How MDR Services Leave Your Organization Vulnerable

As an IT director, you want the best security possible for your organization. The promise of 24/7 managed detection and response (MDR) services can seem appealing. Who wouldn’t want dedicated security analysts watching your systems around the clock? But before outsourcing your security to an MDR provider, consider how this approach might actually leave you more vulnerable than you realize.

The Hidden Gaps in MDR Protection

When evaluating MDR services, many IT leaders discover concerning limitations:

Delayed Response Times

While MDR providers promise rapid response, the reality is often quite different. With junior-level analysts juggling multiple clients and drowning in alerts, response times frequently stretch to 60 minutes or more just to begin analysis. By comparison, automated detection can alert you within seconds, allowing immediate action. In those critical moments when MDR analysts are still triaging alerts, attackers can already be expanding their reach through your network.

Limited Access to Your Own Data

Many MDR services restrict your access to security data and logging, forcing you to go through their analysts for basic information about your own environment. This creates unnecessary friction when you need to investigate issues or demonstrate compliance. Even worse, limited MDR logging means less correlation between events, creating dangerous blind spots attackers can exploit.

Internal Staff Time Required

Instead of being able to take immediate action when threats arise, you're dependent on an MDR analyst who may not understand your environment's specific needs and context. Here's the reality of what happens:

• Provide context about the affected systems
• Verify normal vs. suspicious behavior
• Check user activity patterns
• Confirm configuration settings
• Validate potential impact

3. Only after you provide this information can they suggest next steps.
4. You then still have to implement the actual fixes!

The result? You're doing the same investigation and remediation work you'd do anyway - it's just delayed by waiting for the MDR's involvement. This disconnect not only slows response times, but can lead to missed threats and incomplete remediation.

A Better Approach: Peace of Mind with Automated Support

The experiences of organizations that have moved away from MDR services tell a compelling story. Take Paul Silvestri, IT Manager at Girl Scouts of Southeastern Michigan. Within 36 hours of deploying Blumira's platform, Paul received an early morning alert within seconds of suspicious email forwarding rules on a C-level executive's account. Because he had direct access to the security data and clear response guidance, Paul immediately:

• Verified the compromise
• Changed the account password
• Locked down the account
• Prevented a mass phishing campaign from being launched

"I'm able to resolve [issues] faster than finding out about it and playing defense," explains Paul. "I get an alert? I go right on offense. I deal with it instead of finding out several days later that something has happened."

This experience is echoed by Aaron Cervasio, CISO at Connect Cause, who switched from an MDR provider to gain better visibility and control.

"With Blumira, we got alerts on a customer with plaintext password documents in their environment that [our previous MDR] never alerted us to. It was crickets – we heard nothing from them, ever. If we're going to be an MSP with expertise, we can't rely on some random third-party SOC to interpret this information on our behalf. We have to look at the event and determine if it's actionable or not."

Both organizations discovered that direct access to security data and automated alerts led to faster, more effective threat response than waiting for an MDR service to notice and react to issues.

Why Modern Security Needs Both Speed and Control

Today's threats move too quickly to wait for an outside analyst to review alerts and decide on action. You need:

1. Immediate Visibility: Direct access to comprehensive security data across your environment
2. Automated Detection & Response: Continuous monitoring that catches threats in minutes, not hours, and immediate threat containment of affected endpoints stops the spread of malware
3. Intelligent Response Framework: Step-by-step playbooks that help you take effective action based on the local context of the situation
4. Own Your Security: The ability to move quickly when threats arise

The Real Value of Internal Ownership

When you maintain control of your security operations with the right automated support:

• You can respond to threats immediately instead of waiting for an MDR analyst
• You have complete access to your security data for investigations and compliance
• Your team builds valuable institutional knowledge about your security posture
• You can adapt and customize security settings to your specific needs

As Paul from Girl Scouts discovered: "I can sleep a lot better at night knowing that things are more secure than they were before. Blumira makes things easier for me because I have that single pane of glass that basically tells me there are 565 million logs being reviewed."

Intelligent Guidance, Not Just Instructions

When security incidents occur, MDR services typically provide one of two things: either generic response playbooks or instructions from an analyst who may not fully understand your environment. Both approaches have serious limitations.

Beyond Basic Playbooks and Analyst Instructions

Static playbooks can't account for the unique aspects of your environment or the specific nature of each threat. And waiting for an MDR analyst to review the situation and provide guidance means valuable time lost. Plus, that analyst may lack crucial context about your systems and operations, and is busy juggling your alerts with those of all their other clients.

This is where Blumira's approach fundamentally differs. Rather than providing generic checklists or making you wait for analyst instructions, our platform includes an adaptive response intelligence system that:

• Creates custom remediation paths based on your specific environment
• Adjusts recommendations in real-time as you investigate
• Combines threat intelligence with your local context
• Guides you through effective decision-making like an expert analyst would

Making the Right Choice for Your Organization

Before committing to an MDR service, ask yourself:

• Can you afford to wait minutes, hours, or sometimes even days, for an analyst to review critical security alerts?
• Do you want to depend on external analysts who don't know your environment?
• Are you comfortable with limited access to your own security data?
• Why add an extra layer between you and threat response when your team still needs to:
  • Provide all the environmental context
  • Verify user and system behavior
  • Implement the actual fixes
  • Document the response actions

A More Effective Security Partnership

Rather than outsourcing your security to an MDR provider and still being responsible for doing all of the legwork yourself, consider a modern approach.

• Automated, continuous threat detection
• Automated threat response with endpoint isolation
• Direct access to comprehensive security data
• The ability to address your threats in less time than it takes an MDR to ask for guidance
• Clear, actionable response guidance
• Expert support when you need it

This approach gives you the empowerment and visibility you need, while ensuring you have strong security that moves at the speed of modern threats. Want more visibility? Check out Blumira's Domain Security Assessment tool.

Want to see the difference speed makes in security response? Schedule a demo to discover how you can respond to threats in minutes instead of waiting hours for MDR analysis. Learn how Blumira helps you achieve better security outcomes while maintaining direct ownership of your environment.