EDR migration readiness checklist

1. Establish the scope

Use this checklist before approving an endpoint detection and response (EDR) migration pilot. Record the evidence, owner, and unresolved questions in your change record. Checked items are a working aid, not an automated readiness score; selections stay on this page only.

• Agree on the device population.Reconcile the asset inventory with device-management and existing EDR records. Identify duplicates, retired devices, and devices without a reliable match. Record the population and the time of the snapshot.
• Assign owners and exceptions.Identify who approves the pilot, who carries out the change, and who validates the result. Keep offline devices, unsupported systems, and critical workloads visible with an owner and review date.

Asset inventory is the foundation for deciding what must be protected. CIS Control 1 covers inventory and management of enterprise assets across environments. This checklist applies that inventory principle to a migration decision.

2. Prepare the transition

• Verify the supported product combination.Check the source and target vendors’ current guidance for each operating system and version. Record the approved installation order, coexistence mode, removal requirements, and any required reboot.
• Confirm delivery and reporting paths.Verify package access, required permissions, network connectivity, licenses, and management targeting. Establish where target health and recent telemetry will be checked.
• Agree on a recovery procedure.Document stop conditions, the recovery owner, and how protection will be maintained or restored if validation fails. Confirm that the procedure is supported for the product combination before the pilot.

Coexistence behavior is product-specific. For example, Microsoft documents different Defender Antivirus operating modes and Windows client/server behavior in its compatibility guidance. Its migration setup guidance also covers configuration and device groups. Use the current vendor instructions for operational steps.

3. Define a useful pilot

• Represent the important differences.Include relevant operating systems, application dependencies, locations, and connectivity patterns. A convenient group of identical laptops may leave the difficult parts of the rollout untested.
• Set the window and observation period.Agree on the change window, business-impact checks, and how long healthy reporting must be observed. Choose these periods for your environment; a universal duration would hide differences between workloads.
• Write the exit criteria before starting.Separate installation, reporting freshness, target health, business functionality, and source removal where applicable. Define the required result for each, the evidence source, and who approves exceptions.

4. Validate before expanding

• Compare the same device population.Reconcile pilot membership with installation and validation results. Explain any additions, removals, or devices that stopped reporting instead of silently shrinking the denominator.
• Investigate every unresolved result.Check source freshness and the underlying device identity before deciding whether a failed match indicates a deployment issue. Route actual failures through the agreed recovery process.
• Record the decision and next owner.Capture the evidence time, results against each criterion, unresolved exceptions, and approval to continue or hold. Carry those exceptions into the next review rather than treating them as completed work.

5. Work through a pilot decision

Illustrative example: a 25-device pilot requires all devices to report healthy target validation before expansion. The installation system reports 25 successful installs, but the validation source reports only 24 healthy devices.

Keep the pilot open. Identify the remaining device, compare record identity and evidence timestamps, and resolve the missing or failed validation. A successful installation record alone does not meet this pilot’s agreed health criterion.

If the team changes an exit criterion, record the reason and approval explicitly. Do not change it simply to make the progress indicator look complete.

6. Make the handoff usable

Attach a short decision record to each pilot or rollout phase. Another operator should be able to reconstruct the decision without asking who built the report.

Scope and snapshot

Population identifier, device count, exclusions, and evidence time.

Result by criterion

Required threshold, observed result, source, and validation time.

Open work

Device or issue, assigned owner, next action, and review date.

Decision

Hold or expand, approving owner, rationale, and next review.

Bring the plan into a product evaluation

GreyAware’s migration workflow supports planning, simulated execution, and supported dry-run previews. Live submission is not enabled in the current implementation. Review available validation sources during evaluation and use your approved management process for actual deployment and removal.