SOC as a Service

Your internal IT team is tasked with keeping the lights on, managing email, fixing hardware, and ensuring applications run smoothly. A Security Operations Center (SOC) team is fundamentally different. It is a specialized, proactive intelligence function dedicated solely to defending your business by managing cyber risk.

IT staff may set up a firewall and keep the office tech infrastructure running, but they do not have the knowledge or resources to provide 24/7 real-time threat detection to manage incident response during an attack.

This gap exposes your company to three major risks:

• Business Disruption: Without continuous monitoring, vulnerability management, or Managed Detection and Response (MDR), attackers can steal your data, encrypt your systems, suspend or corrupt key business processes, destroy your reputation and demand a costly payout. The FBI reported that ransomware complaints increased 9% year-over-year in 2024, with it posing the most pervasive threat to critical infrastructure.
• Regulatory Penalties: Your board must demonstrate due diligence and continuous compliance Continuous monitoring of cybersecurity program goals and regulatory compliance controls eliminates manual processes and reduces costs, while on-demand automated reporting ensures proof of compliance. Compliance framework models cover regulatory, supply chain, industry standards, and insurance policy compliance.. Our service includes compliance monitoring, Risk Management Framework (RMF) based security policy recommendations, and monthly reports to directly satisfy regulatory requirements. We ensure you have the evidence to show regulators that you are taking reasonable steps to protect data and aligning with frameworks like those from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
• Cyber Insurance: Insurers are demanding higher standards. Cyber-insurance carriers now require documented evidence of continuous monitoring and incident response capabilities, not just reactive IT support. They expect multi-factor authentication (MFA), endpoint detection, and 24/7 monitoring as minimum baseline coverage. Our specialized services report against the mandatory requirements to qualify for or maintain affordable cyber insurance, protecting your business's financial resilience.

This matters to the board because you need evidence of effective risk management: can you demonstrate to regulators that you are proactively monitoring and managing cyber-risk? Can you satisfy the cyber-insurance provider that you have continuous detection and response? You need it as according to Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency data, this risk is far from theoretical..

CLICK here to see what an in-house SOC would cost and the alternatives.

What does it cost for an in-house SOC for a 100-user company?

The decision to build an internal SOC is not just a high salary line item, it is a massive capital expenditure and resource drain that is out of reach for many SMBs. For a company of 100 employees, staffing a basic 24/7 SOC requires a team of at least eight specialized analysts and a manager to cover three shifts, benefits, and training.

Based on industry estimates, the annual cost of an in-house SOC for a small to mid-sized organization runs into seven figures. This cost breaks down into four categories:

• Personnel: Specialized security analysts are highly paid and hard to retain. Labor alone can easily exceed $1.2 million annually for a minimal 24/7 team.
• Technology & Tools: Buying and licensing advanced tools for Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), endpoint detection, and threat intelligence is a major upfront cost and continuing annual operating expense.
• Overhead & Training: Budget must be allocated for physical space, power, equipment, and constantly upgrading cybersecurity certifications. Continuous training to keep pace with new attack methods can run to $15,000-$25,000 per analyst annually. When key personnel leave, and they will in this competitive market, you face both replacement costs and dangerous knowledge gaps that attackers can exploit during transition periods.
• Opportunity Cost: The time your executive team spends hiring, building, and managing a SOC is time lost from focusing on core business functions.

The recent news stories show that cyberattacks are happening everywhere and while only large companies get the media attention, smaller businesses are being targeted on an even greater scale as they are seen as easier targets.

In 2024, the FBI logged over 859,000 complaints, with reported losses exceeding $16 billion in reported cybercrime across the world.

CyberCrime magazine reports 60% of small companies close within 6 months of an attack.

A 158-year old UK Transport company was breached and could not recover, closing down with 700 job losses, as reported by ITGovernance.

The total first-year investment will typically exceed $1,500,000, with ongoing annual costs of $1,000,000 for basic SOC capabilities.

For a 100-employee or smaller organization, this is simply unaffordable, but regulatory and business risk pressures demand it.

CLICK here to see how Inception helps you address the issue at a fraction of the in-house cost without additional capital and manpower.

How does inception address this issue without capital or staffing expenditure?

Inception’s SOC as a Service (SOCaaS) delivers an enterprise-grade cybersecurity operation without the capital investment, staffing headaches, or operational overhead of building and housing your own team.

We have combined our vCSO and vCISO services with WatchGuard’s WatchGuard® Technologixes, Inc. is a global leader in unified cybersecurity and Inceptions partner for MFA, Encryption, Advanced Endpoint, MDR, XDR, Compliance reporting and Patch Management. The Unified Security Platform® approach is uniquely designed to deliver world-class security to improve operational efficiency. Trusted by more than 17,000 security resellers and service providers to protect over 250,000 customers, the company’s award-winning products and services span network security and intelligence, advanced endpoint protection, multi-factor authentication, and secure Wi-Fi. Together, they offer five critical elements of a security platform: comprehensive security, shared knowledge, clarity & control, operational alignment, and automation. ISO and SOC2 accredited MDR/SOC solution, a winner in the 2025 Cybersecurity Awards , to deliver SOCaaS comprising Managed MFA, Encryption WatchGuard Full Encryption protects Windows and macOS devices with full disk encryption against potential data breaches and unauthorized access. It leverages BitLocker on Windows operating systems or FileVault on macOS systems to encrypt and decrypt disks without impacting end users, allowing admins to centrally control and manage user recovery keys., Advanced Endpoint Protection WatchGuard Advanced EPDR adds hunting and response tools to WatchGuard EPDR, which combines preventive and EDR technologies with two security services as features: Zero-Trust Application Service and Threat Hunting Service. The mix of automated services, advanced hunting and response tools, and the analysts’ knowledge leave threats no place to hide, making the attacks unprofitable and leveling up customers’ security posture., Detection, Response, Threat Hunting WatchGuard ThreatSync equips enterprises with XDR capabilities to centralize cross-product detections and orchestrate the automated response to threats from a single pane of glass. It simplifies cybersecurity while improving visibility and response to threats across the organization faster, reducing risk and cost and providing higher accuracy that would otherwise be impossible., Patch Management WatchGuard Patch Management is a solution for managing vulnerabilities in operating systems and third-party applications. It also provides centralized, real-time visibility into the security status of software vulnerabilities, missing patches, updates and end of life (EOL) software, inside and outside the corporate network., and Compliance Reporting.

What WatchGuard brings: WatchGuard® Technologies, Inc. is a global leader in unified cybersecurity. Their Unified Security Platform® approach is uniquely designed for SMB’s to acquire world-class security that improves operational efficiency. Trusted by over 250,000 customers, the company’s award-winning products and services span network security and intelligence, advanced endpoint protection, multi-factor authentication, and secure Wi-Fi. Together, they offer five critical elements of a security platform: comprehensive security, shared knowledge, clarity & control, operational alignment, and automation.

WatchGuard currently run multiple SOC facilities worldwide, each with over 100 analysts, covering the major domains of cybersecurity – check out the MDR / SOCaaS demo)

WatchGuard currently run multiple SOC facilities worldwide, each with over 100 analysts, covering the major domains of cybersecurity. (LINK TO MDR DEMO USING THE PROVIDED DEMO ICON)

Use of a dedicated MDR Portal allows real-time visibility on all security activities from monitoring to detection to analysis to remedial actions and from these results the required periodic compliance reports are generated and delivered automatically.

To date, WatchGuard remain one of very few companies that provide a fully integrated stack incorporating protections across endpoints, firewalls, identity, network, and cloud and the only one providing comprehensive patching including end-of-life (EOL) software.

What do you get: You gain immediate access to our team of certified security experts and technical account managers (TAMs) who bring over 40+ years of combined experience and full accreditation including for C|CISO The International Council of E-Commerce Consultants (EC-Council) is a member-based organization that certifies individuals in various e-business and information security skills. https://www.eccouncil.org, ISC2 International Information System Security Certification Consortium, or ISC2, is a non-profit organization which specializes in training and professional certifications for cybersecurity professionals. https://www.isc2.org, OSCP OSCP stands for Offensive Security Certified Professional, a hands-on, practical certification in ethical hacking and penetration testing offered by OffSec. https://www.offsec.com/ and COMPTIA The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) is the world’s leading vendor neutral information technology (IT) certification and training body. https://www.comptia.org/ certifications.

Having partnered with WatchGuard for more than 20 years, we deliver the required services at a predictable monthly operational expense.

Typically, this comes in at around 10% of the cost of building and maintaining in-house capabilities, falling to less than 7.5% from year 2 onwards, and is delivered and active within weeks rather than months.

Combined, the SOCaaS provides a customized, proactive service that addresses the issues of cost, continuity, and compliance within one comprehensive package.

We configure your Compliance Reporting saving you time and money while ensuring you maintain the technical controls needed to continuously comply with changing regulations and standards. The Risk Management Framework assessments include ISO-27001, NIST 800-53, NIST SP800-171, NIST CMMC 2.0, GDPR, and NIS2 with automated report creation for ad-hoc, regulatory, and insurance compliance audits.

Your board receives exactly what it needs: Quarterly reports demonstrating compliance with regulatory requirements, monthly risk assessments showing your security posture, and executive dashboards translating technical threats into business impact terms.

You lower the risk to your insurance: When auditors or cyber-insurance underwriters ask for evidence of your security program, you can provide documented proof from certified security professionals. Our services directly address the core requirements insurers demand: MFA, EDR, data and access protections, continuous monitoring, incident response capabilities, vulnerability management, and security risk assessment. These may vary by industry and market.

This matters because ransomware recovery costs average over $1.5 million excluding ransom payments, and business disruption from cyberattacks can extend for weeks.

We actively protect your business continuity: Our 24/7 monitoring detects ransomware attacks, business email compromise attempts, and data breaches in real-time, not days later during forensic investigations. When incidents occur, our response team contains threats immediately with automatic device isolation in under 10 milliseconds and an average Mean Time to First Response (MTFR) of under 6 minutes. Once contained, isolated, or deflected, an SOC manager will call you personally if the incident meets the pre-agreed criteria, no robotic messages or impersonal emails.

You reduce the resource burden hugely: With a False Positive performance of less than 1 event per client per month, resources are not wasted. No recruiting security talent in a market where qualified candidates are scarce and command premium salaries. No managing specialized staff whose skills require constant updating. No capital expenditure on security tools that depreciate rapidly.

Instead, you convert an unpredictable, high-cost security challenge into a manageable operational expense while ensuring your board fulfills its fiduciary duty to protect the organization from preventable threats and your cyber-insurance remains valid.

In short: Your internal IT ensures your operations remain online; our SOCaaS ensures they remain secure while giving the board the dashboards, monthly risk reports and quarterly summaries they need for governance and insurance.

We deliver Real Security for the Real World, without the enterprise-grade budget, compliance gaps, or sleepless nights worrying about vacant security positions. We bridge the gap between general IT support and focused cyber risk management with zero capital or staffing expenses. We eliminate the financial burden by providing a fully operational SOC, ready from day one, through a scalable subscription model typically at around 10% of an in-house option in year 1 and reducing in year 2 onwards.

Inception’s SOCaaS offering combines our vCSO program with WatchGuard’s Total MDR services so at Board level, you know regulatory compliance, security, ransomware protection, and insurance concerns, along with your fiduciary responsibilities, are being met 24/7.

Click here to have a CISO contact you – can you afford not to?

Inception’s Approach to Email Protection

The SOCaaS delivers 24x7x365 threat monitoring, detection and incident response, threat intelligence, threat hunting, and cybersecurity investigation.

Leveraging a combination of technologies, analytics, and specialized skills to enable rapid detection, analysis, and investigation of incidents, our clients benefit from end-to-end SOC capabilities that adhere to the CISA guidelines for SOC providers Security Operations Center as a Service (SOCaaS) or Security Operations Center (SOC) Optimization Advisory Service. Our client-centric service includes personalized onboarding and ongoing support from your assigned Customer Account Manager and Technical Account Managers.

Click here to have a CISO contact you – can you afford not to?