More on what it is

The work falls into four jobs: detect threats, respond to incidents and contain them, reduce your exposure to the next one, and advise on strategy and compliance. The team doing it sits in a security operations center, or SOC.

Three abbreviations describe how much is being watched. EDR, endpoint detection and response, watches laptops and servers. It replaced traditional antivirus because modern attacks often leave no file for antivirus to recognize. XDR widens the view to sign-ins, cloud accounts and the network, and connects what it sees. MDR, managed detection and response, is the service where people do the watching for you, and a good one disrupts an attack instead of only reporting it.

Other pieces are sold beside it. A managed firewall covers configuration, tuning of the rules, keeping the device's software current, and review of what it logs. It is one layer and should never be mistaken for a whole program, because it does nothing for identities, laptops, email or cloud accounts. Security for Microsoft 365 is its own scope: mail, sign-in, file sharing, Teams, the permissions granted to third-party apps and the administrator settings. Zero trust network access replaces the company VPN by checking each user and each device on every connection. Ransomware protection works only as four layers together: prevention, detection, response and recovery. Holding backups is a long way from having restored one successfully.

Three questions separate providers more than any feature list. Will they investigate and contain an attack, or only notify you? Is the response time written into the contract? Do they run their own operations center or resell someone else's?

Who needs it

You are a midsize company that cannot staff or fund a security team around the clock.
You are a healthcare organization, or a vendor that touches patient information on its behalf, such as a billing firm or a cloud host.
You are a defense contractor whose contract makes a CMMC level a condition of award. See Compliance and vCISO.
You own strong security features inside your Microsoft licensing and have nobody to operate them.
You are between security leaders, or too small to hire one, and still need someone accountable.

Every business needs security. Fewer need a round-the-clock operations center. A ten-person firm on cloud email can start with endpoint protection, multi-factor sign-in and a backup it has actually restored. Continuous monitoring earns its place when an incident would stop the business or trigger a legal duty to report.

Signs you need it

You are not sure you would know if you were being attacked right now, and you have no one to call.
Your tools raise more alerts than anyone reads.
Nobody has reviewed the firewall rules in years or knows whether its software is current.
Your last penetration test was more than a year ago, or never. See Penetration Testing.
There is no tested plan for a ransomware attack, and no backup has been restored end to end.
You pay for a license tier with security features that were never switched on.

How IT Raven helps

Add Managed Security to your quote list and tell us what you run, what you already own and what worries you. A person takes that to the security providers in our 500+ partner network and narrows them on the three questions above, on the tools each one will work with, and on the standards they can document.

Security is sold with a great deal of fear. We would sooner start with what you own and what is switched off, because the first improvement is often a feature you are already paying for. From there we size the service to your real risk.

We stay on one thread through the assessment, onboarding and the first months of tuning, when a new service produces the most noise. Security pulls in its neighbors: recovery is Backup and Disaster Recovery, the network edge is SD-WAN and SASE, and an audit deadline is Compliance and vCISO. We quote them together and remain on the account afterward.

The store is the easy part. Staying on the account is the job.

Anyone can show you logos. The reason to buy here is what happens on install night, and on the ticket you open nine months later.

Build your quote list

Add services and companies as you shop. No form stands between you and the shelf.

We bring back real options

A person shops the bench against your addresses, then walks you through what fits and what does not.

We handle the order and install

Paperwork, site survey, install dates, cutover night. You get one thread, not five vendors.

We stay on your account

Same team for moves, adds, tickets and the next renewal. That is the part everyone else drops.

Eight questions that decide this purchase

144 companies to compare

No company matches every box you checked