Most mid-sized businesses cannot afford the security team they actually need. That is not criticism. It is a structural reality. A genuine 24/7 Security Operations Center requires six to ten analysts working rotating shifts, an enterprise SIEM stack, active threat intelligence feeds, and a SOC manager who can hold it all together. The numbers on that do not work for a 300-person company competing for talent against banks and defence contractors.
SOC-as-a-Service exists because of this problem. Before deciding which path makes sense, you need the real cost comparison, not the vendor brochure version.
What SOC-as-a-Service Actually Is
A Security Operations Center monitors your environment around the clock, triages alerts, investigates suspicious activity, and coordinates the response when a real threat surfaces. Every organization above a certain size needs this capability. The question is who runs it.
An in-house SOC means your staff, your tools, your shift rotations. SOC-as-a-Service hands that operational function to a specialist provider. Your endpoints, cloud workloads, identity systems, and network traffic all feed telemetry into their platform. Their analysts, working across multiple shifts and time zones, handle what your internal team would otherwise do at 2 AM on a Sunday.
The provider’s platform has already been built and licensed. Threat intelligence is already running. You are buying a working security function, not building one. If you want a baseline understanding of what a managed provider actually covers day to day, our What Services Do Cybersecurity Companies Provide? breaks this down in detail.
SOC-as-a-Service is sometimes labelled as MDR (Managed Detection and Response). The terms overlap significantly. MDR typically implies a deeper response capability than monitoring-only managed security services, which is what most mid-sized businesses need.
What an In-House SOC Costs a Mid-Sized Business
The Headcount Number
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the median annual salary for information security analysts at $124,910 in May 2024, with senior threat hunters and SOC leads pulling considerably higher. Running three analyst tiers plus a SOC manager across genuine 24/7 coverage requires a minimum of six analysts. Eight is more realistic if you want sustainable shift rotations without burning people out.
Six analysts at median: $749,460 per year, before benefits, bonuses, or overtime. Eight analysts: closer to $1 million in salary alone. Then add an SOC manager. That role typically runs from $140,000 to $180,000 in US markets.
Total personnel cost for a minimum viable in-house SOC: $900,000 to $1.2 million annually, not counting recruitment costs in a market where security roles take an average of 4-6 months to fill.
Technology Licensing
You need a SIEM. You need an EDR platform. You need a threat intelligence subscription, a SOAR tool for response automation, and something covering identity monitoring and vulnerability management. Per-seat enterprise licensing for this stack runs $150,000 to $500,000 per year for an organization in the 200 to 2,000-employee range, depending on vendor selection and environment size.
Training That Cannot Be Skipped
Certifications like OSCP, CISSP, and CEH require continuous maintenance. SANS Institute pegs annual training and certification spend at $5,000 to $15,000 per analyst. For a team of seven, that is $35,000 to $105,000 per year.
Alert Fatigue and Coverage Gaps
Here is where in-house SOCs collapse in practice. A 2023 study by Vectra AI found 67% of SOC analysts considered quitting because of alert volume. Understaffed teams skip alerts. They miss the ones that matter.
The CrowdStrike 2026 Global Threat Report documented an average attacker breakout time of 29 minutes in 2025. That is the time between initial access and lateral movement across your systems. A two-hour gap in analyst coverage on a Saturday night is not a compliance problem. It is how a contained incident becomes a breach. AI-powered attacks are making this window shorter every year, with adversaries now automating the early stages of intrusion that used to require manual effort. Cybersecurity in the Age of AI covers what this shift means for enterprise defenses right now.
Estimated total annual cost for an in-house SOC at a mid-sized business: $1.2 million to $2.5 million.
What SOC-as-a-Service Costs
Managed SOC pricing runs on a subscription model. Providers price by data volume ingested, number of endpoints, or user count, depending on their model. For organizations with 200 to 2,000 employees, market pricing falls between $5,000 and $25,000 per month, or $60,000 to $300,000 annually.
That cost gap versus in-house is not of lower quality. It comes from shared infrastructure. A provider amortizes the cost of enterprise SIEM licensing, threat intelligence platforms, and senior analyst salaries across hundreds of clients. The threat hunter who would cost your organization $170,000 as a single hire is embedded in the subscription.
Expect pricing to sit toward the upper end for organizations with HIPAA, PCI-DSS, or SOC 2 compliance requirements, or those running complex multi-cloud environments.
For a fuller picture of what a managed security engagement typically includes, Managed Security Services for Modern Businesses covers scope, pricing structures, and what to look for in a provider.
Coverage Side by Side
| Capability | In-House SOC | SOC-as-a-Service |
| 24/7 Monitoring | Requires full 3-shift staffing | Included |
| Threat Intelligence | Licensed and integrated separately | Aggregated across client base |
| Incident Response SLA | Depends on analyst availability | Contract-defined |
| Specialist Expertise (forensics, cloud, OT) | Hired individually | Available on-demand |
| Organizational Context | Deep institutional knowledge | Built during onboarding |
| Compliance Reporting | Internal responsibility | Often included or tiered |
| Scalability | Constrained by headcount | Scales by contract tier |
| Data Sovereignty | Full control | Requires contractual data agreements |
Where Managed SOC Wins
For most mid-sized businesses, the structural advantages are hard to argue against. Around-the-clock coverage without holiday gaps, access to senior analysts who would not take a role at a 500-person company, and continuously updated threat intelligence are all included in the subscription cost.
The legitimate weakness in managed SOC is the onboarding window, typically 30 to 90 days, while the provider integrates your environment, reduces false positives, and builds behavioral baselines. Organizations should plan for a period of higher internal alert posture during that transition.
If you want to understand your current exposure before committing yourself to a managed model, a VAPT assessment gives you an objective baseline. Ekfrazo’s cybersecurity services start there before any managed engagement.
The Talent Problem Is Not Getting Better
The ISC2 2025 Cybersecurity Workforce Study put the global cybersecurity staffing gap at 4.8 million professionals. The BLS projects 29% employment growth in information security roles through 2034, far beyond what the education pipeline can fill. That creates a hiring market where mid-sized companies consistently lose candidates to larger organizations with broader career paths and higher compensation packages.
A managed SOC provider is not competing in the same labor market at the client level. Their scale lets them recruit, retain, and develop analysts by giving them exposure to diverse client environments and attack scenarios that no single mid-sized business can offer. The analyst quality accessible through a managed engagement is typically higher than what a mid-sized company can attract and keep internally.
How to Choose the Right Model
Step 1 - Assess Your Current Security Maturity
Fewer than three dedicated security staff, no documented incident response plan, no active SIEM generating monitored alerts: you do not have the foundation to run an in-house SOC effectively. A managed provider brings both the coverage and the operational scaffolding to build on.
Step 2 - Check Your Regulatory Requirements
Most commercial mid-sized businesses can meet PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2, and ISO 27001 requirements through a managed provider with the right contractual controls. If your compliance framework mandates full data residency or prohibits third-party telemetry access, review your specific contract terms before assuming managed SOC is off the table.
Step 3 - Run the Budget Reality Check
If your total annual security budget is below $500,000, building a credible in-house SOC is not possible. Personnel costs alone exceed what remains after licensing essential tools. A managed model delivers superior coverage within that number.
Step 4 - Decide How You Treat Coverage Gaps
The operational question is concrete: what happens to your business if an attacker has 29 minutes of access to your environment at 2:00 AM on a Saturday? Organisations in healthcare, financial services, or those holding substantial customer PII tend to answer that question clearly once they frame it that way.
For context on how AI-powered threats are raising the stakes on this calculation, Cybersecurity in the Age of AI: What Enterprises Must Protect in 2026 covers the six active threat areas reshaping security operations this year.
The Hybrid Option
Many mid-sized organizations run a small internal team handling governance, compliance, and vendor oversight, while the managed provider covers 24/7 monitoring and response. This is not a compromise. It is often the most practical model for organizations that have outgrown a purely reactive posture but cannot justify the headcount for a full internal SOC.
Ekfrazo has worked in both modes. The FortiWeb deployment and VAPT engagement for MTN Ivory Coast ran alongside their internal security function, not in place of it. The managed layer added capacity and specialised capability where the internal team had gaps.
FAQs
What is the difference between SOC-as-a-Service and an MSSP?
How much does SOC-as-a-Service cost for a mid-sized business?
What are the main risks of outsourcing to a managed SOC?
Can managed SOC providers support HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and SOC 2 compliance?
Is a hybrid SOC model realistic for a 300-person business?
What should we look for when evaluating SOC-as-a-Service vendors?
The Bottom Line
A genuine 24/7 in-house SOC costs $1.2 million to $2.5 million per year. SOC-as-a-Service covers the same ground for $60,000 to $300,000. The math is not close.
In-house makes sense when regulatory mandates require internal data control or when a mature internal team already exists. For most mid-sized businesses, neither applies.
Building in-house when the budget and talent market work against it does not strengthen security posture. It creates the coverage gaps attackers count on.
Start with a VAPT assessment to get a clear picture of your current exposure before making this call.
Related reading:
- Cybersecurity in the Age of AI: What Enterprises Must Protect in 2026
- What Are the Best Cybersecurity Solutions for Remote U.S. Teams?
- What Services Do Cybersecurity Companies Provide?
- Ekfrazo Cybersecurity Services
