the complexity of the environment. The process includes infrastructure discovery, sensor and agent deployment, a baseline learning period during which Eve establishes behavioral norms, detection rule tuning tailored to your specific environment, and SOC team handoff. For organizations facing urgent security needs, such as an active incident or an imminent compliance deadline, PTG offers accelerated deployment that provides baseline monitoring coverage within 48 hours, with full optimization completed over the subsequent weeks.
What happens when the XDR platform detects a threat?
When a threat is detected, the response process follows a structured workflow. The SOAR engine immediately executes pre-approved automated containment actions, such as isolating a compromised endpoint, blocking a malicious IP address at the firewall, or disabling a compromised user account. Simultaneously, a SOC analyst reviews the alert with full contextual information, validates whether the threat is genuine, determines the scope of the compromise, and coordinates with your designated contacts on next steps. For managed clients, the entire cycle from initial detection to containment action typically completes within minutes rather than the hours or days common with traditional security operations.
Do we need to replace our existing security tools to use managed XDR?
No. PTG's Managed XDR Suite is designed to integrate with your existing security investments rather than replace them. The platform ingests logs and telemetry from a wide range of leading security solutions, including Microsoft Defender, SentinelOne, Sophos, CrowdStrike, Cato Networks, and many others. PTG adds the cross-source correlation, SOAR automation, and 24/7 human analysis that transforms disparate data sources into unified threat intelligence. This approach protects your existing technology investment while adding the detection depth and operational capability that individual tools cannot provide on their own.
How does the XDR Suite help with regulatory compliance?
The platform generates compliance-ready evidence as a natural byproduct of ongoing security operations. Continuous monitoring logs, incident detection and response records, vulnerability scan results, access audit trails, and configuration monitoring data are automatically produced, retained, and mapped to specific control requirements within CMMC, NIST 800-171, HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC 2, FFIEC, GLBA, and GDPR. This eliminates the labor-intensive process of manually assembling compliance evidence from disparate systems before each audit cycle and ensures that your compliance documentation is always current rather than point-in-time.
What is deep packet inspection and why is it important?
Deep packet inspection, or DPI, examines the actual payload content of network traffic rather than just the packet headers and metadata that traditional firewalls analyze. This is critical for detecting threats that use legitimate network protocols for malicious purposes, hide command-and-control communications within encrypted channels, exfiltrate data in ways that appear normal at the header level, or use DNS tunneling to bypass network security controls. PTG's DPI sensors analyze network traffic at every layer to identify these threats, providing a detection capability that endpoint-only security solutions fundamentally cannot deliver.
Can the XDR Suite protect remote and hybrid workers?
Yes. Endpoint agents installed on remote devices provide full monitoring and response capability regardless of where the device is physically located. For remote office networks, network detection sensors can be deployed to inspect local traffic and block indicators of compromise. Cloud-based log ingestion ensures that remote workers accessing SaaS applications and cloud services receive the same level of monitoring as on-premises users. As hybrid and remote work continues to be the norm for businesses across the Triangle, extending enterprise-grade security to every work location is essential for maintaining a consistent security posture.
What role does Eve play in the SOC?
Eve is PTG's AI security agent that operates within the Security Operations Center to augment human analyst capabilities. Eve continuously processes the millions of security events generated across client environments each day, applying machine learning models to identify patterns and anomalies that would be invisible to rule-based detection or manual review. She builds and maintains behavioral baselines for users, devices, and applications, flags deviations that could indicate compromise, enriches alerts with contextual information, and prioritizes the event queue so that SOC analysts focus their expertise on the threats that genuinely require human investigation and judgment.
What size organizations benefit from managed XDR?
PTG's Managed XDR Suite is designed for organizations of any size, from twenty-person professional services firms to multi-thousand-employee enterprises. Smaller organizations benefit from access to enterprise-grade security operations that would be cost-prohibitive to build in-house. Larger organizations benefit from augmented SOC capabilities that extend their existing security team with 24/7 monitoring, AI-powered analysis, and SOAR automation. PTG's flexible deployment model scales the scope and depth of monitoring to match each organization's infrastructure, risk profile, and compliance requirements.