The security operations center-as-a-service (SOCaaS) market continues to heat up, with research firms predicting the rapid growth in the number and sophistication of cyberattacks, combined with the cost of building and running an internal SOC, increasing regulatory compliance demands, and the ongoing talent shortage will accelerate adoption among enterprises, smaller organizations, and MSSPs alike.
Most recently, analysts with
S&S Insider wrote that they expect the global SOCaaS market will expand from $6.86 billion last year to
$15.61 billion by 2032, an average growth of 10.8% a year. In the United States, the amount spent on SOCaaS will increase from $1.78 billion in 2024 to $3.15 billion in 2032.
“The market is expanding quickly due to the complexity and frequency of cyber-attacks,” the analysts wrote. “Without needing the creation of costly internal equipment, SOCaaS offers businesses affordable security operations centers with round-the-clock monitoring, threat detection, incident response, and compliance support.”
The report follows similar findings from other market research firms, including
Fortune Business Insights, which expects the global SOCaaS market to grow from $8.44 billion in 2025 to
$20.40 billion in 2030, and
MarketsandMarkets, which predicted the space worldwide will jump from $7.37 billion this year to
$14.66 billion in 2030.
The MarketsandMarkets analysts outlined trends seen in the market, including the increasing use of AI in cybersecurity for quick detection and response, demand for such tools as vulnerability assessment, threat detection, fully- and co-managed SOCs, and cloud, endpoint, network, and real-time response needs.
The Challenges with Internal SOCs
While the numbers may vary, the steady upward growth is undeniable, as are the reasons for the growth.
Vectra AI, which offers a SOCaaS,
noted the combination of an evolving threat landscape – with the average cyberattack breakout time dropping to 62 minutes – and an “unprecedented security staffing crisis,” citing reports that 65% of SOC analysts considering leaving their jobs within a year due to stress and alert fatigue.
“SOC as a Service emerges as more than just an outsourcing solution – it represents a fundamental shift in how organizations approach threat detection and response, offering enterprise-grade security capabilities through a subscription model that eliminates the overhead of building internal SOC teams while providing access to specialized expertise and advanced technologies that would otherwise remain out of reach for most organizations,” the vendor wrote.
Arctic Wolf, another SOCaaS provider, outlined the challenges organizations face when trying to build an internal SOC, from the cost of the people and infrastructure needed to months or years necessary to pull it all together. The company puts the cost of an SOC team at more than $1 million a year, with the need for software, hardware, and training driving it up to
$2 million to $7 million annually.
“Should your organization build an in-house SOC?” Arctic Wolf wrote. “There’s no right or wrong answer to this question. Large enterprises may benefit greatly from the control a SOC gives them, even if it means taking bites of the budget. For an SMB who’s more focused on growing business, a SOC may take too much time and resources away from business operations. It all depends.”
SOCaaS Not a Panacea
Jason Soroko, Senior Fellow at security vendor
Sectigo, sees the pros and cons when it comes to using a SOCaaS. It’s a practical way to mature their security profile – particularly if they lack the in-house expertise or budget for an internet SOC – and delivers 24-by-7 monitoring, access to specialized talent and tools, faster deployment of capabilities, more predictable costs, and a service model that can scale up or down depending on need, Soroko told MSSP Alert.
It also offers a way for smaller teams to handle alerts, meet compliance needs, and improve visibility across endpoints, networks, and the cloud without have to put it all together alone.
That said, there are also points that organizations need to aware of.
“You are trusting a third party with sensitive telemetry – which raises data privacy and sovereignty questions – you may get generic playbooks that lack deep knowledge of your business context, integration and tuning can still be complex, and, over time, subscription costs can approach or exceed the cost of building some internal capabilities,” he said. “There is also the risk of overreliance on the provider, so if the partnership ends or the service underperforms, you might find your own team has not developed enough incident response skills or institutional knowledge.”
AI Gives MSSPs Another Tool
MSSPs are seeing an influx of AI-driven options for augmenting or building their SOCaaS offerings. For example,
Stellar Cyber, which offers an AI-powered security platform for MSSPs, in September rolled out
Release 6.1 of its platform, noting that it delivers improved visibility, investigations, and integration for MSSPs and enterprise security teams. The same month,
Wipro added startup
Simbian’s AI SOC Agent technology to its
Cybershield AI-based security services portfolio.
“AI-driven cyberattacks are overwhelming, and even elite security teams struggle to keep up these days,”
Ambuj Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Simbian, wrote in a
recent column. “Managed security service providers are an important avenue for help, especially as organizations face a severe shortage of talent. This shift also presents a significant opportunity for MSSPs, who must consistently prove they offer a more effective defense to win and keep their businesses growing.”
