Every choice has its pros and cons, and this is no exception. Before outsourcing a SOC, it is important to have a clear understanding of both sides. By the way, SOC stands for Security Operations Center—the team that monitors your network 24/7.
The biggest advantage is that you don't have to build your own team. Setting up a full-fledged security team requires significant time, resources, and money—things many SMEs don't have readily available or the capacity to develop in-house. Furthermore, you don't just need one specialist; you need an entire team trained in areas like incident analysis, threat hunting, and incident response. Finding such a qualified team is difficult these days. It is no coincidence that the security sector has been struggling with a shortage of qualified personnel for years.
Outsourcing cybersecurity can therefore offer significant benefits. You are essentially buying expertise you don't have in-house, and time that your IT staff can now spend on other tasks instead of losing sleep over a dashboard at night. Regarding costs: you pay for coverage, not for salaries. No recruitment, no sick leave, no development plans, or expensive training.
In practice, we see that IT service providers and SMEs, in particular, benefit from having one party handle their security monitoring and incident response. This saves them from having to manage it themselves. Let's be honest: building that level of knowledge and expertise is a major undertaking, and most smaller companies don't have a dedicated security team ready to go. In those cases, outsourcing is almost always the better option. See here why cybersecurity is even more important for SMEs.
The honest downside is that you relinquish a degree of direct control as an organization. You no longer see every second of what is happening yourself; you have to rely on reports and on a partner to do what has been agreed upon. For some companies, this feels uncomfortable or like a loss of control. Additionally, by outsourcing cybersecurity, you create a dependency on a third party. This naturally carries some risk, especially if the quality of that partner were to decline over the long term.
These feelings and risks are real, but they can be addressed with the right agreements. Ask about response times, communication protocols, exactly what is being monitored, and how you can maintain visibility without having to be hands-on yourself. A partner that cannot transparently explain these types of matters is a partner you should investigate further.
Not every company needs to immediately start looking for a reliable cybersecurity partner, but in the three situations below, it is definitely worth considering.
Do you lack an in-house security team and have no realistic plan to build one in the near future? Then SOC-as-a-Service is not so much an alternative as it is the only practical path to cybersecurity coverage outside of office hours. Setting up a small team that only monitors for eight hours a day provides a false sense of security—especially when hackers strike during the other 16 hours.
Even with a dedicated IT team, cybersecurity is often the first topic to be sidelined when things get busy. A migration, a system outage, or onboarding a new colleague quickly take precedence. This is logical, as your business needs to keep running. Security doesn't suddenly become less important, but priorities shift elsewhere.
The same applies to expertise. An IT professional managing networks, backups, and the helpdesk rarely has time to keep up with the latest threats, vulnerabilities, and attack techniques. This isn't a criticism; it’s simply a different field of expertise. Given the incredibly rapid developments in the IT and cybersecurity landscape, it’s not something you can just do on the side.
The Cyber Security Act has been in effect since August 15, 2026, serving as the Dutch implementation of the European NIS2 directive (source: Dutch Government, NCSC). More than 8,000 organizations in the Netherlands are now subject to requirements regarding risk management, incident reporting, and demonstrable security measures. If you fall under these regulations, or if you provide services to a company that does, "we're doing something" is no longer enough. You must be able to demonstrate what is being monitored, when action was taken, and why.
Outsourcing to a partner that documents this structurally is not only practical, but it is often the fastest way to achieve demonstrable compliance.
Outsourcing cybersecurity is not a free pass. Even with an external party managing it for you, the ultimate responsibility remains with your organization, both legally and practically.
In concrete terms, this means you remain responsible for determining which data and systems need protection, for access management within your own organization (who has access to what), for reporting incidents to the appropriate authorities, and for being able to prove that you have engaged a party that actually performs the work. During a tender, an audit, or an insurance application, you will be asked what arrangements you have in place, and it is important that you can provide an answer—both in writing and with practical examples.
Peakproteqt offers Managed Detection & Response (MDR) in two packages: MDR Essentials and MDR Premium. Essentials is built for companies with up to approximately 15 to 20 employees and feels like having an internal security team, without the need to build one yourself. Premium adds more extensive incident response, monthly reporting, threat intelligence, vulnerability management, and more. It is suitable for organizations that require more than just basic monitoring.
The exact cost depends on the number of employees, servers, and endpoints. If you want to know how that comparison works for your situation, use the price calculator for an indication based on your own numbers. You will also immediately see the Return on Investment (ROI) of outsourcing your cybersecurity.
We think along with you from the very first conversation: what risks are relevant to you, what is already in place, and what should be prioritized. Want to know what Peakproteqt can do for your organization? Get in touch.
