Why MSPs Need 24/7 SOC for Their Clients?

Key takeaways

Cyberattacks often strike after hours, making 24/7 SOC coverage essential for rapid detection and response.
Building an in-house SOC is costly and resource-intensive, but outsourcing offers round-the-clock protection without the overhead.
Managed SOC services fill critical skill gaps, providing expertise across EDR, SIEM, and identity without overloading your team.
Transparent incident reporting and compliance-ready logs from a SOC build client trust and simplify regulatory requirements.

Hackers don’t work 9–5, but they know many security teams do. That’s why the most serious cyber attacks hit after hours, when attackers have the longest window to do damage. As an MSP, you promise timely detection and response to contain threats, minimize downtime, and remain compliant, but scaling a round-the-clock SOC is resource-intensive. By outsourcing SOC services, MSPs can offer 24/7 security coverage without hiring, training, or building their own SOC. Below, we break down the advantages of partnering with an external SOC to turn your MSP into a cybersecurity operations center.

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Topics

Why MSPs Need 24/7 SOC for Their Clients?

Key takeaways

Cyberattacks often strike after hours, making 24/7 SOC coverage essential for rapid detection and response.
Building an in-house SOC is costly and resource-intensive, but outsourcing offers round-the-clock protection without the overhead.
Managed SOC services fill critical skill gaps, providing expertise across EDR, SIEM, and identity without overloading your team.
Transparent incident reporting and compliance-ready logs from a SOC build client trust and simplify regulatory requirements.

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Business case

The business case for continuous SOC monitoring is clear: closing the gap between detection and action is the most impactful formula for containing breaches. The rise of sophisticated AI-powered attacks and the increasingly complex regulatory environment have led a growing number of organizations to seek SOC protection. The market for managed detection and response (MDR)/SOC services is expected to grow by 22% by 2030. The MSPs that can offer SOC services will differentiate themselves.

After-hours breaches mean longer downtime. An average mid-size or large enterprise loses $300,000 per hour of downtime. Professional SOC services provide trained analysts and playbooks for incident triage, coordinating threat hunting and automated responses to shrink mean time to respond (MTTR). Minimizing downtime preserves the trust of your clients’ customers, which in turn encourages clients to renew their contracts.

While you could build an in-house SOC, doing so isn’t cheap. Developing custom SOC infrastructure—such as a SIEM or SIEM-like tooling—requires dedicated engineers to spend months on research, system design, development, tuning, and quality assurance. Even when using a white-labeled SIEM, a mid-sized MSP needs about five to seven full-time analysts for round-the-clock coverage, each making ~$106K+ each. When you also consider the cost of EDR, SIEM, and other tools, outsourcing SOC services is significantly more cost-effective.

Staffing realities of MSPs

In addition to the cost of building a SOC, staffing it also comes with challenges. Globally, organizations continue to struggle with cybersecurity talent shortages. In ISC2’s recent workforce study, 67% of respondents cited talent shortages as a barrier to growth. These shortages lead small MSP teams to work long hours, causing alert fatigue, missed threats, and burnout. Staff turnover is expensive and risks undermining customer satisfaction and retention.

Meanwhile, 90% of organizations report skills gaps on their security teams, especially in cloud, incident response, and identity areas. MSPs rarely have a deep bench in all domains, so a managed SOC (with multi-domain expertise in EDR, SIEM, identity, etc.) lets MSPs offer comprehensive coverage without new hires and with no increased demands on their own staff.

Service quality

A 24/7 AI-assisted SOC like Huntress provides broad and deep visibility for real-time protection. Integrated SIEM, EDR, and ITDR platforms correlate various signals from across every device on your network. This comprehensive view lets SOC analysts catch stealthy attacks that single-point tools would miss.

The SOC approach is methodical, dictated by runbooks, documented procedures that keep alert triage consistent, reducing human error and enabling faster escalations. With 24/7 coverage, SOCs allow MSPs to track mean-time-to-detect (MTTD) and respond (MTTR), demonstrating measurable value to clients.

Client communication

A quality SOC gives MSPs the ability to maintain transparent communication with their clients during and after incidents. Clear incident tickets translate technical details into business-relevant language, explaining what happened and which systems were affected, along with recommended actions.

SOCs back up these reports with evidence snapshots, such as logs, screenshots, and samples (e.g., an email header of a phishing attempt). After resolving an event, SOCs provide reports summarizing the root cause and remediation steps. Providing this objective evidence and prioritizing proactive communication builds trust and aids any needed follow-up

Compliance and insurance

Many regulatory frameworks (HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC 2, etc.) mandate continuous logging and monitoring. By centralizing log data in a SIEM, a SOC keeps a timeline of alerts and actions, using smart filtering to present only relevant information. MSPs can assure clients that they have the evidence insurers and auditors demand. Proof of controls and timely incident handling make sure clients avoid penalties for late or incomplete reporting.

Discover Huntress’s outsourced SOC services for MSPs

By integrating Managed EDR, ITDR, and SIEM under one 24/7 SOC, Huntress extends your bench without adding to your headcount. Schedule a demo today.

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