My company is growing, and we can no longer keep up with the volume of security alerts. We are debating between building an internal Security Operations Center (SOC) or outsourcing to an MDR provider. For those who have tried both, what are the hidden costs of MDR?
3 answers
Building an in-house SOC is incredibly expensive when you factor in 24/7 staffing. You need at least 8-10 analysts for full coverage. MDR is great because you get instant access to high-end tools and experts. However, the hidden cost is the "context gap." An external provider doesn't know your business logic. They might see a legitimate admin script as a threat and kill a production process. You still need at least one internal person to act as a liaison and provide that missing context to the MDR team to avoid constant false positives.
Are you concerned more about the initial setup costs of the hardware and software, or is the difficulty of finding and retaining talent your main worry?
We went with a hybrid model. We have a small internal team for core strategy and an MDR for the "eyes-on-glass" monitoring during nights and weekends. It’s the best of both worlds.
The hybrid approach is what I always recommend, Nancy. It keeps the high-level knowledge inside the company while offloading the tedious alert fatigue to the outsourced specialists.
Richard, the talent gap is definitely the killer. Even if you hire good people, they get headhunted within six months. With an MDR, the "churn" is their problem, not ours. We pay for the service level agreement (SLA), and they guarantee the uptime and monitoring. It’s much easier to scale the budget for a monthly subscription than to constantly fight for new headcount.