Managed Detection and Response (MDR)24/7 Threat Detection, Investigation & Response · Aligned to NIST CSF 2.0 and MITRE ATT&CK

Managed detection and response (MDR) is a 24/7 outsourced cybersecurity service that combines a Security Operations Center, a managed SIEM platform, and threat intelligence to detect, investigate, and respond to active attacks. Specifically, an MDR provider ingests telemetry from your endpoints, identity providers, Microsoft 365 tenants, networks, and cloud workloads. Then human analysts review every actionable alert, map it to MITRE ATT&CK techniques, and walk your team through containment when an incident is confirmed. In short, the difference between MDR and a SIEM-only deployment is the human triage layer: MDR delivers an outcome, not just a tool.

A SIEM is a tool. By contrast, MDR is the outcome the tool is supposed to produce. Specifically, a SIEM ingests logs, runs correlation rules, and generates alerts. But it does not investigate, triage false positives, or guide response. So organizations that deploy a SIEM without an analyst team end up drowning in alerts and missing the few that matter. In practice, MDR includes the SIEM, the rules, the analysts, the threat intel feeds, and the runbooks. As a result, you get detection-and-response as a service rather than a platform you have to staff and operate yourself.

Traditional MSSPs typically forward alerts. By contrast, MDR investigates them. Specifically, an MSSP often monitors a SIEM and emails your team when a rule fires, leaving triage, scoping, and response to you. Meanwhile, MDR providers absorb the triage layer entirely: analysts validate every alert, kill false positives, and only escalate confirmed incidents with documented response steps. In short, the operational burden on your IT team drops sharply with MDR. As a result, mid-market organizations without dedicated security headcount typically find MDR a better fit than MSSP for the same monthly spend.

MDR is designed to catch ransomware in the precursor phase, not at encryption. Specifically, modern ransomware crews stage for hours or days before launching encryption: Cobalt Strike beacons, BloodHound discovery, Mimikatz credential dumping, lateral movement over SMB, and shadow-copy deletion. Each of these triggers MITRE ATT&CK-mapped detections in a tuned SIEM. In practice, our typical median detection target on tuned alerts is under 10 minutes from the precursor behavior firing. As a result, the response window opens hours before the encryption stage rather than after.

EDR is necessary, but not sufficient. Specifically, EDR provides endpoint visibility and signature/behavior detections on the device. But it does not correlate across identity, Microsoft 365, network, and cloud telemetry, and it does not staff a 24/7 analyst team to triage what fires. Most importantly, 79% of detections in the latest CrowdStrike Global Threat Report were malware-free identity-based attacks. These are events EDR alone is not designed to surface. So MDR pairs your EDR with cross-surface correlation and human triage. As a result, attacks that pivot through Entra ID or M365 actually get caught.

Yes. Specifically, our MDR ingests sign-in logs from Microsoft Entra ID, audit logs from Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams, plus control-plane events from Azure and AWS. Detections cover mailbox compromise, malicious inbox rules, OAuth grant abuse, anomalous external sharing, impossible-travel sign-ins, and suspicious tenant-level changes. In addition, the M365 telemetry pairs cleanly with our Managed Microsoft 365 service so configuration drift gets surfaced alongside active attack signal.

MDR directly supports several CMMC 2.0 Level 2 controls. Specifically, AU (Audit and Accountability) controls are satisfied by the SIEM’s log collection, retention, and review capability. Meanwhile, SI.L2-3.14.6 (system monitoring) is satisfied by the 24/7 SOC. And IR.L2-3.6.1 (incident handling) is satisfied by the documented response playbook and post-incident reporting. As a result, an MDR engagement gives a CMMC C3PAO assessor the evidence they expect for those control families. Not every CMMC control is covered by MDR alone, however. We pair the engagement with a CMMC readiness assessment for full coverage.

Pricing is contact-gated and scoped to the environment. Specifically, the variables that drive cost are: number of endpoints, number of identity users, telemetry volume from Microsoft 365 and cloud workloads, and add-ons such as penetration testing or dark web monitoring. For most businesses with 10–500 users, MDR runs a fraction of the fully-loaded cost of building an in-house SOC, which industry benchmarks place above $1.2M annually. As a useful comparison, you can model the spread against managed IT pricing on our cost calculator.

A typical onboarding runs 2–4 weeks. Specifically, weeks 1–2 are spent inventorying log sources, deploying lightweight collectors, and connecting EDR, identity, M365, firewall, and cloud feeds to the SIEM. Then weeks 3–4 are spent applying our detection-rule library and tuning to your environment: building allowlists for legitimate admin behavior, learning off-hours patterns, and calibrating UEBA baselines. As a result, by the end of week 4 the SOC is producing actionable, low-noise detections rather than a flood of false positives. By contrast, in-house SOC builds typically take 6–12 months to reach the same maturity.

A confirmed incident triggers our response playbook. Specifically, the on-call analyst opens a bridge call with your designated IT contact, scopes the blast radius from SIEM telemetry, and walks your team through the immediate containment steps: isolating affected hosts, disabling compromised identities, forcing credential rotation, and preserving forensic artifacts. Meanwhile, we coordinate with your incident response retainer or insurance carrier if one is engaged. Afterwards, you receive a documented incident report covering the timeline, the technique observed, the controls that fired, and the recommended hardening. So response is not a runbook handed off. It is a guided incident.