5 Reasons Why a Managed SOC is a Security Must-Have

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Explore the Benefits of Empowering Your Security with a Managed SOC

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It’s no secret that any firm, regardless of size, is at risk for cyberattacks, and that risk is growing every day. In fact, Small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) have experienced a 424% increase in cyberattacks in the last two years. Cyberattacks are also growing more expensive. The average cost of a cyberattack to a small U.S. business is $25,612. Clearly, businesses need a robust defense and powerful security solutions to stay out of trouble, but that’s not the whole solution. Businesses also need expert insight into their security challenges and expert analysis of their ongoing threat picture to stop problems before they start. That work is most commonly done in a security operations center (SOC).  

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5 Reasons to Choose Managed SOC 

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Businesses have two paths to choose from when they decide to invest in a SOC, and deciding between them can be challenging.  On one path, they build a SOC in-house. On the other path, businesses partner with a managed SOC provider. Here are five reasons why Managed SOC is the smoother path for businesses to travel to security success. 

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1. SMBs need expert help to handle cyber threats 

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SMBs are under siege from increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.  Unlike larger organizations that typically built their own cybersecurity practice, traditionally SMBs haven’t invested much in their cybersecurity. Smaller businesses often don’t have the resources – money, people and expertise – to build a top-notch security practice. At the same time, threats are constantly becoming more sophisticated and many of the simple security solutions that typically serve SMBs are no longer sufficient to handle the load. Unfortunately, even one cyberattack can be a lethal blow for any organization. An estimated 60% of SMBs that experience a successful cyberattack go out of business within 6 months. 

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2. A SOC helps mitigate risk and stop cybersecurity disasters  

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A SOC, or Security Operation Center, is a command center made up of highly skilled security personnel, processes and cybersecurity technologies that continuously monitors for malicious activity while preventing, detecting and responding to cyber incidents. Considering the constantly growing risk of cyberattacks on businesses of all sizes, even the smallest organizations need to have continuous, 24/7 monitoring and response service available to them to stay out of trouble. But most small business IT departments are stretched thin. That makes it hard for them to tackle all of their responsibilities and be constantly on guard against security threats.  

However, handling everything in-house isn’t always the best choice. In this case, it’s also not the path that offers the most value to SMBs. Turning to an external resource for some security operations enables a perenially overburdened in-house IT team to efficiently focus on the IT projects and activities that matter most while ensuring that security is covered.  A managed SOC is an outsourced service that provides managed detection and response (MDR) – continuous monitoring to protected organizations, searching for threats aiming to penetrate the organization and mitigating them as soon as they are found. 

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3. Creating an in-house SOC is expensive 

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While many small businesses recognize the benefits of having a SOC to protect their data, devices and people, most IT departments do not have one. Why? Because creating a SOC is a big, complex and costly undertaking. In order to simply operate a managed SOC, an organization needs to ensure 24/7 coverage, including on weekends and holidays (traditionally high-risk days for cyberattacks). That coverage would require leveraging a combination of multiple (and often complex) cybersecurity technologies and an experienced team that includes SOC analysts, security researchers and threat hunters – an expensive proposition 

The technology lift in this project alone is daunting. Cybersecurity technologies are often expensive and taxing to deploy. They can also require a massive effort to maintain. This makes it harder for small IT departments to adopt these technologies, deploy them and commit for the long term. Additionally, many small businesses lack the in-house security expertise needed in order to even establish a SOC and they often can’t afford the major up-front technology investments required.  

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4. The skills shortage makes it hard to build an effective & experienced security team 

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Security experts are expensive to hire, and those skills are relatively hard to adopt so training personnel from scratch is often not a valid option for a small IT department. Security professionals are always in high demand and retaining them is also a challenge. The global cybersecurity workforce gap grew by about 26% in 2022 over 2021’s already alarming number. At the same time, detection and response workloads have snowballed, creating pressure that makes cybersecurity taxing and unattractive for internal IT teams. In a survey on IT employee burnout, 47% of respondents said they experience alert fatigue from things like false positives and junk alerts. That sometimes results in IT staffers making dangerous choices like turning off high-volume alerting capabilities when they are too busy or neglecting alerts when there are too many alerts for analysts to analyze.   

Operating an effective SOC requires a significant number of experienced cybersecurity experts. So, not only do you need to hire and/or train security professionals to analyze indicators of compromise and triage alerts, but you need enough of them to adequately staff a 24/7 operation. This is no easy task. Establishing an in-house SOC takes time and knowledge. It also requires massive investment in personnel and technology. These barriers are high, leaving many small businesses exposed or looking for an alternative. 

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5. Managed SOC removes barriers to entry for businesses 

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Utilizing a managed SOC is a smart choice for small business IT departments. With managed SOC, small and mid-sized companies gain big company defensive capability. Managed SOC’s 24/7 managed detection and response capability as well as advanced threat protection helps mitigate risks like ransomware, credential harvesting, business email compromise, account takeover and more. A managed SOC also increases an organization’s defense-in-depth posture by providing real-time threat detection and response, helping businesses mitigate cyber threats as they occur. This dramatically reduces risk exposure and potential damage from a cyber-attack.  

Plus, a managed SOC raises organizations’ security maturity level significantly as it allows for stronger security of the organization’s endpoints, network and cloud while providing around-the-clock monitoring, detection and response. By taking a proactive approach to security, a managed SOC helps companies identify threats before they become disasters. In the event of an incident, managed SOC is a game-changer that speeds up the time to containment and remediation. Managed SOC puts invaluable cybersecurity expertise and resources at a lean IT team’s disposal to help companies right the ship fast. 

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Kaseya’s Managed SOC is the ideal choice for businesses 

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Designed specifically for a small business environment, Kaseya’s Managed SOC is the ultimate solution for IT leaders who see the potential and value of providing a managed detection and response service to their customers but find the barriers of setting up a SOC practice too high.

Kaseya Managed SOC is a managed detection and response service that leverages our Threat Monitoring Platform to detect malicious and suspicious activity across three critical attack vectors: Endpoint, Network and Cloud.

Our team of cybersecurity veterans hunt, triage and work with our partners’ teams when actionable threats are discovered. 

Schedule a demo (and a free trial) today!

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