What is Managed Detection and Response (MDR)? The complete 2025 guide

Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is a comprehensive cybersecurity service that provides organizations with 24/7 threat monitoring, detection and response capabilities, delivered by a remote Security Operations Center (SOC) staffed by elite security experts. Unlike a simple tool, MDR is an outcome-focused service designed to close the cybersecurity skills gap, stop advanced threats, and rapidly restore business operations.

• What is the main benefit? You get 24/7/365 protection from an expert security team without the high cost and complexity of building your own SOC.
• Who is it for? Any organization struggling with understaffed IT teams, alert fatigue, or the need for round-the-clock security. It is especially critical for mid-market companies and the managed service providers (MSPs) who serve them.
• How does it work? It combines advanced security technology with an essential layer of human expertise for threat hunting, investigation, and rapid response to contain threats.

Organizations adopt MDR services to solve critical gaps that technology alone cannot address. The core problem is that buying more security tools doesn't guarantee better security outcomes. The gap is almost always a lack of 24/7 expert human oversight to operate the tools, hunt for hidden threats, and respond decisively.

• The cybersecurity skills gap: It is challenging and expensive to hire, train and retain a team of senior security analysts to cover nights and weekends. An internal SOC can cost over $735,000 per year to staff and operate. MDR provides this expertise as a service for a fraction of the cost.
• Constant alert fatigue: Modern security tools generate thousands of alerts daily. Lean IT teams are quickly overwhelmed, leading to burnout and a risk of missing genuine threats. MDR services filter this noise, escalating only verified, high-priority incidents.
• The accelerating speed of attacks: Ransomware and other advanced threats can compromise an organization in hours, not days. According to IBM, the average breach takes 277 days to identify and contain. MDR dramatically reduces this "dwell time" by providing immediate investigation and containment.

• Delivering 24/7 coverage: Clients expect always-on protection. MDR enables MSPs to deliver on 24/7 SLAs without needing to staff their own costly, round-the-clock SOC.
• Scaling security operations profitably: Managing security for dozens or hundreds of clients creates immense complexity. MDR providers with multi-tenant platforms, like Acronis, allow MSPs to manage clients efficiently, enforce standard playbooks and maintain healthy margins.
• Proving value and meeting SLAs: MDR services provide the detailed reporting, post-incident analysis, and Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) / Mean Time to Respond (MTTR) metrics needed to prove security value to clients and satisfy compliance requirements.

A high-quality MDR service follows a proven incident response lifecycle, moving from initial alert to complete resolution.

1. Event triage and prioritization: The service begins by ingesting telemetry from endpoints, cloud workloads, and networks. The MDR provider’s SOC utilizes automation and expert analysis to filter out false positives, enrich data and prioritize the most critical events, ensuring your team focuses only on real threats.

2. Proactive threat hunting: This is a key differentiator. Instead of just waiting for an alert, expert analysts proactively search for hidden threats, attacker techniques, and indicators of compromise (IOCs) that automated tools might miss.

3. In-depth investigation: Once a credible threat is identified, the SOC team conducts a deep-dive investigation. They analyze the forensic timeline to understand the threat's origin, scope, and potential impact.

4. Guided or hands-on response: This is where the service delivers its primary value. The MDR team executes a rapid response to contain the threat. Actions can include isolating affected endpoints from the network, killing malicious processes, and terminating attacker access.

5. Remediation and integrated recovery: The final step involves restoring systems to a known clean state. This is where MDR solutions with integrated platforms, such as Acronis MDR, provide a unique advantage. They can orchestrate point-in-time recovery from clean, immutable backups directly from the same console, drastically reducing downtime.

Acronis MDR is a prime example of a modern MDR service that delivers security outcomes through a unified platform, combining expert human oversight with integrated technology.

• 24/7/365 SOC-as-a-Service: Get continuous monitoring, threat hunting, and hands-on remediation from a world-class global Security Operations Center. This allows you to achieve a faster response, reducing MTTR from a typical ~11 hours for an internal team to under 1 hour.
• A unified platform (one agent, one console): Acronis MDR is built on the Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud. This single solution integrates EDR/XDR, vulnerability management, automated patching, and backup. This drastically reduces tool sprawl, lowers operational overhead, and simplifies management.
• Integrated, one-click recovery: Acronis goes beyond just containing threats by offering outsourced attack rollback and data recovery from immutable backups. If a system is compromised, the SOC can initiate a point-in-time rollback to a clean state, ensuring business continuity.
• Automation with human oversight: Automated playbooks handle routine response actions. At the same time, human-in-the-loop approvals ensure critical decisions — such as isolating a server or rolling back data — are made with your consent.
• Proof of value and compliance: The service delivers post-incident reports, audit trails, and executive-ready dashboards with MTTD/MTTR metrics, making it easy to demonstrate ROI and prove compliance.

For MSPs and MSSPs, offering MDR is no longer optional; it's essential for protecting clients and growing your business. A partner-centric MDR solution should provide the tools to operate efficiently and profitably.

• Deliver outcomes, not just alerts: With a solution like Acronis MDR, you can offer clients a clear security outcome: containment and recovery. The outsourced SOC handles triage, investigation and response, freeing your team to focus on client relationships and strategy.
• Improve operational efficiency: A multi-tenant, unified platform is critical. The ability to manage security, backup, and recovery for all clients from a single console reduces context-switching and eliminates policy drift. This consolidation can improve the total cost of ownership (TCO) by up to 60%.
• Scale your security services profitably: Leverage the MDR provider's SOC to offer 24/7 protection without hiring more staff. Standardized playbooks and parallel containment and recovery actions across your client base allow you to scale services without scaling headcount.
• Go-to-market faster: The best MDR programs provide strong channel support. The Acronis Partner Program, for example, includes sales enablement tools, co-marketing funds, pricing guides and technical training to help you package, market, and sell MDR services effectively.

If you lead security at a mid‑sized enterprise or service provider, you may be trying to decide between endpoint detection and response (EDR) and managed detection and response (MDR). Here’s what you need to know:

EDR is a tool. It collects telemetry from processes, files and registry changes on endpoints and uses AI or signatures to block known threats. Your team is responsible for interpreting alerts and taking action.

MDR is a service. It builds on EDR or XDR, offering 24/7 analyst support that hunts for hidden threats, investigates incidents and guides or performs remediation. You get human expertise without needing to hire an entire SOC.

Key distinction. With MDR, a human SOC validates alerts, hunts for threats, prioritizes incidents and performs or guides containment and recovery. EDR alone still relies on your staff to triage and respond.

Real‑world question answered: “Do we need MDR if we already have EDR?”  If you struggle with alert fatigue or lack round‑the‑clock coverage, MDR provides the people and processes you need to turn EDR data into actionable insights. Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud integrates EDR, backup, vulnerability scanning and anti‑malware into a single agent and console, backed by a 24/7 SOC that hunts for threats and responds on your behalf.

MDR services fill gaps that tools alone cannot solve. For any organization asking, “What does MDR do and how does it help us?” here’s a concise breakdown:

Continuous monitoring and triage. Acronis’s SOC ingests telemetry from endpoints, cloud workloads and backups, filters noise and prioritizes real threats.

Proactive threat hunting. Human analysts search for stealthy attacks that automated rules miss, such as living‑off‑the‑land techniques or identity misuse.

Incident investigation and response. The MDR team investigates incidents, isolates affected systems and, in the advanced tier, can remediate and recover directly from backups.

Guided recovery. Integrated recovery allows outsourced attack rollback and point‑in‑time restores. Acronis’s unified console lets you launch investigations, isolate endpoints and restore data from one place.

Reporting and compliance. MDR services provide real‑time dashboards, multi‑channel security escalations and post‑incident reports.

A use case to consider: After a ransomware alert, the MDR team can quarantine the device, kill malicious processes, roll back to a clean snapshot and produce a report on how the attack unfolded.

Acronis advantage: The Acronis MDR service includes onboarding, 24/7 SOC support, continuous monitoring, event triage and prioritization, rapid threat isolation, guidance to mitigate and prevent incidents, outsourced attack rollback and recovery, and detailed multi‑channel security escalations.

You might see terms like “managed SOC” and “MDR” used interchangeably. While there is an overlap, here’s how they typically differ:

Managed SOC. This usually refers to an outsourced team that monitors telemetry, triages alerts and hands findings back to your staff. Some providers may advise on response, but definitions vary.

MDR. MDR includes everything a managed SOC offers, plus proactive threat hunting, incident investigation and direct or guided remediation. MDR services often integrate backup‑based recovery, allowing analysts to restore systems without switching tools.

Outcome focus. Managed SOCs can sometimes be passive depending on the provider; MDR is designed to reduce dwell time and business impact by containing and removing threats and then recovering operations.

Common question: “Can our managed SOC just do what MDR does?”  It depends on the provider. Acronis offers SOC‑as‑a‑Service alongside integrated remediation and recovery. You get both the monitoring and triage of a managed SOC, as well as hands‑on threat hunting and rollback capabilities of MDR in one solution.

Whether you're looking to enhance your organization's defenses or build a profitable security practice, MDR provides the expertise and outcomes you need.

Join the Acronis MSSP Partner Program. Leverage a multi-tenant, SaaS-based platform to deliver MDR, backup, and cyber protection services under your brand, with complete training and go-to-market support.