Everyone claims
"24/7 monitoring."
Almost nobody defines what that means.
your IT provider isn’t here to sell you one MDR brand. This is how to tell real 24/7 coverage from a marketing slide.
Find your coverage model before you talk to a vendor
A few quick questions. We'll highlight the closest fit below, then you can read why.
Three coverage models, three different commitments
Vendors bundle these differently and brand them however marketing wants that quarter. The underlying commitment each one makes is what actually matters.
In-House SOC + XDR Tooling
Your own team runs detection and response using a unified platform.
- Full control over process and priorities
- Requires real headcount, around the clock
- Highest total cost of ownership
XDR Platform
Unified telemetry and automation across endpoints, email, and cloud, with a lighter human layer.
- Correlates signals a single tool would miss
- Still needs someone to act on findings
- Faster to deploy than building a SOC
MDR (Managed Detection & Response)
A managed team watches for you and acts on your behalf, day and night.
- Real 24/7 coverage without hiring
- You depend on their response time
- Coverage quality varies wildly by provider
12 questions to ask any mdr / xdr vendor
Click each one off as you go. Bring what's left to the sales call, a vendor who gets defensive about any of these is telling you something.
Who is actually watching alerts at 3am by name, or by an anonymous service?
What’s the guaranteed time from alert to a human actually looking at it?
Can they actually contain a threat or just tell you about it after the fact?
Does coverage include cloud and identity not just endpoints?
What’s excluded from the SLA in the fine print?
How is a false positive handled and who pays for the noise?
Do you own the data and rules if you ever switch providers?
What’s the true headcount behind "24/7 SOC," really?
How often are detection rules updated for new attack techniques?
What happens during a confirmed breach minute by minute?
Is there a cyber insurance requirement this actually satisfies?
Can you get a straight answer to all eleven questions above, in writing?
6 signs your mdr / xdr is a liability, not a defense
These show up constantly in businesses that thought they were covered.
"24/7 monitoring" turns out to be one person covering three shifts.
Alerts get emailed with no follow-up unless you call in yourself.
Nobody can show you a real incident timeline from a past event.
The SLA measures "alert sent" time, not "human responded" time.
Detection rules haven’t been updated since onboarding.
There’s no defined containment step, only notification.
The buzzwords, decoded
We’ll look at what you actually have, then tell you the truth about it.
No vendor commission riding on the answer. Just a straight read on whether your current coverage is real.
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