Every security leader faces the same fundamental question: should we build our own security operations centre or partner with a managed SOC provider? The answer depends on your team’s size, expertise, budget, and risk profile.
The Case for In-House
Building your own SOC gives you direct control over every aspect of your security operations:
- Deep institutional knowledge: Your team understands your environment, business processes, and risk appetite better than any external provider
- Custom detection logic: Tailor rules and playbooks to your specific threat landscape
- Career development: Build internal expertise and retain institutional knowledge
- Faster escalation: No handoff delays between detection and response
The challenge is scale. A 24/7 SOC requires a minimum of 8–12 analysts across shift rotations, plus management, engineering, and threat intelligence roles. For most mid-market organisations, that’s a £600K–£1.2M annual commitment in staffing alone.
The Case for Managed SOC
Managed SOC providers offer security operations as a service, typically bundled with a SIEM or XDR platform:
- Immediate coverage: 24/7 monitoring without building a team from scratch
- Shared expertise: Access to a larger pool of analyst experience across many customer environments
- Predictable costs: Fixed monthly pricing simplifies budgeting
- Faster time to value: Operational in weeks, not months
The trade-off is depth. Managed SOC analysts serve multiple customers and may lack the context to distinguish genuine threats from benign anomalies in your specific environment.
The Hybrid Approach
SenseOn’s managed SOC offering takes a different approach. Our cross-domain correlation handles first-line detection and triage, dramatically reducing the volume of events that require human analysis. This means:
- Leaner team requirement: 2–3 analysts instead of 8–12 for equivalent coverage
- Higher-quality escalations: Analysts receive pre-correlated, high-fidelity cases
- Built-in context: The platform learns your environment automatically
- Flexible scaling: Add managed SOC coverage for off-hours or full 24/7
Whether you build in-house or use our managed service, the cross-domain correlation engine ensures your analysts spend time on real threats instead of chasing false positives.
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