Business leaders are increasingly under pressure to protect sensitive data from opportunistic cybercriminals. The average cost of a data breach continues to increase every year—nearly $10 million in the US as of 2024. Organizations need a comprehensive multi-layered security posture supported by best-of-breed technologies. 

There are two broad ways to achieve that. Either you build extensive in-house security infrastructure and staff it with internal employees, or you outsource security operations to a third party. Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is a solution that belongs in the latter category. It acts as an extension of your security team, providing 24x7 alarm monitoring and response delivered by product experts. 

In-house incident response comes with significant pain points 

Many organizations choose to delegate security and incident response operations to third-party vendors because building in-house capabilities involves significant drawbacks.  

For small businesses, the demands of running a full-featured Security Operations Center (SOC) make it infeasible. For large enterprises, the economics of running an in-house SOC are difficult to justify. Cybersecurity operations do not scale as well as many other IT workflows, putting pressure on in-house security teams in growing organizations. 

Some of the obstacles that in-house security teams often face include: 

• SOC deployment costs. Building a basic SOC and staffing it for 24x7 monitoring and response can cost more than $1 million per year. This only covers the bare minimum for securing a relatively small organization. 

• Staffing and turnover risk. Turnover tends to be high in cybersecurity. Maintaining 24x7 coverage means retaining your security analysts, even when other companies make more attractive offers. 

• Scalability issues. Scaling your own in-house SOC comes with underutilization risks. You may invest in infrastructure or onboard a new analyst only to downsize a few months later.  

• Availability of expertise. Building and customizing SOC technologies requires expertise that the average analyst does not have. To truly optimize security operations, you will need to leverage hard-to-find expertise. 

MDR unlocks the value of security operations 

MDR vendors provide 24x7 detection and response as a service. By delivering security operations from its own SOC, your MDR partner can provide superior service at a lower price than the in-house alternative. 

Your MDR partner will help you integrate best-of-breed security solutions and optimize those integrations for your use case. That may include installing agents on endpoint devices, crafting custom detection rules, and assessing your security posture against benchmarks for your industry. 

Once you have the technology ready, your partner’s security team will begin monitoring your network for unauthorized activities and indicators of compromise. When it discovers an unusual security event, it will leverage those integrated tools to investigate. It may even execute its own response workflow, neutralizing the threat before it has a chance to spread. 

This process helps organizations improve security operations in four major ways: 

1. You don’t have to deploy your own SOC 

Contracting an MDR vendor costs much less than building and staffing an in-house SOC. This enables IT leaders to allocate funding to higher impact strategic initiatives without compromising security in the process.  

Your MDR vendor handles all the standard operations SOC personnel typically carry out. That includes itemizing IT assets and security resources, conducting preventative maintenance on security infrastructure, and continuously fine-tuning your detection rules. If you are pursuing regulatory compliance, your MDR vendor will also help you prepare for and pass compliance audits. 

2. MDR costs less than hiring in-house talent 

Staffing an in-house SOC is a continuing challenge. As your organization grows, securing it will demand more talent and resources. If security operations don’t scale to meet evolving demands, security can become a bottleneck for increased productivity and growth. 

 As a result, hiring in-house security talent becomes increasingly expensive as time goes on. The need to guarantee 24x7 coverage under uncertain growth conditions means you may end up paying a premium just to retain talent. 

 By contrast, working with an MDR vendor gives you access to on-demand talent when it is needed. This is especially helpful when dealing with an unexpected security incident that requires a lengthy and time-consuming investigation. Instead of diverting in-house talent from other tasks, your MDR provider takes responsibility. 

3. Leverage security resources in response to real-world needs 

Many different managed service providers offer access to security technologies and expertise. However, no two organizations have the same security risk profile. The security tech stack that works for one organization may not produce the best results in another—especially in its default configuration.  

Partnering with an MDR vendor helps security leaders identify their organization’s real-world security needs. MDR analysts’ broad experience securing different sectors and industries helps pinpoint where cybersecurity expenditure will produce the best results. Adding network observability and insight into digital risk enhances decision-making at the executive level. 

4. MDR vendors offer specialist expertise on demand 

There is a big difference between the workflows of a Tier 1 analyst, a dedicated threat hunting professional, and a security architect crafting custom detection rules. All of these tasks are vital to operational security excellence, but they demand a specialized skill set. 

Only the largest and best-equipped enterprises can reliably hire in-house expertise for all of these separate contingencies. Even then, there is no way to guarantee your organization will always have access to the exact skills it needs to conduct prudent security operations. MDR vendors optimize their workforce specifically for this purpose. 

This is especially true when it comes to product expertise. An MDR vendor that has implemented a complex security technology in multiple environments has valuable experience to offer. It can plan ahead for the common pitfalls unique to that technology in ways that in-house teams rarely can. 

Pick Lumifi to be your operational security partner 

Lumifi can help you obtain the visibility and control you need to secure your workflows from advanced threats. Our MDR solutions revolve around the SOC Visibility Triad, which combines EDR, NDR, and SIEM technology into a single, consolidated whole.  

Our proprietary SOC automation platform, Shieldvision™, combines AI-enriched insight with human expertise to deliver security insights in near real-time. Discover how we can help you optimize your security workflows. Talk to an expert today.