Playbook: Eliminating Breach Risks — 2025 Edition for midmarket organizations.
Playbook: Eliminating Breach Risks — 2025 Edition for midmarket organizations. Download to learn more
Download our Comprehensive AI Playbook for the Mid-Market:
Playbook: Eliminating Breach Risks — 2025 Edition for midmarket organizations. Download to learn more
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PONDURANCE MDR FEATURES
Technology and Human Intelligence working together
MSSP Advantages
- Broader tool coverage—can manage a variety of vendors and devices.
- Less expensive upfront than MDR.
- Useful if your main gap is tool administration, not active threat hunting.
- Good for meeting minimum compliance “monitoring” requirements.
1. Core Purpose
Primary Role
Strategic Position
2. Detection and Response Capabilities
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Primarily reactive, responding when alerts fire.
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Your existing security stack (firewalls, IDS/IPS, VPNs, SIEM, endpoint security).
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Can manage a wide range of vendor products; may not optimize for threat detection efficiency.
MSSP vs. MDR for Mid-Market Organizations
(Managed Security Service Provider vs. Managed Detection and Response)
MDR (Managed Detection & Response)
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Outsources security device management and monitoring (e.g., firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, SIEM).
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Keeps your security tools running, patched, and monitored according to SLAs.
Detection Approach
Response Actions
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Alerts you when something looks suspicious, often based on rule-based SIEM triggers.
Tools Managed
Internal Staff Requirement
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Minimal internal SOC need; MDR acts as your SOC and IR team.
Customization
Alert Fatigue
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Significantly reduced; MDR filters noise and engages only when action is needed.
Speed of Containment
Proactivity
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Proactive; it includes threat hunting and rapid incident response to reduce dwell time.
4. Operational Impact for Mid-Market Organizations
Regulatory Alignment
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Usually minutes; MDR handles containment directly.
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Still need staff to validate alerts, triage, and handle incident response.
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Strong fit for breach notification and HIPAA/PCI/SOX readiness— includes documented detection and response processes.
5. Cost Considerations
Pricing Model
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Typically per-endpoint or per-user subscription (plus add-ons for IR retainers).
Value for Mid-Market
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Can be high, with many false positives unless you have staff to tune and respond.
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Dependent on your team’s ability to respond.
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Supports compliance logging and reporting, but you must show you can respond to incidents.
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Higher monthly spend, but more predictable breach response and reduced need for in-house SOC hires.
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Often device- or log-volume-based subscription fees.
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Lower cost than MDR, but higher hidden cost in staff time and breach exposure.
3. Technology Stack
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Usually bundles its own detection/response platform (often EDR/XDR) or integrates tightly with your EDR (e.g., CrowdStrike, SentinelOne).
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Often technology-opinionated—chooses proven tools to ensure speed, integration, and consistent outcomes.
MSSP (Managed Security Service Provider)
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Delivers threat detection, incident response, and proactive hunting with a focus on stopping active threats.
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Actively hunts for, investigates, and contains threats—operating as an extension of your incident response team.
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Uses behavioral analytics, threat intelligence, and continuous monitoring to spot stealthy or emerging attacks.
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Takes immediate containment actions (e.g., isolating endpoints, disabling accounts) and guides full remediation.
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Typically stops at notification; you (or your IT team) handle investigation and remediation.
MANAGED DETECTION & RESPONSE (MDR)
The first MDR service built to eliminate breach risks
Full lifecycle, proactive cybersecurity protection for what matters most. From threat detection through disruption
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RISK-BASED MDR SOLUTIONS
MDR vs MSSP: What's the Difference?
Threats to an organization’s data are complex, expanding, and always evolving—creating serious breach risks for midsized organizations. But smaller organizations may lack the size, budget, or internal expertise to build an in-house security operations program.
To bridge the gap, they often turn to managed security services for help. However, it’s not always clear what type of support is the best fit. One common question is: What’s the difference between managed detection and response (MDR) and a managed security services provider (MSSP)?
While both models offer outsourced cybersecurity support, they differ significantly in scope, capabilities, and response. Understanding these differences can help you make a more informed decision about your security strategy.
Bottom Line for Mid-Market Organizations at High Breach Risk
An MSSP may make sense if:
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You already have internal incident response capability,
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You need multi-vendor tool management,
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And you’re primarily looking to offload device maintenance and log management—not active response.
If you:
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Have minimal internal security staff
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Need rapid containment and hands-on response
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Face high regulatory and breach-cost exposure
…an MDR provider is generally the more effective strategic choice, because it closes the detection-to-response gap and delivers a SOC-as-a-Service function without requiring you to hire 24/7 in-house analysts.
WHY PONDURANCE
Pondurance is the only MDR solution built to eliminate breach risks
Consumer-class user portal
Track tickets, view real time metrics, and collaborate with SOC analysts through a single, streamlined and intuitive user interface. With a glance at your dashboard, you’ll see the most relevant information about your networks.
Rapid implementation
Get up and running fast. Pondurance integrates with your existing security stack, minimizing downtime and disruption. We can meet you where you are in your cybersecurity journey, and adapt or scale our services as your needs mature in the future.
Visibility across entire attack surface
Get 360-degree visibility in our consumer-grade user portal. Ingest data from your entire attack surface — endpoints, network, identity, apps, cloud, and IoT — and view it in one centralized dashboard.
Access to trusted advisors
Our trusted security advisors become an extension of your team, rounding out any gaps in your internal security resources. From a virtual CISO, to our expert analysts and threat hunters, to certified consultants for risk assessments, compliance audits, and more, we work to provide everything and everybody you may need to eliminate breach risks and ensure cybersecurity and data privacy compliance.
Proprietary risk analytics
Cut through noise to surface the highest-risk threats first. As a modern MDR solution, Pondurance correlates telemetry across all potential threat entry points and incorporates world-class threat intelligence to better validate and contextualize alerts. Our proprietary Pondurance Exposure Index™ provides continuous threat exposure management (CTEM).
Integrate with existing infrastructure
We believe you shouldn't have to rip out tools and technologies you've already invested in and are happy with. The cloud-native Pondurance Platform integrates any existing EDR tools you have, and ingests logs from hundreds of existing network, identity, cloud, app and IoT systems. The result is rapid and easy implementation — without creating security gaps or overlapping capabilities.
STILL HAVE QUESTIONS?
Check out these Frequently Asked Questions
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