MSSP

Managed Security Service Providers operate in a market where customer expectations continue to rise whilst differentiation becomes harder to sustain. Customers expect stronger protection, faster response, better reporting and clearer commercial value, even as cyber threats grow in volume, sophistication and operational impact.

At the same time, the economics of delivering managed security have become increasingly difficult. Revenue may grow with customer numbers, but operating costs grow with alerts, investigations, escalations and analysts. In many cases, margin is constrained less by technology than by labour. The practical challenge for the modern MSSP is no longer simply how to deliver managed security, but how to deliver it profitably, at scale, and with a value proposition strong enough to support retention and expansion.

Deterministic eXecution Integrity changes that equation. Abatis, the deterministic execution engine within DXI, prevents unauthorised code from executing before it can generate alerts, incidents or business disruption. For an MSSP, every prevented execution is analyst time that never has to be spent. The cheapest investigation is the one that never has to take place.

Most MSSPs have built their services around remarkably similar technology stacks. Endpoint Detection and Response, SIEM, SOAR, Network Detection and Response, vulnerability management and cloud security platforms now form the backbone of the modern Security Operations Centre. These technologies remain valuable, but they are increasingly difficult to differentiate. Competition therefore shifts towards price, service levels and response times rather than genuine technological advantage.

That creates a structural problem. Traditional SOC and MDR models begin after execution. Malicious code runs, telemetry is generated, behavioural anomalies are observed, alerts are raised, analysts investigate, and escalations follow. The operating model assumes that value is created through detection, triage, investigation and response. It also assumes that as environments grow, the human workload required to sustain that model will grow with them.

DXI operates earlier. By controlling what code is permitted to execute before operational consequences can occur, Abatis removes work from the SOC rather than merely helping the SOC process it more efficiently. Fewer malware executions mean fewer alerts to triage, fewer investigations, fewer escalations and fewer incident response engagements. The outcome is not only stronger security. For many MSSPs, it has the potential to reduce the cost of delivering managed security by reducing the operational workload associated with malware execution.

This is the shift that matters. Most MSSPs compete on how quickly they can react once an incident has begun. DXI enables them to compete on reducing the number of incidents that ever require a response in the first place.

For many MSSPs, the most important operational challenge is not a lack of tools. It is the cumulative economic pressure created by service commoditisation, analyst dependency, operational complexity and growing customer expectations.

Most providers sell variations of the same underlying stack. That makes premium pricing difficult to defend and creates constant pressure from lower-cost competitors. At the same time, traditional SOC models generate substantial volumes of behavioural alerts and telemetry which must be reviewed by skilled analysts. As customer estates expand across enterprise IT, cloud, OT and IoT, the cost of people often rises faster than incremental revenue.

Operational complexity compounds the problem. MSSPs frequently run multiple consoles across EDR, SIEM, NDR, asset discovery, compliance, ticketing and reporting. This increases integration effort, onboarding friction, operational risk and the difficulty of presenting customers with a clear and unified view of what the service is achieving.

There is also increasing pressure from regulated and sovereignty-sensitive markets. Government, defence, finance, utilities, healthcare and critical infrastructure customers expect managed security providers to demonstrate resilience, governance, accountability and control over change and execution. In these markets, the MSSP is not judged only by how quickly it can respond. It is judged by whether it can demonstrate control, reduce operational risk and support regulatory confidence.

Most MSSPs sell fixed-price monthly services. That means every ransomware investigation, false positive, overnight escalation or unplanned incident response engagement consumes analyst time that cannot be billed elsewhere. Margin is therefore shaped not only by what the MSSP charges, but by how much labour is required to deliver the service.

DXI improves this equation by reducing the operational workload associated with malware execution. If unauthorised code does not execute, much of the downstream operational chain either disappears or is materially reduced. That matters because the most expensive parts of SOC delivery are often not the tools themselves, but the people and processes required to investigate, escalate, tune and report on events.

For the MSSP, this creates clear business benefits:

Increase endpoints and devices managed per analyst.
Reduce overnight investigation and escalation workload.
Improve SLA performance by reducing incident volume rather than simply accelerating response.
Lower operational cost per customer and per contract.
Improve analyst utilisation and revenue per analyst.
Increase gross margin without increasing prices.

This is not merely a technical efficiency story. It is a better operating model. In a market where service lines are often difficult to differentiate, the ability to deliver equivalent or stronger security outcomes with lower operational effort becomes a meaningful source of commercial advantage.

The cybersecurity industry has spent years optimising around Mean Time to Detect and Mean Time to Respond. Those metrics remain relevant, but they are a product of a service model that begins after malicious execution has already taken place.

DXI allows the MSSP to frame the service more powerfully. Rather than competing solely on how quickly the provider can investigate incidents, it enables the provider to compete on reducing the number of incidents that ever require investigation. Instead of saying, “we detect attacks quickly,” the MSSP can credibly say, “we prevent a large class of attacks from executing before they become operational incidents.”

That is a stronger message commercially and strategically. Customers do not ultimately buy response metrics for their own sake. They buy reduced disruption, improved resilience and confidence that the provider is reducing the operational risk to the business. Fewer disruptive incidents are easier for customers, boards and regulators to understand than marginal improvements in investigation speed.

This also creates a distinctive position in a crowded market. Most MSSPs deliver similar combinations of EDR, SIEM, SOAR and managed detection services. DXI enables providers to introduce a preventive capability beneath the existing stack without asking customers to abandon the technologies they already rely upon.

Critical National Infrastructure, Operational Technology, healthcare, transportation, manufacturing, utilities and smart city environments increasingly require demonstrable resilience, deterministic control and cyber sovereignty. Engineered across Microsoft Windows, Linux and Android, Abatis enables MSSPs to extend deterministic protection across enterprise IT, Operational Technology, Industrial Control Systems and the Internet of Things through a single architectural approach.

This enables providers to address higher value regulated markets whilst maintaining a consistent security philosophy.

Customers rarely change Managed Security Service Providers because another provider offers a more attractive dashboard. They leave because confidence has been lost. A successful ransomware attack, a serious compromise, repeated incidents or visible operational disruption inevitably raises difficult questions, regardless of where responsibility ultimately lies.

By materially reducing the likelihood of unauthorised code executing within protected environments, DXI helps reduce one of the principal causes of customer dissatisfaction: successful compromise. That matters because customers evaluate MSSPs not only by the quality of reporting or the speed of triage, but by whether the provider appears to be reducing real-world risk.

Reducing successful execution helps reduce:

Ransomware events affecting business operations.
High-severity escalations to customer leadership teams.
Board-level questions about why the attack was not stopped earlier.
The operational events most likely to trigger customer churn.

Better dashboards may help presentation. Fewer successful incidents help retention.

Traditional SOC models scale by adding analysts. As customer numbers increase, so do endpoints, telemetry, alerts, investigations and operational overhead. This creates a direct relationship between revenue growth and staffing growth, which in turn constrains margin.

DXI changes this equation because it removes a significant portion of routine malware-related workload before behavioural analysis and alert triage begin. The analyst is no longer required to repeatedly answer the same questions around whether code is malicious, legitimate or simply another false positive generated by a noisy environment.

That creates room for analysts to focus on higher-value activities such as threat hunting, customer engagement, strategic reporting, onboarding, hardening, governance and service improvement. It also helps providers support larger estates without proportional growth in headcount.

This enables Security Operations Centres to:

Support larger customer estates without proportional increases in analysts.
Increase devices and environments managed per analyst.
Reduce alert fatigue and improve service quality.
Improve productivity across fixed-price service contracts.
Reallocate skilled personnel towards higher-value services.

Every prevented malware execution is analyst capacity that can be redeployed elsewhere.

For the serious MSSP buyer, the commercial case can be expressed simply.

Revenue is generated through recurring monthly SOC, MDR and managed security contracts. Costs are driven by analyst salaries, shift coverage, investigations, escalations, incident response, detection engineering, reporting, onboarding and ongoing service overhead.

DXI changes that operating model in a direct sequence:

Unauthorised execution is prevented at the kernel.
Fewer malware incidents occur.
Fewer alerts need to be triaged.
Fewer investigations and escalations are required.
Analyst workload is reduced.
Cost to serve declines.
Gross margin improves.

That is the business case. It resonates not only with CISOs, but also with CEOs, COOs, CFOs and Heads of Managed Services because it links technical control directly to operating economics.

Abatis is not designed to replace the existing Security Operations Centre, SIEM, SOAR or Endpoint Detection and Response platforms already used by the MSSP. Those technologies continue to deliver real value and remain embedded in customer contracts, workflows and service models.

DXI strengthens the architecture beneath them. Working alongside Abatis, Praesidium provides operational visibility, governance, compliance, SIEM, Network Detection and Response, asset discovery and incident management through a unified operational platform. Aegis extends deterministic control to protected information by governing which applications may access sensitive data.

Together, these capabilities complement existing security investments rather than displacing them. That matters commercially because it allows the MSSP to improve security outcomes, reduce operational burden and differentiate its service without undermining the service revenues already built around existing tooling.

Managed Security Service Providers occupy a unique position within the cybersecurity ecosystem. They protect some of the world’s most important organisations whilst operating privileged infrastructure upon which those organisations depend. Security Operations Centres, management platforms, administrative workstations and remote management systems therefore represent highly attractive targets for sophisticated threat actors.

A successful compromise of an MSSP has the potential to affect not only the provider itself but also every customer that depends upon it. The provider becomes part of the customer’s supply chain. Protecting that supply chain begins at home.

For that reason, MSSPs should deploy the same deterministic execution controls that they recommend to their customers. Deploying DXI across the provider’s own operational environment demonstrates confidence in the control, reduces the risk that malicious software, compromised updates or unauthorised code can disrupt the provider’s own business, and helps protect the operating foundations upon which EDR, SIEM, SOAR and remote management tooling depend.

This is more than internal hygiene. It is part of the provider’s credibility.

Higher-value growth opportunities for MSSPs increasingly sit in sectors where conventional detection-centric approaches are commercially or operationally limited. Critical National Infrastructure, Operational Technology, industrial environments, utilities, transportation, healthcare, government, defence and smart city deployments all demand resilience, predictability, demonstrable control and clear governance.

Engineered across Microsoft Windows, Linux and Android, Abatis enables MSSPs to extend deterministic protection across enterprise IT, Operational Technology, Industrial Control Systems and the Internet of Things through a single architectural approach. This allows providers to address markets where behavioural EDR may be unsuitable, too noisy, too operationally intrusive or too dependent on external cloud analytics.

DXI and Praesidium enforce execution policy locally and do not rely on the continual export of operational telemetry to external cloud services in order to make protection decisions. This supports sovereignty-sensitive customers and gives MSSPs a stronger foundation for building managed services aligned with evolving regulatory and jurisdictional expectations.

For providers seeking expansion, this is significant. It supports entry into higher-value regulated markets whilst maintaining a consistent security philosophy and a more defensible margin profile.

Managed security is no longer defined solely by the ability to detect attacks. Increasingly, it is defined by the ability to prevent disruption, demonstrate resilience and deliver measurable business outcomes.

That is where DXI creates strategic value for the MSSP. It helps reduce labour-intensive incident workload, improve analyst productivity, preserve and strengthen existing services, support sovereign and regulated deployments, improve customer retention and differentiate the provider in a market where many service stacks appear interchangeable.

The result is a better business model for managed security: fewer incidents, lower operating costs, stronger customer confidence, improved margins and a more credible platform for expansion.

The most valuable security incident is the one that never occurs. The most profitable investigation is the one that never has to take place.

Reduce Incidents. Increase Margins.

CHANGING THE ECONOMICS OF MANAGED SECURITY

THE BUSINESS PROBLEM BEHIND THE SOC

IMPROVE GROSS MARGIN

COMPETE ON PREVENTION,

NOT RESPONSE

One approach across IT, OT and IoT.

PROTECT EXISTING SERVICE REVENUES

EXPAND INTO NEW MARKETS

Local policy enforcement supports sovereignty.

TRADITIONAL MDR VS DXI-ENABLED MANAGED SECURITY

REDUCE CUSTOMER CHURN

INCREASE ANALYST PRODUCTIVITY AND SCALE WITHOUT LINEAR GROWTH

A SIMPLE ECONOMICS NARRATIVE FOR THE MSSP BUYER

STRENGTHEN EXISTING SERVICES RATHER THAN REPLACE THEM

PROTECT YOURSELF FIRST

EXPAND INTO REGULATED, SOVEREIGN AND OT MARKETS

A BETTER BUSINESS MODEL FOR MANAGED SECURITY

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