SOC Onboarding & Log Source Assessment
We inventory your systems and decide which logs and telemetry give the best detection coverage for your risk.
- Log source plan
- Coverage assessment
Cybersecurity & Risk Management
Managed SOC Services
Our analysts monitor your logs, endpoints and cloud around the clock, investigate alerts, and respond to real threats, giving you SOC coverage without hiring and rostering a team of your own.
- 24/7 monitoring
- Threat detection
- Alert triage
- Response playbooks
- Years of delivery
- 8+
- Years of delivery
- Projects shipped
- 350+
- Projects shipped
- Clients across US, UK, AU & SG
- 200+
- Clients across US, UK, AU & SG
What’s included
Everything You Need for 24/7 Threat Monitoring Without Building a SOC
Round-the-clock analysts, SIEM and EDR tooling, and response playbooks delivered as a managed service.
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SIEM Deployment & Log Integration
We deploy or manage a SIEM such as Microsoft Sentinel or Splunk and connect endpoints, cloud, identity and network data.
- SIEM setup
- Log connectors
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Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR/XDR) Management
We run EDR agents across your endpoints and servers, spotting ransomware and malicious behaviour before it spreads.
- EDR deployment
- Policy tuning
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24/7 Security Monitoring & Alert Triage
Analysts watch your environment around the clock and triage alerts, so your team only sees verified threats.
- 24/7 monitoring
- Triage notes
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Threat Detection Engineering & Threat Intelligence
We write and tune detection rules mapped to MITRE ATT&CK and feed in current threat intelligence.
- Detection rules
- ATT&CK coverage map
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Incident Escalation & Response Playbooks
Agreed playbooks define who acts and how fast, enabling containment of confirmed threats in minutes, not hours.
- Response playbooks
- Escalation matrix
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Proactive Threat Hunting
Analysts search your data for hidden attacker activity that automated alerts missed, reducing attacker dwell time.
- Hunt reports
- New detections
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Monthly SOC Reports & Security Posture Reviews
You get clear metrics, incident summaries and improvement advice for executives, auditors and cyber insurance renewals.
- Monthly SOC report
- Quarterly review
Need something specific?
Why Kramate
Why Business Owners Choose Kramate for Round-the-Clock Watch
A team that watches for trouble so you can sleep and run your business.
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Someone Is Watching While You Sleep
Instead of
attacks that wait for nights and weekends
With Kramate
Our analysts watch your systems around the clock, so a night-time attack is not left alone.
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We Call You Only When It Matters
Instead of: a flood of alerts that all get ignored
With Kramate: We check each alert first and only wake your team for real threats.
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A Team Without Hiring a Team
Instead of: paying many salaries for a full security team
With Kramate: You get a trained watch team for a monthly fee, instead of hiring your own.
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Agreed Steps Before Trouble Starts
Instead of: arguing over who does what in a crisis
With Kramate: We write down who does what and how quickly, long before anything happens.
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Monthly Reports You Can Understand
Instead of: paying for watching and seeing nothing back
With Kramate: Each month you get a plain summary of what we saw, what we did and what to improve.
Our approach
How Our Managed SOC Service Runs, Step by Step
Trained analysts watch your systems and alert you when something looks wrong.
6 clear steps 6 deliverables you keep
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Coverage Planning
We agree which systems, accounts and sites our analysts will watch, and who we call first.
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Log Connection
We connect your logs from servers, email, cloud and firewalls into one place we can monitor.
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Alert Tuning
We set rules for what counts as suspicious in your business and quieten the false alarms.
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Round-the-Clock Watching
Our analysts review alerts, decide which are real threats and investigate the ones that are.
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Escalation and Response Help
When a threat is real, we call your contact at once and advise on how to contain it.
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Monthly Security Review
We report what was found, what was blocked and what to improve, then adjust the watching.
Tools & technologies
Technologies We Use for Managed SOC
Our analysts work with established detection tools across logs, hosts and networks.
- Splunk: Searches and analyses logs to find issues and threats.
- Elastic: Searches and analyses security logs at scale.
- Grafana: Dashboards and alerts for live system metrics.
- Microsoft Sentinel: Cloud security monitoring that gathers alerts from across your systems.
- Wazuh: Open-source monitoring of servers and devices for threats and drift.
- Falco: Detects suspicious activity inside running containers.
- Datadog: Monitors applications, infrastructure and logs in one place.
- Snort: Detects and blocks suspicious network activity.
- Wireshark: Inspects network traffic to spot misuse and misconfiguration.
- Suricata: Watches network traffic and flags known attack patterns.
- PagerDuty: Alerts the right on-call person when something breaks.
- Jira: Tracks work, priorities and delivery progress.
- Python: Readable language for business logic, data and automation.
- Ansible: Automates server setup and configuration without manual steps.
Expert guide
Managed SOC Services: A Complete Guide for Businesses
Managed SOC services give an organization a security operations center run by an outside team: analysts who watch your security signals around the clock, investigate alerts, and tell you or act when something looks wrong. A SOC, short for security operations center, is the function that turns raw logs into decisions.
Few mid-sized organizations can staff every shift, tune detection rules and keep analysts current. A managed arrangement shares that load, provided it is set up with clear data sources, escalation paths and permissions.
This guide explains what a SOC does, how in-house, managed and co-managed models differ, what to ask providers, regional considerations for the USA, UK, Australia and Singapore, and how to plan a budget.
How managed SOC services work, from signal to action
A SOC runs a repeating loop. Telemetry flows in, detection rules and analytics raise alerts, analysts triage them, confirmed incidents are escalated or contained, and lessons feed back into better detection.
- Collect. Logs and signals from endpoints, identity systems, cloud platforms, email, network devices and key applications.
- Detect. Rules, behavioral analytics and threat intelligence highlight suspicious patterns.
- Triage. Analysts separate false alarms from real activity, adding context from your asset list.
- Respond. Following agreed runbooks, they isolate a device, disable an account, or hand over to your team.
- Improve. Tuning, reporting and regular reviews reduce noise and close coverage gaps.
Quality depends far more on the inputs and agreements around this loop than on the number of screens in a room.
In-house, managed and co-managed models
| Model | Who watches and responds | Best fit | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|
| In-house SOC | Your own analysts and engineers | Large organizations with steady demand and budget | Hiring, retention and shift coverage are hard |
| Fully managed SOC | Provider monitors and handles most response | Small and mid-sized teams with little security staff | Less direct control; relies on clear runbooks |
| Co-managed SOC | Provider covers out-of-hours and triage; your team handles decisions and fixes | Teams with some security skill who lack round-the-clock cover | Needs clean hand-offs between two teams |
Managed detection and response, often shortened to MDR, usually emphasizes active response on endpoints. A managed SOC may cover a wider range of data sources and reporting. The labels overlap, so compare what is actually monitored and what the provider may do.
What a SOC needs to see
A SOC cannot detect what it cannot see. Start with the sources that reveal most intrusions:
- Identity logs: sign-ins, MFA events, privilege changes.
- Endpoint telemetry from laptops and servers.
- Email and collaboration security events.
- Cloud control-plane logs, which show configuration and access changes.
- Network and firewall logs, DNS and remote-access records.
- Critical application and database audit logs.
Cloud logs are a frequent gap, so pair monitoring with cloud security services. Log retention matters, because investigators often need to look back across weeks of activity. Decide retention periods early and balance them against storage cost and privacy obligations.
Detection engineering and the role of AI
Good detection is designed, not bought. Teams often map rules to adversary behaviors described in the MITRE ATT&CK knowledge base (opens in a new tab), then measure which techniques they can actually see. Gaps become a prioritized backlog.
Machine learning helps by grouping related alerts, spotting unusual behavior and drafting investigation summaries. Analysts still make the call, since models can miss context and produce confident errors. Ask a provider how automation is validated and where humans stay in the loop. Threat intelligence such as the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog (opens in a new tab) helps prioritize patching alongside detection.
Regional considerations: USA, UK, Australia and Singapore
Monitoring collects logs that may contain personal data, so privacy laws apply to the service itself. Check where logs are stored, which staff can see them, and which countries analysts work from. The UK NCSC (opens in a new tab) and the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (opens in a new tab) publish national guidance, and CISA StopRansomware (opens in a new tab) offers US resources. Australian and Singapore organizations in critical sectors may have additional reporting duties.
Time zones matter: a provider with analysts across regions can follow the sun, but alerts and hand-offs should still reach your team in your working hours. Confirm legal requirements with counsel.
Cost factors and budget planning
Pricing for managed SOC services usually follows endpoints, users, data volume or a mix. Variables include the number of log sources, retention length, response authority, reporting depth and whether the provider supplies the monitoring platform or works in yours. Onboarding and tuning effort in the first months is real, so include it.
Compare the total against a full in-house cost: several analysts for round-the-clock cover, tools, training and turnover. Also budget for your own side, since someone must act on escalations.
How to evaluate managed SOC services providers
- Which data sources are included, and who builds the integrations?
- What exactly will analysts do at night: notify, contain, or investigate?
- How are alerts tuned, and how will you see false-positive and coverage reports?
- Where is data stored, who can access it, and how is it retained?
- How are analysts trained and vetted?
- How does the contract handle exit, data return and a transition to another provider?
Linked work such as vulnerability assessment gives the SOC context about which assets are weakest.
How Kramate delivers managed SOC services
We begin with a free consultation and sign an NDA before detailed technical talks. A detailed estimate follows within 24 hours, with fixed-price, dedicated-team or hourly options. You get a dedicated project manager, daily Slack or Teams updates and a review at the close of each two-week round. Runbooks, rules and documentation are yours. Learn more in how we work.
Four to six hours of overlap with US Eastern time, and a full working day with the UK, Australia and Singapore, keep escalations reachable. Kramate can run the service or support your internal analysts. Our own practices include least-privilege access and encrypted devices.
Frequently asked questions
What is a managed SOC?
It is a security operations center run by an external provider. Analysts monitor your logs and alerts around the clock, investigate suspicious activity, and escalate or contain incidents according to rules you agree in advance.
What is the difference between a managed SOC and MDR?
The terms overlap. MDR usually centers on endpoint detection with active response, while a managed SOC may monitor a broader set of sources such as identity, cloud and network. Ask any provider to list monitored sources and permitted actions.
Should we build an in-house SOC or outsource?
In-house suits larger organizations with constant demand and the ability to hire and retain analysts. Outsourcing or co-managing suits teams that need round-the-clock cover without building it. Hybrid models are common.
What logs does a SOC need?
At minimum, identity and sign-in logs, endpoint telemetry, email security events, cloud control-plane logs and firewall or remote-access logs. Add critical application logs as coverage matures, and review coverage whenever you adopt a new platform.
Is a managed SOC worth it for a small business?
It can be, if you handle sensitive data or lack staff to watch alerts at night. Compare it with the real cost of covering shifts yourself, and make sure someone on your side can act on escalations.
How are alerts escalated?
By severity, following a runbook. Low-risk alerts may be handled and reported later; high-risk ones trigger a call to named contacts. The provider needs pre-agreed permission for any containment action.
Sources and further reading
- MITRE ATT&CK (opens in a new tab)MITRE
- CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog (opens in a new tab)CISA
- NIST SP 800-61 Incident Handling Guide (opens in a new tab)NIST
- FIRST CSIRT Services Framework (opens in a new tab)FIRST
- NCSC UK Guidance and Collections (opens in a new tab)NCSC UK
- Singapore CSA Cybersecurity Resources (opens in a new tab)Cyber Security Agency of Singapore
- CISA StopRansomware (opens in a new tab)CISA
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Cost depends on the number of endpoints, users, cloud accounts and log sources monitored, log volume, hours of coverage and response duties. SIEM and EDR licences are separate and vary by vendor. Custom detection work and reporting add effort. Send us your SOC scope and a no-obligation estimate follows within 24 hours.
We list your assets and log sources, deploy collectors and agents, connect them to the SIEM, tune detections, then agree escalation paths and go live. Duration depends on how many sources you have, data quality and how quickly access is granted. Tuning continues after launch.
You do. Before detailed SOC talks, Kramate signs an NDA and transfers IP and deliverables to you, including playbooks, detection content and reports. Logs stay in tooling under your control, and security data is limited to named analysts.
We connect to tools you already run, such as Microsoft Defender, CrowdStrike or Splunk, and escalate through your ticketing and on-call channels. An agreed matrix defines who acts on what. Your team handles business decisions while analysts handle investigation.
For most small and mid-sized firms, a managed SOC is more practical, since round-the-clock coverage needs several skilled analysts plus tooling. Large organisations may build in-house or use a hybrid. The choice depends on budget, data sensitivity and hiring ability.
A SIEM is software that collects and correlates logs. A SOC is the team and process that monitor and respond. MDR is a service focused on detecting and responding to threats on endpoints and related systems. A managed SOC often combines all three.
Ask about analyst qualifications, how alerts are triaged, detection coverage against known attack techniques, response times in the contract and report clarity. Review a sample report. Be cautious of anyone promising to stop every attack.
Taking new projects
Let’s talk about your Managed SOC Services needs
Tell us about your project and get a free consultation and estimate within 24 hours.
- We reply within 4 business hours A real consultant reads your brief — no bot, no queue.
- 30-minute discovery call We dig into goals, constraints and budget. NDA signed on request.
- Proposal in 24 hours Scope, timeline, team and price — clear enough to decide on.
NDA on request You own the IP No obligation Free estimate