Managed Detection & Response (MDR)
A 24/7 human-led SOC that investigates and shuts threats down —
not just sends you an alert and waits.
Managed Detection & Response, run by real people
Most firms that come to us already have security tools — a firewall, endpoint protection, maybe MFA. The gap usually isn’t the tools. It’s that no one’s watching them at 2 a.m., and no one acts when one of them fires.
That’s what MDR is for. AMA’s MDR puts a 24/7 human-led Security Operations Center on your environment — correlating signals across your endpoints, network, cloud, email, and identity, sorting real threats from noise, and containing them for you. And it’s our own people doing the watching — the same San Diego team that runs your environment, not a faceless global SOC you’ll never get on the phone. It layers on top of the security floor every AMA client already runs — EDR and MFA from day one — so detection and response is depth, not your only line of defense.
A real person makes the call
A real security analyst — an actual person — looks at what fires, decides what’s a genuine threat, and acts. Automation and AI help them move faster; they don’t make the call alone. When it’s your business on the line, someone’s accountable for the decision.
Every surface, one view
Endpoints, network, cloud, email, and identity, correlated together — so an attack that hides by moving between them doesn’t slip through the gaps.
Evidence for auditors and insurers
Every investigation and response is documented — the record your compliance auditor needs and your cyber-insurance carrier asks for after an incident.
What MDR actually is
MDR — Managed Detection and Response — is two things working together: technology that watches your whole environment, and a team of security analysts who monitor it, investigate what it flags, and respond around the clock, for you.
The technology (often called XDR — Extended Detection and Response) pulls signals from endpoints, network, cloud, email, and identity into one correlated picture, so a threat that would hide inside any single tool has nowhere to sit. The people are what make it managed: someone is actually watching, and someone actually acts — on a holiday weekend, not just during business hours.
EDR, XDR, MDR — what's the difference?
Easy to drown in acronyms, so here’s the plain version.
EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) is the tool on each device — laptops, servers — watching for and stopping malicious behavior on that endpoint. It’s your floor; every AMA client runs it from day one.
XDR (Extended Detection and Response) widens the lens — it correlates what the endpoint sees with your network, cloud, email, and identity, catching attacks that move between them.
MDR (Managed Detection and Response) is the part people forget: the humans. A 24/7 SOC running that technology for you — investigating every real alert, clearing the false ones, and taking direct action to contain a threat. EDR tells you something happened. MDR makes sure someone competent does something about it, immediately.
Not every “MDR” is the same. A lot of it is really just automated alerting with a nice dashboard. Ours is hands-on: real investigation, real response, documented.
Why businesses put MDR at the center of their security
24/7, because attacks don't keep office hours
Attackers hit nights, weekends, and holidays on purpose, betting no one’s watching. Our analysts are, every day of the year — so a threat gets caught and contained before it spreads.
A full SOC, without building one
A real in-house SOC means hiring analysts, running a 24/7 rotation, and buying the tooling — six figures a year before you’ve stopped a single attack. MDR gives you that team and that tooling as a service.
We contain it — we don't just flag it
The moment a threat is confirmed, our analysts act — isolating the device, cutting off the activity — not after a ticket’s been filed and read the next morning. That overnight gap is exactly where ransomware wins. We close it. Since 2015, not one of our fully-managed clients has had ransomware take their business down.
Built on a real security floor
MDR isn’t a standalone bolt-on here. It layers on top of the EDR and MFA every AMA client already runs — so you’re adding depth to a solid stack, not patching a hole.
Evidence you can hand to a regulator or insurer
Every detection and response is written down. When an auditor asks how an incident was handled, or your carrier wants proof of monitoring, the record already exists.
How our MDR works
See everything, correlated
We pull telemetry from endpoints, network, cloud, email, and identity into one view — so analysts see the whole picture, not four disconnected dashboards.
Catch what signatures miss
Behavioral analytics and machine learning flag the anomalies signature-based tools walk right past — unknown malware, zero-days, and the quiet lateral movement that comes before a real breach.
A real analyst investigates
When something flags, an analyst validates it, clears the false positives, and works out the real scope before anyone hits a button. No knee-jerk, no alert fatigue dumped on you.Contain, remediate, document
Confirmed threats get shut down in real time — isolate the endpoint, block the activity, remediate — and every step is recorded for you, your auditor, and your insurer.
How to get MDR
MDR comes standard on our top-tier Compliance plan. On any other managed plan — Complete, Foundation — it’s a straightforward add-on: keep the plan you’re on and layer MDR on top. Whether it’s worth adding comes down to your compliance pressure and what you’re actually protecting. The honest way to size it is a short conversation about your setup — not a number on a page that turns out wrong for you.
Not sure where your gaps are?
Start with a Cyber Health Check — a no-obligation review of your environment with a written report of what’s actually exposed.
Or talk to the founder directly for a straight read on whether MDR is even your right next move.