Managed Detection & Response for NZ Businesses

Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is a cybersecurity service that combines continuous 24/7 monitoring of your IT environment with human security analysts who investigate alerts and actively respond to threats. Unlike tools that block known threats, MDR detects suspicious behaviour across your entire environment – endpoints, cloud, network, identity, and email – and takes action when something real is found. For NZ SMBs that cannot justify a full in-house security team, MDR delivers enterprise-grade detection and response as a managed service.

Antivirus blocks known malware. MDR detects and responds to threats that antivirus misses – unknown malware, suspicious behaviour, lateral movement, credential abuse, and attacks that unfold over time across multiple systems. Antivirus is a preventive tool. MDR is a detection and response capability. Most businesses need both – antivirus as a baseline, MDR as the layer that catches what antivirus does not.

EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) is the technology that monitors individual devices for threats. MDR is the complete managed service that uses EDR tools – plus network, cloud, and identity monitoring – and adds human analysts who review every alert and respond to confirmed threats. EDR without managed expertise generates enormous alert volume that most NZ businesses cannot handle internally. MDR puts the human layer behind the tooling.

A Security Operations Centre (SOC) is the team and infrastructure required to provide continuous security monitoring and response. Building an internal SOC requires hiring multiple analysts, implementing expensive tooling, and maintaining 24/7 coverage – typically costing $400,000 or more per year in New Zealand. MDR delivers SOC-level capability as a managed service at a fraction of that cost. NSP’s MDR service is backed by NSP’s in-house SOC, so you get the capability without building the infrastructure.

No. MDR works alongside your existing tools – antivirus, firewall, email security, and endpoint protection. MDR adds the continuous monitoring and human analysis layer that makes those tools effective. Your existing tools generate data. MDR makes sense of that data, identifies genuine threats within it, and responds when something real is found.

MDR is priced based on the size and complexity of your environment – number of users, endpoints, and cloud services in scope. NSP provides a clear, fixed monthly fee based on agreed scope before anything starts. As a reference point, building an equivalent internal capability would require multiple security analysts and specialist tooling – typically $400,000 or more per year. MDR delivers the same capability for a fraction of that cost, scaled to what your business actually needs.

Yes – significantly. NZ cyber insurers are increasingly requiring evidence of active, continuous security monitoring as a condition of coverage or a prerequisite for preferred premiums. NSP’s MDR service produces the monitoring logs, incident reports, and evidence of active response capability that your insurer needs at renewal. Businesses with MDR in place are in a materially stronger position when applying for or renewing cyber insurance.

NSP’s Security Operations Centre monitors your environment in real time – alerts are generated and reviewed as events occur, not in a daily or weekly log review. For confirmed threats, NSP begins active response immediately. The goal is to reduce dwell time – the period between when an attacker gains access and when they are detected – to minutes rather than the industry average of weeks.

Yes. NSP’s Security Operations Centre is staffed by New Zealand-based analysts who operate in your time zone and understand the NZ regulatory and business environment. You are not routing your incident through an offshore support desk. When something happens at 2am on a Sunday, the team responding is local.

When NSP’s analysts confirm a genuine threat, they act immediately – isolating affected systems, terminating malicious processes, locking compromised credentials, and containing the incident before it can spread. You are notified with a clear explanation of what was found, what action was taken, and what to do next. For complex incidents requiring deeper forensic investigation or legal notification support, NSP’s incident response team is immediately available.