24x7 MDR (Sophos) vs Optiv Managed Detection and Response (MDR): Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)

24x7 MDR (Sophos)

Mid-market and enterprise security teams that need threat hunting and incident response outsourced entirely should consider 24x7 MDR (Sophos); the service prioritizes detection and analysis over your team doing the heavy lifting, with around-the-clock analysts triaging Sophos platform alerts and conducting investigations under NIST RS.AN. The cloud deployment means no infrastructure overhead, which matters if your SOC is understaffed or nonexistent. Skip this if you have mature internal analysts who prefer owning the investigation workflow or if you need deep integration with non-Sophos endpoints; you'll be paying for a managed service when you don't need one.

Optiv Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

Mid-market and enterprise teams without dedicated 24/7 SOC staffing should evaluate Optiv Managed Detection and Response because its 40 hours annually of active defense work shifts you from passive log review to actual threat hunting and containment. The vendor's NIST DE.CM and DE.AE coverage is solid, but response capabilities (RS.MA, RS.AN, RS.MI) lag behind pure incident response platforms; you're getting detection and triage, not deep forensics or recovery orchestration. Skip this if your organization already has mature internal threat hunting or needs end-to-end incident management with forensic rigor.