What Is Managed Detection and Response (MDR)?

Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is an outsourced service blending human cybersecurity expertise and professional technology to detect and respond to threats 24x7. MDR integrates continuous security monitoring with threat hunting and instant response to malware and hacking attempts.

In this guide, we explore precisely what MDR involves, how it compares to other cybersecurity options, how it’s commonly used, and how you can choose the right provider for your needs.

What MDR Includes

The core services MDR provides are threat monitoring and detection, threat hunting, human-led investigations, and in-depth incident response and analysis.

Here’s how our team at VikingCloud breaks down each of these points in practice:

• Continuous threat monitoring and detection analyzes all networking and endpoints in real-time to allow for instant threat response.
• Threat hunting, led by human professionals, dives deeper into potential threat data raised by automation to thoroughly ascertain whether or not concerns are legitimate.
• Human-led investigations determine why threats occur and what’s at risk, once hunting determines that automated tools have found legitimate attacks. Doing so helps to fortify cybersecurity against future threats.
• In-depth response and analysis are supported by insightful tool data, backed by expert understanding of context and potential impacts. Human experts isolate threats, determine what went wrong, and re-strengthen affected areas against future attacks.

Crucially, MDR allows our cybersecurity experts to work in tandem with insightful automation and professional tools to identify, analyze, and neutralize threats.

Why Organizations Use MDR

Many organizations choose managed detection and response for its efficient 24x7 coverage, its reduction of alert fatigue and time-to-detect, and its ability to cover complex environments at speed.

Building 24x7 security coverage of multiple complex networking areas takes considerable time and effort, including building and managing SOCs in-house. MDR takes the operational and financial strains of in-house coverage out of the business, offering instant, “always-on” coverage with an outsourced team of experts.

Firms struggling with alert fatigue and time-to-triage slowdowns also have reassurance that MDR will only raise legitimate alerts, and that immediate action will be taken. MDR can effectively relieve staff from continuously and manually monitoring security so they have more time to spare on other operations.

What’s more, managing cybersecurity in-house gets increasingly complex as new systems are added and as customer and personnel demands evolve.

MDR is particularly valuable for small and mid-sized businesses that lack the resources to build and staff a full in-house security operations center. For these organizations—which make up the vast majority of the market—MDR provides enterprise-grade threat detection and response without the overhead of recruiting specialized security analysts, investing in expensive tooling, or maintaining 24x7 shift coverage. It levels the playing field, giving smaller teams access to the same caliber of protection that large enterprises maintain internally.

We recommend MDR to our customers as it blends the precision and efficiency of automated threat monitoring with outsourced human expertise to ensure even the most sprawling of infrastructures are monitored and protected.

Studies also suggest that many companies’ internal SOCs may be underperforming concerning capability and efficiency, thus strengthening the argument to move to an MDR solution. According to Gartner research, nearly two-thirds of organizations identify their SOC research and development processes as needing the most improvement, while more than half report that their SOC’s aggregation and correlation capabilities are lacking. Other commonly cited areas for optimization include incident response playbooks, log management, data mobility, and reporting.

“64% of respondents say their research and development processes are among those that require the most improvement. Many also see optimization opportunities in their incident response playbooks (45%), as well as log management (35%) and ticketing (32%) processes.

(...) Over half (57%) find their SOC’s aggregation/correlation capabilities lacking. Data mobility (46%) and reporting (39%) capabilities in the SOC are also common target areas for improvement.”

Gartner

How MDR Works

MDR typically monitors and prioritizes alerts, hunts for threats, investigates why they occurred, offers a guided response, and then supports remediation and recovery. Step complexity may vary depending on threats discovered and remediation advised.

Here is a typical step-by-step overview of how MDR operates via VikingCloud:

1. Alerts are prioritized. MDR sifts through alerts for potential threats and other security issues, and prioritizes those that appear legitimate, removing false positives (and ensuring customers’ time isn’t wasted).
2. Threats are hunted and investigated. Human experts add context to the prioritized threats and identify how they breached the perimeter. Further investigation ensures customers understand what happened, why, and to what extent. Human expertise at this stage helps to build a more robust response to future threats.
3. Response is guided. MDR experts now advise customers on how to neutralize threats they’ve investigated. This may include isolating specific areas of a network, for example. Guided response from cybersecurity experts saves customers from having to guess their way through threat removal (potentially causing further damage).
4. MDR supports remediation and recovery. In many cases, MDR will take care of the removal of threats and restoration of systems, which can include registry cleaning. This step fortifies customers against further similar threats, ensuring future detection and response are more efficient. Remember, complete recovery ownership is not always guaranteed, as it may vary on the provider.

What MDR Monitors

MDR monitors the entirety of the telemetry a customer connects to, covering endpoints (usually via EDR), identity controls, activity in the cloud and via SaaS, and networking and logging data (often through log and SIEM pipelines). Coverage will vary depending on customer demands.

Common signal sources MDR monitors and picks up on include:

• Endpoints, often using EDR to monitor behavior, automated responses, and suspicious activity
• Identity controls, such as strange login behaviors, changes in privileges, and unauthorized access attempts
• Cloud and SaaS activity, such as permissions and security changes, weak security settings, and new rule creations in shared applications
• Network and log data, such as unauthorized API calls, large file transfers, and privilege escalations

Crucially, MDR uses a blend of tools and human expertise to cover extensive and often complex infrastructural ground, which would usually require extensive operational demands in-house.

MDR Capabilities and Technology

With the backing of automation and tools, MDR supports threat intelligence and analytics, and layered coverage with EDR, SIEM, and XDR. However, a crucial element of human-led threat hunting adds context to alerts raised and enhances the effectiveness of recovery and remediation.

MDR setups use several enabling technologies to help power their coverage and guidance:

• EDR solutions collate and analyze endpoint data and provide insight into threats
• SIEM systems bring together security insights across the infrastructure and help experts to spot patterns and find anomalies
• XDR systems consolidate security layers and tools together for a holistic overview of threats, risks, and vulnerabilities

However, the human element of MDR is vital, as seasoned cybersecurity experts can confidently break down the data these layers provide and swiftly respond to and remediate threats.

MDR vs Other Security Solutions (quick comparisons)

Let’s look briefly at how MDR solutions compare to purely using EDR, MSSP, SIEM, and XDR in practice.

MDR vs EDR

EDR is one of several tools used in an MDR setup, acting as an endpoint data collector to feed into threat analysis. MDR uses human expertise and threat investigation to refine and isolate legitimate concerns posed by EDR’s automation.

MDR vs MSSP

Managed Security Service Providers monitor and manage security infrastructures on behalf of customers, and many now offer some level of incident response. However, MDR goes deeper—providing dedicated threat hunting, expert-led investigation, and hands-on remediation as core services rather than add-ons. While an MSSP may alert you to a potential threat, an MDR provider will actively investigate it, determine its root cause, and guide you through containment and recovery. Some providers, including VikingCloud, combine MSSP and MDR capabilities to offer both broad security management and specialized threat response.

MDR vs SIEM

SIEM solutions provide insightful cybersecurity data, but said data is not always digestible for end customers. After SIEM data aggregation, users typically have to process the information themselves and manually remediate. MDR, meanwhile, processes data and offers clear, actionable steps for customers to take.

MDR vs XDR/MXDR

Both XDR (as technology) and MDR (as a service) support broader visibility into threat landscapes from disparate sources. XDR consolidates telemetry across endpoints, user activity, and access controls into a unified platform, while MDR wraps human-led detection, hunting, investigation, and response around that data. Many firms combine the two with MXDR, pairing XDR’s consolidated visibility with MDR’s expert-driven threat management—all managed off-site.

How to Choose an MDR Provider

When choosing an MDR provider, you need to consider its in-house expertise, its ability to scale, the technology it uses, and how easily it will integrate with your organization. Cost is naturally a key consideration. Building an equivalent in-house SOC with 24x7 staffing, tooling, and ongoing training can cost significantly more than an outsourced MDR engagement—often several times the annual investment. When evaluating MDR pricing, look beyond the monthly fee and consider the total cost of ownership: reduced headcount requirements, faster mean time to detect and respond (MTTD/MTTR), lower risk of breach-related losses, and the operational efficiency gained by freeing your internal team to focus on strategic priorities.

Here are a few simple questions to ask of your managed detection and response provider before you decide to choose a partner:

• Is your team specialized in any particular skills?
• Are you willing to transfer knowledge and support/train our in-house team?
• What technology and layers do you use to support your service?
• What are you able to do without the need for approval?
• What do you study and use to ensure you keep ahead of evolving threats affecting your customers?
• What is your mean discovery and response time?
• Do you run on a cloud-native solution? If not, do you have an efficient setup in place to help you access a broad data scope in real-time?
• How does your team communicate with each other? Will we have access to workflows to understand strategies and actions taken?
• What is your approach to integrating with clients - how will you attach to our existing security posture?
• Do you provide complete threat coverage around the clock?

If your chosen provider can answer all of these questions positively and without the need for further follow-ups, you are likely working with a team you can trust. It is also worthwhile asking questions that are specific to your current situation and setup, as this list is purely for demonstrative purposes.

Implementing MDR

To implement MDR effectively, you must prioritize attaching outsourced expertise to your most critical endpoints and systems, and establish a clear process for escalating concerns and gathering responses. Crucially, you must implement a standardized operational reporting and performance review cadence to ensure MDR is performing as expected.

MDR implementation will take careful planning and require a transition involving multiple moving parts. That not only means taking steps to ensure you integrate its support with the right telemetry and ensure irrelevant alerting is reduced, but also to establish a review plan to measure MDR’s effectiveness.

The best MDR providers understand that moving from a SOC-based operation to outsourcing threat response and remediation will take extensive planning. It is all the more reason to choose a provider with provable expertise, and who is willing to take time to support you as you get started.

As MDR experts, we help you integrate our services as smoothly as possible into your existing cybersecurity posture, ensuring you have complete coverage over your most important systems and assets as soon as possible.

Moving toward managed detection and response is a big step for many companies, regardless of their size and scope. If you’re considering the benefits of MDR and are struggling to manage threat response in-house, contact VikingCloud’s team today for a no-obligation MDR readiness assessment.