Managed Detection & Response (MDR)
Managed detection and response in the UK combines 24/7 SOC monitoring, human-led investigation, and full incident response in one service, not billed as separate add-ons. Precursor Security delivers MDR from a CREST-accredited UK Security Operations Centre in Newcastle, correlating SIEM and EDR telemetry with human analyst triage across endpoints, networks, cloud environments, and identity layers. Pricing starts from £900 per month.
An alert fires at 11pm on a Friday. Under your current setup, it sits unread until Monday. With Precursor MDR, a CREST-accredited analyst picks it up immediately, investigates it against your environment, and contains the threat before midnight. 24/7 UK-based coverage. Full incident response included. From £900/month. Reports support cyber insurance applications and renewals.
What is Managed Detection and Response (MDR)?
24/7 threat detection and response from a CREST-accredited UK SOC, vendor-agnostic across endpoint, network, identity, and cloud.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is an outsourced 24/7 service combining endpoint, network, identity, and cloud telemetry with human analyst triage to detect and contain threats in real time. Precursor MDR runs from a CREST-accredited UK SOC in Newcastle, with full incident response included as standard, not billed separately.
MDR is the endpoint and cloud subset of a broader outsourced SOC engagement. For a full side-by-side breakdown, see our MDR vs SOC vs SIEM vs EDR vs XDR buyer's guide.
Your MSSP sends alerts. We resolve them.
Most managed security providers forward alerts to your internal team for investigation. Precursor MDR is different. Our analysts triage, investigate, and respond to threats 24/7 from our physical UK security operations centre. When a critical alert fires at 2am, a CREST-accredited analyst picks it up immediately. Not a handover queue, not an offshore team seeing your environment for the first time.
Book a Scoping CallWhat Precursor MDR
Delivers.
Six integrated capabilities, delivered by CREST-accredited analysts from our physical UK facility. Every alert is triaged by a human. Every finding is validated before escalation.
24/7 Threat Monitoring
Our UK-based SOC analysts monitor your environment 24/7/365 against the broader UK threat landscape tracked by the NCSC. We ingest telemetry from EDR, SIEM, and XDR platforms to detect malicious activity in real time. No follow-the-sun model. Every analyst operates from our physical Security Operations Centre in Newcastle.
Proactive Threat Hunting
We do not wait for alerts. Our analysts run hypothesis-driven hunts using MITRE ATT&CK TTPs, intelligence from Mandiant M-Trends dwell-time research, and vulnerability data from our offensive security team to find threats before they trigger rules. See how our SOC hunts and catches MSIX malware campaigns via SEO poisoning.
Rapid Incident Response
When a confirmed threat is identified, our analysts contain the threat, isolate affected endpoints, and initiate forensic investigation. Full incident response is included in every MDR tier. No bolt-on fees. No retainer required.
Vendor-Agnostic Integration
Bring your existing stack or choose from our recommended vendors. We integrate via API with Microsoft Defender, SentinelOne, CrowdStrike Falcon, and Elastic SIEM. No rip-and-replace required.
Offensive + Defensive Fusion
Unlike pure-play MDR providers, Precursor Security combines CREST-accredited penetration testing with SOC operations. Vulnerabilities found by our Red Team feed directly into detection rules, closing the loop between attack and defence, mapped to the NIST Cyber Security Framework identify, protect, detect, respond functions.
Customer Portal & Reporting
Real-time visibility into your security posture. Track alerts, investigations, and monthly trend reports through our dedicated client portal. Board-ready reports delivered monthly. 12-month log retention with audit-ready event export.
The MDR Investment Case
Most organisations cannot resource 24/7 threat monitoring internally. The numbers tell the story.
Average weekly alert volume forwarded by MSSPs to internal teams for investigation. Unresolved.
Average time from alert to investigation without 24/7 SOC coverage. Weekends and after-hours gaps compound the delay.
Every confirmed threat is investigated by a UK-based CREST-accredited analyst. No offshore handoffs, no automated responses, no overnight backlogs.
Controls
360° Threat Coverage
Precursor MDR monitors every layer of your technology stack. Our SOC correlates signals across endpoints, networks, cloud, identity, and email to deliver threat detection and response against sophisticated multi-stage attacks that siloed tools miss.
Endpoint (EDR/XDR)
Continuous endpoint telemetry analysis across workstations and servers. Our analysts provide managed endpoint detection and response across your entire estate.
Network Traffic
East-west and north-south traffic analysis for lateral movement detection. Threat detection and response across your network perimeter and internal segments.
Vulnerability Context
Offensive intel from our CREST pen testing feeds directly into SOC detection rules. The closed-loop advantage that pure-play MDR providers cannot offer.
Identity Threat Detection
Azure AD, Entra ID, and Active Directory monitoring for credential abuse, privilege escalation, and lateral movement via compromised accounts.
Cloud Security Monitoring
AWS, Azure, and GCP resource activity, API calls, and misconfiguration monitoring. Cloud-native telemetry correlated with endpoint and network signals.
Microsoft 365 & SaaS
Microsoft 365 security monitoring covering Exchange Online, SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive. Business email compromise and account takeover detection.
Ready to see what 24/7 monitoring would look like across your environment? Book a free scoping call No commitment. 30 minutes.
What Happens at 2am?
This is what actually happens when a critical alert fires outside business hours. Not what the brochure says. What the analyst does.
Human analyst coverage. 24/7/365. From the UK.
Threat Detected
Your EDR detects a malicious process executing on a domain controller. Alert fires in the Precursor SOC.
Analyst Triage
A Precursor SOC analyst receives the alert and begins immediate triage. Critical severity alerts are prioritised above all other work.
ATT&CK Correlation
The process is correlated against MITRE ATT&CK TTPs and cross-referenced with your environment baseline established during onboarding.
Containment Initiated
Threat confirmed: lateral movement from a compromised credential. Endpoint isolation initiated. You receive a phone call.
Forensic Investigation
Full forensic investigation underway. Attack chain from initial access to lateral movement mapped. Scope of compromise determined.
Incident Report Delivered
Full incident report in your portal. Remediation steps documented. Your team arrives Monday morning to a resolved incident.
MDR vs MSSP vs In-House SOC: A Comparison
Your current MSSP sends you alerts. Your team investigates them. MDR resolves them. Here is what that means in practice.
| Capability | Traditional MSSP | Precursor MDROur approach | In-House SOC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alert triage | Not included | Included | Partial |
| Threat hunting | Not included | Included | Partial |
| Incident response | Not included | Included | Included |
| After-hours coverage | Partial | Included | Not included |
| CREST accreditation | Varies | Included | Not included |
| Offensive intel integration | Not included | Included | Not included |
| Cost (mid-market) | £900+/mo | From £900/mo | £500,000+/yr |
| Time to deploy | Weeks | 5-10 days | 6-12 months |
Not sure which service model fits your organisation? Talk to a senior analyst. We will tell you honestly if MDR is right for you.
Our pen testers harden the same environments our SOC defends.
Most managed detection and response providers operate only on the defensive side. Precursor Security holds CREST accreditation for both penetration testing and SOC operations. This means our red team finds real vulnerabilities in your environment, and those findings feed directly into custom SOC detection rules, closing the loop between attack and defence.
Red team finds a vulnerability. SOC detection rule is written. Next pen test validates the defence. This cycle is unique to Precursor, and it is why our detection capability is calibrated to real attacker behaviour, not generic threat intelligence.
Explore CREST Penetration TestingMDR Pricing: What to Expect
No hidden fees. No contact wall. MDR pricing in the UK typically ranges from £900 per month depending on endpoint count and service tier. Every tier includes full incident response.
Essential
50-100 endpoints24/7 monitoring and basic incident response for smaller organisations. EDR/SIEM integration, alert triage, and monthly reporting.
Standard
100-500 endpointsProactive threat hunting and dedicated analyst support for growing mid-market organisations. MITRE ATT&CK reporting and quarterly strategic reviews.
Enterprise
500+ endpointsDedicated analyst teams, custom detection rules, advanced threat intelligence, and board-level reporting for large or complex environments.
MDR Onboarding Workflow
From initial assessment to 24/7 protection in as little as 5 days. Most organisations are fully operational within 2-3 weeks.
Discovery & Onboarding
We assess your current environment, technology stack, and risk profile. Our engineers deploy or integrate monitoring agents and configure log ingestion within days, not months.
Baseline & Tuning
We learn what is normal in your environment. During the first 30 days, our analysts tune detection rules to minimise false positives while ensuring genuine threats surface immediately.
Active Monitoring & Hunting
24/7/365 detection and response kicks in. Our SOC triages alerts, investigates anomalies, and proactively hunts for threats using the latest threat intelligence and MITRE ATT&CK mapping.
Continuous Improvement
Monthly reporting, quarterly reviews, and detection rule refinement. Insights from our offensive security engagements are continuously fed back to strengthen your defensive posture.
MDR for MSPs and
smaller teams.
The same 24/7 detection and response works two ways: managed detection and response for MSPs who want to add security to their stack without building a SOC, and MDR for SMBs that need enterprise-grade cover without enterprise headcount.
Add 24/7 MDR to Your Stack
Precursor works with MSPs and IT service providers who want to offer clients managed detection and response without staffing a 24/7 SOC of their own. Our CREST SOC-accredited UK analysts run detection, investigation, and response behind your service, so you keep the client relationship and add security cover without the recruitment, licensing, and rota that an in-house SOC demands. Engagements are co-managed and vendor-agnostic, integrating with the EDR and SIEM tooling your clients already run.
Enterprise Cover, SMB Budget
MDR for SMBs gives small and mid-sized businesses the same 24/7 monitoring and human-led response the enterprise gets, starting from £900 per month. There is no in-house SOC to build and no analyst rota to run: our UK team is your night shift and weekend cover, so a threat at 2am on Saturday is contained then, not on Monday.
What You Get
Every MDR engagement includes the following, regardless of tier.
All service tiers include our proprietary Threat Intelligence Feed, Rapid Incident Response SLA, and CREST-accredited analyst oversight.
Strengthen Defences.
Complete the Loop.
Your MDR detects threats. Our penetration testers validate whether those defences hold. We feed pentest findings directly back into SOC detection rules, building custom alerts for your specific attack surface. This is the closed-loop advantage.
Explore Penetration TestingSecurity Operations Centre
24/7 UK-based SOC with SIEM monitoring, EDR management, and threat hunting.
CREST Penetration Testing
Validate your SOC detections with manual exploitation by CREST-accredited testers.
EdgeProtect ASM
Continuous external attack surface monitoring for exposed services and credentials.
Incident Response
Emergency breach support, digital forensics, and ransomware recovery services.
MDR vs MSSP vs XDR vs SOC
Four terms buyers are asked to choose between. They overlap, but each implies a different scope, commercial model, and operational expectation. Precursor MDR is vendor-agnostic: we operate it using your existing EDR/SIEM stack, add human analysts 24/7 from our UK SOC, and include full incident response as standard, so there is no retainer wall between you and containment.
Full Services Catalogue
Comprehensive penetration testing services tailored to your environment.
Internal Testing
Post-perimeter assessments targeting Active Directory, lateral movement, privilege escalation, and segmentation validation from inside your network.
Deciding between detection technologies? These side-by-side comparisons explain the differences and where each fits.
Plain-English definitions of the concepts behind this service, from our security glossary.
Ready to stop watching alerts pile up?
Most organisations who complete a scoping call receive a formal proposal within 48 hours. The call takes 30 minutes. You will speak with a SOC analyst who understands your environment, not a salesperson reading from a script.
Managed Detection & Response: Common Questions
Pricing, onboarding, coverage, and how MDR compares to MSSP and in-house SOC.
MDR pricing starts from £900 per month, depending on the number of endpoints, log sources, and service tier. All tiers include full incident response as standard with no additional retainer fees. We provide fixed monthly pricing after a free scoping call.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is a service in which a specialist provider monitors your IT environment 24/7, investigates threats using human analysts, and actively responds to confirmed incidents, including containment and remediation.
- Includes threat hunting and incident response as standard, not just alert forwarding.
- Human analysts investigate each alert and escalate only confirmed threats that need your decision.
- Goes beyond a traditional MSSP by providing active investigation and response, not a queue of alerts.
An MSSP monitors logs and forwards alerts to your team to investigate. MDR goes further: the provider triages, investigates, and actively responds, including containment. MDR resolves incidents; an MSSP reports them.
- MSSP: forwards 200 alerts a week to your team to work through.
- MDR: analysts investigate each alert and only escalate when a confirmed threat needs your decision.
- The simple test: if your team still investigates every alert, you have an MSSP, not MDR.
MDR is a service that investigates and responds to threats, typically wrapped around your existing EDR and SIEM tooling. A SOC (Security Operations Centre) is the broader function of continuous monitoring, detection, and response across your whole environment, delivered by people, process, and technology together.
- In practice, MDR is usually one delivery model for SOC capability: most UK organisations buying MDR are buying 24/7 SOC-delivered detection and response.
- A full outsourced SOC can extend further, adding SIEM log management, compliance reporting, and custom detection engineering on top of the MDR core.
- See our full MDR vs SOC vs SIEM vs EDR vs XDR buyer's guide for a term-by-term breakdown.
EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) is a security technology that collects telemetry from endpoints. MDR (Managed Detection and Response) is a managed service that wraps human analysts around EDR and other tools. MDR analysts monitor, investigate, and respond to EDR alerts 24/7. EDR is the sensor, MDR is the team that acts on it. Precursor MDR analysts operate your EDR platform 24/7, investigating and responding to threats so your team does not have to.
Building and operating an in-house Security Operations Centre typically costs £500,000-£1,000,000+ annually once you account for analyst salaries (3-5 analysts minimum for 24/7 coverage at £40,000-£70,000 each), SIEM/EDR licensing (£50,000-£200,000), threat intelligence feeds, training, and management overhead. MDR provides the same capabilities at a fraction of the cost (£30,000-£144,000/year depending on tier) with immediate access to CREST-accredited analysts, established playbooks, and enterprise-grade tooling. For most organisations under 1,000 employees, MDR delivers better security outcomes at lower total cost than in-house SOC operations.
Most internal IT security teams are overwhelmed by reactive alert fatigue, vulnerability management, and compliance requirements, leaving no capacity for 24/7 threat monitoring and proactive hunting. MDR augments your existing team by handling the continuous monitoring burden, allowing your internal staff to focus on strategic security initiatives, vendor management, and risk governance. Think of MDR as your night shift and weekend coverage: threats detected at 2am on Saturday get investigated and contained immediately, not Monday morning when your team returns.
Precursor MDR operates 24/7/365 with human analyst coverage across all severity levels. Critical alerts get human analyst investigation within 10 minutes of firing, and a named L3 incident response lead is paged for any Critical or High severity alert. Critical severity alerts (confirmed malware execution, active intrusion, data exfiltration) receive immediate investigation, endpoint isolation, and containment. High severity alerts (suspicious lateral movement, credential abuse) are prioritised ahead of routine monitoring. Medium severity alerts (policy violations, reconnaissance activity) are reviewed and triaged by the on-shift analyst. All confirmed threats trigger customer notification via phone within the first hour, plus email and portal alerts, with detailed incident reports delivered within 24 hours. Specific containment timelines are agreed in writing during scoping, based on your environment and tier.
Precursor MDR covers your whole technology stack, not just endpoints, correlating signals across every layer to catch multi-stage attacks that single-point tools miss.
- Endpoint: Windows, macOS and Linux workstations and servers via EDR.
- Network: north-south and east-west traffic analysis for lateral-movement detection.
- Cloud: AWS, Azure and GCP resource activity and misconfigurations.
- Identity: Entra ID and Active Directory for credential abuse.
- Email and SaaS: Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace for phishing and business email compromise.
Yes. Precursor Security operates a physical UK-based Security Operations Centre in Newcastle. We do not use a follow-the-sun model with offshore analysts. Every analyst is UK-based and DBS-checked, with no offshoring of work.
Absolutely. Precursor MDR is vendor agnostic. We integrate with your existing EDR, SIEM, XDR, and cloud security tooling via API. If you use Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, SentinelOne, CrowdStrike Falcon, or Elastic SIEM, we integrate without requiring you to switch vendors. If you lack existing tooling, we can deploy proven, enterprise-grade tooling as part of the bring your own EDR integration service.
Precursor Security is CREST accredited for both penetration testing and SOC operations. We also hold ISO 27001, ISO 9001, and Cyber Essentials Plus certifications. Our analysts hold GIAC, OSCP, and CREST-level certifications.
For organisations with existing EDR or SIEM tooling, Precursor MDR can be operational within 5-10 business days. For greenfield deployments where we provide the endpoint agents, typical onboarding is 2-4 weeks depending on estate size.
Yes. Every Precursor MDR tier includes full incident response as standard. When a critical threat is confirmed, our team contains the threat, performs forensic analysis, and guides remediation. No additional retainer required. Incident response is not a bolt-on service.
Yes. Precursor provides managed detection and response for MSPs and IT service providers who want to offer clients 24/7 security cover without building a SOC of their own. The model is co-managed and vendor-agnostic: your CREST SOC-accredited UK analyst team runs detection, investigation, and response behind your service while you keep the client relationship. MSPs use MDR from Precursor to add enterprise-grade security to their stack without the recruitment, SIEM licensing, and 24/7 rota an in-house SOC requires.
Yes. MDR for SMBs starts from £900 per month and gives small and mid-sized businesses the same 24/7 monitoring, human-led investigation, and incident response the enterprise gets, without building an in-house SOC. Pricing scales with endpoint count and log volume, so an SMB only pays for the coverage it needs. For most organisations under 1,000 employees, MDR delivers stronger security outcomes at lower total cost than recruiting and retaining a 24/7 security team.
MDR is usually priced on endpoints, log sources, and service tier rather than strictly per user, but a per-user figure is a useful planning guide. Precursor MDR starts from £900 per month, and for a typical 160-user organisation the total monthly cost commonly lands in the region of £1,800 to £3,500 depending on how many servers and cloud log sources are in scope and the depth of threat hunting required. That works out to roughly £11 to £22 per user per month for fully managed 24/7 detection and response with incident response included. We confirm a fixed monthly price in writing after a free scoping call.
Yes. That is exactly what managed detection and response provides. Precursor delivers 24/7 threat detection and response across all your endpoints, plus network, cloud, and identity layers, from our CREST SOC-accredited UK Security Operations Centre, with no need to build or staff an internal SOC. Our UK analysts monitor, investigate, and contain threats around the clock, so you get continuous coverage across nights, weekends, and public holidays without recruiting analysts, licensing a SIEM, or running a shift rota yourself.