Business case
The business case for continuous SOC monitoring is clear: closing the gap between detection and action is the most impactful formula for containing breaches. The rise of sophisticated AI-powered attacks and the increasingly complex regulatory environment have led a growing number of organizations to seek SOC protection. The market for managed detection and response (MDR)/SOC services is expected to grow by 22% by 2030. The MSPs that can offer SOC services will differentiate themselves.
After-hours breaches mean longer downtime. An average mid-size or large enterprise loses $300,000 per hour of downtime. Professional SOC services provide trained analysts and playbooks for incident triage, coordinating threat hunting and automated responses to shrink mean time to respond (MTTR). Minimizing downtime preserves the trust of your clients’ customers, which in turn encourages clients to renew their contracts.
While you could build an in-house SOC, doing so isn’t cheap. Developing custom SOC infrastructure—such as a SIEM or SIEM-like tooling—requires dedicated engineers to spend months on research, system design, development, tuning, and quality assurance. Even when using a white-labeled SIEM, a mid-sized MSP needs about five to seven full-time analysts for round-the-clock coverage, each making ~$106K+ each. When you also consider the cost of EDR, SIEM, and other tools, outsourcing SOC services is significantly more cost-effective.
