Co-managed SOC in the Caribbean: shared monitoring that scales
Hybrid model: your internal IT plus regional MSSP with playbooks and clear escalation.
Puerto Rico SMB with 80 employees does not need own 24/7 SOC — needs effective monitoring when GuardDuty, EDR, and M365 alert at 2am. Co-managed SOC model divides responsibilities: internal IT knows business and users; regional MSSP (Caribbean or Miami serving PR) triages, hunts, and escalates per SLA. CISA recommends detect capability; co-managed is how many SLTT and SMBs obtain it affordably.
Define RACI before signing: MSSP monitors tier 1-2, escalates tier 3 to internal IT with context; internal IT executes containment on known endpoints; MSSP supports ransomware forensics. Documented playbooks for top scenarios — credential leak, BEC, ransomware, insider. Without RACI, co-managed becomes "nobody owns it."
Typical PR stack: Microsoft Sentinel or Wazuh centralizing M365, EDR, firewall, AWS GuardDuty. Minimum 90-day log retention; 1 year if compliance requires. Krebs on Security emphasizes logs without analyst are expensive archive — validate MSSP has bilingual analysts familiar with regional threats.
MSSP selection: references in Puerto Rico or anglophone Caribbean, contractual response time SLA, quarterly escalation drill, clarity on log data residency. Bruce Schneier warns against outsourcing security judgment — you retain business decisions; MSSP informs options.
Co-managed SOC cost for 50–150 endpoints + cloud is usually fraction of San Juan FTE analyst. Compare vs average breach cost documented by IBM/CISA. Scale to full managed possible as maturity grows; start co-managed to maintain internal control and learn from real alerts.
Operations and execution — connecting strategy with what the team ships every week.
