A typical security operations centre (SOC) has three core costs: People, data and tools. The total cost of these will vary dramatically based on factors like how many endpoints and users are in your environment and the number of SOC team members you need. Various SOC cost calculators available online put the cost of building a SOC for a 1000-user environment at upwards of £2 million per annum.

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) alerts are what happens when an EDR system decides that event data from an agent installed on an endpoint, or several endpoints, shows a potential threat. This doesn’t mean that every EDR alert is a malicious event in progress. Many are “false positives” or malicious behaviour that is actually not a threat.

If you had to choose a security measure that would make the most difference to your cyber program right now, what would it be? Maybe you’d like to get another person on your team? Someone who is a skilled analyst, happy to do routine work and incredibly reliable. Or perhaps you’d prefer an investment that would give your existing team members back more of their time without compromising your ability to find and fix threats? What about human intelligence without human limitations?