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As cyber defenses have become more sophisticated, organisations of all kinds need a more advanced level of skill to deliver cybersecurity. For most, however, cybersecurity has become too complex to manage effectively on their own because they simply don’t have the necessary round-the-clock expertise.
This creates a great opportunity for the channel to bridge this gap by offering cybersecurity as a service.
Offering managed detection and response services like Sophos MDR means you can provide your customers of any size with a 24 x 7 x 365 elite threat monitoring and response team, without adding any headcount.
You’re able to deliver unparalleled cybersecurity outcomes – lower total cost of ownership, better protection, improved productivity and customer satisfaction.
Here are seven truths about MDR:
1. The MDR business opportunity is substantial
The business opportunity is huge. By 2025, Gartner predicts that 50% of organisations will use managed detection and response.* Sophos MDR helps you to differentiate your business whether you are a reseller or an MSP. You can include managed detection and response services and offer new protection capabilities to your customers without taking on the heavy lifting of building and maintaining cybersecurity teams of your own.
Providing managed cybersecurity is not about replacing anything you already do but about augmenting your offering. By integrating data and telemetry from Sophos and third-party endpoint, cloud, identity, email, firewall, and other security technologies your customers get the most out of their investment and don’t need to rip and replace security products.
2. An MDR service significantly lowers the threat risk for your customers
The increasingly challenging threat environment impacts organisations of all sizes.
Six in 10 IT pros working in small and mid-sized organisations with 100-5000 employees saw an increase in the complexity of attacks in the last year. At the same time, 57% saw an increase in the volume of attacks as adversaries take advantage of malware-as-a-service models, AI and automation in their attacks. And almost three quarters of organisations in Asia Pacific and Japan were hit by ransomware in 2021.
Sophos MDR gives you and your customers peace of mind as your clients’ networks will be constantly defended by human-led teams staffed with expertly trained engineers to find and fight the types of sophisticated, targeted cyberattacks that are purpose-built to evade purely technology-based defenses.
3. An MDR solution provides superior outcomes for your customers
IT managers report that they don’t have enough people or enough time to dedicate to managing threat response. Engaging in MDR is about enabling the IT team to focus on activities that will help achieve the organisation’s goals.
4. An MDR service needs to be flexible
By providing an MDR service, you become the trusted security advisor for your customers. Ideally, you can take a whatever-works-best-for-you approach when it comes to managing security operations. For example, with Sophos MDR, we can use Sophos tools, someone else’s tools that generate threat detection data or a combination of the two.
With Sophos MDR, the choice is yours – you can establish your own threat hunting and incident response team, rely on Sophos’ expert teams or combine both approaches so you can take the lead during the week, and Sophos will take over after hours. You choose the engagement level that’s best for you and your customers’ businesses.
5. Creating and maintaining a SOC is very expensive
Finding and keeping skilled threat analysts is hard enough but making sure resources cover 24/7, weekends and holidays, makes it even harder. The number of unfilled cybersecurity jobs worldwide grew 350% between 2013 and 2021. In the US there are 1 million cybersecurity workers and 750,000 cybersecurity openings. Security analysts cost US$100-150K per year, and the annual cost to maintain a SOC is US$2.86M.**
The Sophos MDR service is considerably cheaper, can be set up immediately and easier to maintain than standing up an owned SOC.
6. MDR services grow cybersecurity revenue
Take advantage of the huge demand for MDR and other security services to win new customers and increase your existing customer footprint. Selling Sophos MDR is financially rewarding with competitive pricing, unbeatable margins and lucrative incentives.
Services are easier to articulate for a sales team. Plus, services generate more money and more margin for resellers. A good service is more difficult to replace than a product alone. Yet alone, it would be impossible to stand up your own quality service at this cost.
7. MDR will help you and your customers sleep at night
We hear from our partners that they constantly fear a breach at one of their customers because they were lacking visibility of potential malicious activity. Sophos MDR comes with a team of expert threat hunters that always has your customers’ back so you can rest easy.
Sophos already protects more than 12,000 MDR customers – meaning that more organizations trust Sophos for MDR than any other vendor. On Gartner Peer Insights, Sophos is the highest rated and most reviewed MDR service with an exceptional rating of 4.8/5.
* Source: Gartner Market Guide for Managed Detection and Response 2021
** Source: Ponemon Institute: “The Economics of Security Operations Centers: What Is the True Cost for Effective Results?”
