How to offer SOC as a service without building your own security team

Key takeaways

• SOC as a service lets MSPs deliver 24/7 threat monitoring, detection and incident response under their own brand without hiring a single security analyst.
• Building an in-house Security Operations Center requires at least five to seven dedicated analysts and $724,000+ in annual payroll before any software or tooling.
• Choose from three partner delivery models: white-label, co-managed, or resell.
• Pricing a managed SOC service means accounting for remediation depth. Alert-only providers create hidden labor costs that land back on the MSP.

A client calls to say their cyber insurer wants proof of 24/7 security monitoring before renewal. You do not have a security team. You do not have a SOC. You have until the end of the month.

This situation is playing out for MSPs across North America right now as businesses look to protect themselves online. A hiring spree to build your own Security Operations Center to support these requests is not the answer.

SOC as a service (SOCaaS) lets you deliver enterprise-grade security monitoring under your own brand, backed by a partner’s analysts and infrastructure. This guide covers how it works, what it costs to build versus buy, and how to evaluate the right partner for your stack.

What is SOC as a service and why are clients asking for it?

A Security Operations Center as a Service, also called a managed SOC, is an outsourced security model that provides round-the-clock monitoring, detection and remediation of security events. It combines advanced security platforms with human analyst oversight to continuously analyze signals across networks, endpoints, user accounts and cloud software.

Think of it as someone watching every system, every night, every weekend, and responding right away when something looks wrong.

Four structural shifts are driving demand among SMBs for increased cybersecurity right now:

• Cyber insurance requirements have tightened. The Canadian cyber insurance market is projected to nearly double from US $590 million in 2025 to US $1.14 billion by 2030, and underwriters have raised the bar sharply. Insurers routinely deny coverage or apply premium surcharges of 20 to 100 percent when organizations cannot prove continuous monitoring and rapid response. Screenshots and yes/no questionnaires no longer cut it.
• Regulatory compliance is now binding. Bill C-8, the Critical Cyber Systems Protection Act, received Royal Assent on June 16, 2026, establishing mandatory security baselines across six federally regulated sectors. This also affects SMBs across other sectors. Many large enterprises are rewriting vendor contracts to require IT service providers to legally attest to specific security baselines and provide immediate incident notifications.
• AI-powered attacks have made response time the deciding variable. Threat actors now begin active exploitation within an average of 14 minutes of obtaining credentials. Human-paced IT triage cannot respond at that speed. Automated containment workflows can.
• MSPs themselves are now prime targets. Recent RMM platform exploits have shown attackers pivoting from MSP consoles into downstream client environments. When your RMM can become the attack vector, 24/7 monitoring of your own environment is part of what you owe your clients. The same SOC as a service coverage you sell should be watching your back too.

Why building an in-house SOC doesn’t add up for most MSPs

Some MSPs respond to lost security deals by considering an in-house Security Operations Center. While that seems like a logical solution to combat cyberthreats for clients, MSPs quickly walk back this decision because:

• Staffing costs alone are prohibitive. Round-the-clock monitoring requires five to seven full-time analysts to cover three daily shifts, weekends and vacations. An experienced analyst in Toronto earns around $113,166 at base. With a 28% benefits and overhead multiplier, the fully loaded cost per analyst reaches $144,852. For five new staffers, this costs your business upwards of $724,260 annually, before a single license is purchased.
• Platform licensing adds a second large fixed cost. Every SOC requires a SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) platform, the tool that aggregates and correlates logs across the environment. A standard Microsoft Sentinel deployment runs $108,000 to $190,000 per year in licensing. Splunk Cloud for a moderate environment runs $50,000 to $150,000. Even open-source alternatives like Wazuh carry infrastructure and engineering overhead that pushes year-one costs to $180,000 to $280,000.
• Alert fatigue drives turnover. One study discovered that 56% of North American MSPs experience alert fatigue weekly. For those managing more than 1,000 clients, daily exhaustion is universal. Around 25% of security signals are false positives, and 62% of SOC alerts go entirely unanswered because manual triage cannot keep up with demand. Replacing a burned-out analyst costs 1.5 to two times their annual salary once recruiting and lost institutional knowledge are factored in.

Over three years, an in-house enterprise SIEM deployment costs $1 million to $2.3 million in total cost of ownership. A partner-delivered SOCaaS model runs $115,000 to $240,000 over the same period, with staffing costs at zero and platform licensing rolled into a flat per-seat price.

SOC as a service vs. MDR vs. MSSP

The managed security market runs on overlapping terminology that buyers and MSPs frequently conflate. Here is how the three main models differ:

• MDR (Managed Detection and Response) delivers active threat detection, investigation and rapid containment. MDR providers combine endpoint, identity and cloud telemetry with dedicated human analysts who isolate compromised systems and terminate hijacked sessions.
• MSSP (Managed Security Service Provider) focuses on administering and maintaining network security infrastructure: firewalls, VPNs and patch management. MSSPs manage devices but do not typically perform active threat hunting or human-led incident response.
• SOCaaS is the most complete model. It provides the full infrastructure, software and analyst team needed to manage a SIEM, integrating logs across an entire IT environment and delivering round-the-clock triage and remediation.

MDR vs. SOC as a service

MDR and SOCaaS overlap significantly, and some vendors use the terms interchangeably. The meaningful distinction is scope:

• MDR focuses primarily on endpoint, identity and cloud telemetry with rapid containment as the priority. 
• SOCaaS is broader, managing the underlying security platform, analyzing multi-source logs from across the full environment and coordinating compliance reporting alongside active response. 

In practice, the quality of the partner and the depth of their remediation matter more than which label they use.

SOC as a service vs. MSSP

An MSSP administers and maintains security hardware. It keeps firewalls patched and networks configured. SOCaaS monitors what is happening inside those environments in real time, hunts for threats and responds when something is found. 

Clients who ask for “24/7 monitoring” are usually asking for SOCaaS, not MSSP services. The two are complementary, not interchangeable.

How to offer SOC as a service without hiring analysts

Partnering with a verified SOCaaS provider lets an MSP offer round-the-clock protection under its own brand without building any internal security infrastructure. Three decisions determine whether the service is profitable: the delivery model, the security stack and the pricing structure.

Sherweb’s partner security resources cover the curated vendor options available across all three models below.

Choose your delivery model: white-label, co-managed, or resell

Each service delivery model suits a different stage of security practice maturity:

• White-label delivery means the SOCaaS partner operates entirely behind the scenes under the MSP’s brand. Alerts are triaged, ticketed and contained in the MSP’s name. Clients interact only with the MSP. This model protects brand equity and carries the highest margin potential, but also the most operational responsibility.
• Co-managed security splits the work. The MSP’s internal team handles standard IT alerts and patch management during business hours, while the SOCaaS partner manages threat hunting, forensics and after-hours coverage. This works well for MSPs with some existing security capabilities who want to extend coverage without building a more expensive, full-time 24/7 team. 
• Resell makes the MSP an authorized agent selling the partner’s branded service directly to the end client. The partner handles service agreements, support and incident response without the MSP as the middleman. It is the fastest path to market with the lowest technical risk, but yields the thinnest margins for the MSP.

For MSPs already helping clients with Microsoft 365 security and compliance, the co-managed or white-label models connect naturally to existing Microsoft 365 workloads.

Build your security stack from pre-vetted tools

A strong security stack consolidates telemetry from across the client environment into a single platform. Collecting every available log raises storage costs and could bury critical alerts in noise. The priority is high-value telemetry from four signal types:

• Identity telemetry: Failed logins followed by sudden access, permission changes on service accounts
• Endpoint behavior: Anomalous process execution, unauthorized remote access tools on workstations
• Mailbox-level signals: Language anomalies, zero-day phishing payloads in internal communications
• Cloud infrastructure access: VPN connection patterns, administrative portal logins

Sherweb’s marketplace includes pre-vetted security tools from vendors such as Huntress and SentinelOne, which significantly reduces vendor evaluation and integration time. The CyberMSP community is also a helpful resource for learning how MSPs are structuring their security stacks in practice. 

Package and price the service

Pricing is where many MSPs lose the margin they should be keeping. Roddy Bergeron, Sherweb’s Cybersecurity Technical Fellow, put it plainly: “If you win on price, you will lose on price.” Leading with value is the only durable position in security services.

Start with the depth of remediation your SOC partner actually performs:

• An alert-only SOC flags risks and creates tickets, which shifts weekend containment work back onto the MSP’s team. If that labor is not priced into client agreements, it comes straight out of margin.
• A fully active partner handles device isolation, threat hunting and 24/7 containment. This typically costs $15 to $20 more per endpoint per month at wholesale, but it supports a 45% target margin. At a $15 wholesale rate, the client rate is approximately $21.75 per endpoint, with out-of-SLA incidents billed separately. 

Packaging tiers by remediation depth and compliance reporting depth lets MSPs sell up rather than compete on price.

Schedule a call with the Sherweb team to work through your specific pricing model and partner selection.

What to look for in a SOC as a service partner

Choosing the wrong SOC partner is an expensive mistake. Start your search by evaluating these most critical criteria: 

• Active remediation depth. Does the SOC isolate compromised hosts, disable accounts and contain the threat? Or does it generate a ticket and hand the work back to you? The answer determines how much unpriced labor lands on your team during an incident.
• Communication structure. During an active breach, you need a direct line to someone who knows your client’s environment. Confirm whether the partner assigns a dedicated security team or routes you through a general support queue. That distinction matters at 2 a.m. on a Sunday.
• Post-incident support. Strong partners stay engaged for 14 to 30 days after an incident to monitor for persistent threat activity, then conduct a root cause analysis. Partners who disengage during containment leave the MSP exposed to reinfection.
• Tool agnosticism. A SOC that supports only one EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) vendor creates a lock-in risk. Confirm the partner integrates with multiple EDR platforms before committing.
• Forensic and insurance alignment. Cyber insurers now expect automated, live-collected evidence rather than passive screenshots. A SOC with established carrier relationships can accelerate claims and, if arranged in advance, handle forensic collection itself.
• Canadian data sovereignty. Clients under PIPEDA, OSFI Guideline B-13, or Quebec’s Law 25 require security logs to be processed and stored within Canadian borders. Get this confirmed in writing in the partner agreement.

Sherweb’s curated security vendor lineup has been evaluated against these criteria as part of the partner program.

Stop staffing the problem. Start selling the service.

SOCaaS is a revenue problem before it is a technology problem. MSPs have the right tools but are losing because they lack a viable path to 24/7 coverage that fits their cost structure.

A partner-backed model solves that. The analyst team, the SIEM infrastructure and the compliance reporting are already built. Your job as the MPSP is to choose the right delivery model, price it correctly and put it in front of clients who are already asking.

Join the Sherweb partner program to access the security partner stack and start building a repeatable SOCaaS offering.

Frequently asked questions

What is SOC as a service?

SOC as a service is an outsourced security model that provides continuous threat monitoring, detection and incident response. Human analysts investigate alerts from a client’s network, endpoints and cloud systems to identify and contain attacks before they disrupt operations. It is typically sold on a per-seat monthly subscription.

What is the difference between MDR and SOC as a service?

The difference between MDR and SOC as a service comes down to scope. MDR focuses on identifying and isolating active threats using endpoint, identity and cloud telemetry. SOC as a service is broader: it manages the underlying security platform, analyzes logs across the full environment and coordinates compliance reporting alongside active response.

What is the difference between SOC-as-a-service and an MSSP?

The key difference between SOC-as-a-service and an MSSP is what each actually monitors. An MSSP administers and maintains network security hardware such as firewalls and VPNs. SOC as a service focuses on real-time threat monitoring, alert triage, threat hunting and active incident response inside those environments.

How do you evaluate SOC as a service providers?

Evaluating a SOC as a service provider starts with verifying the depth of active remediation during an incident, not just how alerts get escalated. From there, confirm Canadian data residency compliance, post-incident support duration, EDR agnosticism, and established relationships with cyber insurance carriers. Get dedicated communication channels confirmed in writing before signing.