Ontinue Recognized as ‘Major Player’ in 2024 IDC MarketScape Report for Worldwide Emerging MDR Services 

In-house security teams face increasing numbers of attacks generating a continuous barrage of alerts that persists 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Additionally, the expanding attack surface adds another layer of risk for in-house security teams. For organizations that lack the resources needed to staff a 24/7 SOC, they turn to a Managed Security provider for help. 

IDC recently released its MarketScape: Worldwide Emerging Managed Detection and Response Services 2024 Vendor Assessment, and we are proud to announce that Ontinue has been named a “Major Player.” 

“Being named a ‘Major Player’ and standing among industry giants in the latest IDC MarketScape report recognizes our commitment to excellence and innovation in AI, automation and our deep Microsoft expertise,” said Geoff Haydon, CEO of Ontinue.   

The IDC MarketScape is an assessment that helps technology buyers evaluate products and services across a range of technology markets, identify vendors that meet their criteria, and confirm investment decisions. The assessment uses a rigorous scoring methodology based on qualitative and quantitative criteria.  

The IDC MarketScape report recognized Ontinue for the following strengths:   

• The way we use our deep expertise with Microsoft to help customers operationalize and optimize their Microsoft security controls. The result is that customers can maximize their ROI on these tools, reduce SIEM ingestion costs, and streamline their security posture by removing redundant legacy controls. 
• Our unique approach to using automation and AI to speed incident triage, investigation, and response to reduce our customers’ MTTR. In particular, IDC notes how we use AI to “analyze and model a customer’s environment and security operations workflows” to “tailor incident response and remediation workflows to each customer’s existing operational processes.” 
• The fact that the core ION MDR service includes threat intelligence integration and proactive threat hunts mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, all without additional costs. 
• Our one-of-a-kind interaction model built within Microsoft Teams to eliminate the need for additional management consoles and to facilitate real-time collaboration between our customers and our SOC, helping to reduce MTTR and provide a white glove customer experience. This is aided by our ION IQ Assistant, which makes it simple for customers to get the information they need when they need it. 
• The fact that our service places great importance on attack surface management to help customers reduce their attack surface and prevent attacks before they begin. We accomplish this in a variety of ways including security posture monitoring and hardening recommendations, as well as our Managed Vulnerability Mitigation add-on service.  

“We believe that AI has the true potential to revolutionize Managed Security Operations; making not only threat detection and response faster and more accurate, but also strengthening an organization’s security maturity,” Haydon added. “We’ve also made the strategic decision to complement the Microsoft Security suite helping to maximize customers’ security investments.”  

IDC did note two areas where they felt we could improve our service. The first was that our singular focus on MDR means that while we have deep domain expertise with MDR and deliver a truly innovative service, customers seeking a wider range of services beyond MDR will need to work with multiple vendors. The second was based on feedback from customers who wanted more regular updates on the overall threat landscape.  

Interestingly, these two points are related to each other. There is no denying that today we are a pure play MDR vendor with the sole focus of delivering a managed service that protects our customers and alleviates the burden of daily security operations so they can focus on more strategic security work. This singular focus allows us to innovate incredibly quickly to achieve that end. The second area of improvement noted by IDC is a prime example of this point.  

Customers were interviewed back in September 2023 for this report, and since then, we integrated regular Threat Advisories (delivered by our Advanced Threat Operations (ATO) team) directly into ION for Microsoft Teams – our Microsoft Teams-based user interface. Since the beginning of the year, the team has delivered 13 advisories to keep our customers abreast of key threats that our Threat Intelligence team tracks.  

Additionally, our ATO team published their first inaugural Threat Intelligence Report, which provides insights and trends related to threats, attack techniques, and attacker groups, including industry-specific breakdowns of what to look out for in 2024. 

As a newer player in a crowded market, we are thrilled with our position as a Major Player.  

“We don’t see ourselves as just another MSSP or MDR, we’re an extension of our customers’ teams. We’re also proud of how we help them alleviate the burdens of SecOps, giving them time back to focus on strategic business initiatives while we handle their frontline defense,” said Haydon.