See how quickly the one-off cost of moving to a managed security service is recovered by the yearly difference between running security in-house and paying a provider.
Enter the one-off cost of switching and the yearly difference between the two ways of doing the job: what the in-house option costs a year (people, on-costs, tools, training, after-hours cover) minus the managed service's annual fee. The tool subtracts any credit, grows the saving each year by the rate you enter and counts how long the cumulative saving takes to cover the net one-off cost. Net saving = total saving over the period − net one-off cost.
Worked example (illustrative): the in-house option is half of a security engineer's time ($75,000 including on-costs) plus security tooling ($18,000) = $93,000 a year, without overnight cover. The managed MDR and SOC proposal is $54,000 a year ex GST. Yearly saving = $93,000 − $54,000 = $39,000. Moving costs $20,000 (onboarding, tool overlap for two months, internal project time). With 3% growth, payback is about 0.51 years and the net saving over three years is about $100,545 ($120,545 of savings less $20,000).
Compare like with like. If the in-house option does not include 24/7 monitoring, the comparison flatters it; if the managed option excludes response work, add the expected hourly charges. A negative saving is a valid answer: some businesses with strong IT teams pay more for managed services because they buy coverage they cannot staff, not because it is cheaper. See in-house versus managed costs.
Worked costings and choosing a provider
Compare the cost of running security in-house with a managed service, including 24/7 roster arithmetic, tooling and on-costs, an illustrative payback calculation and hybrid options.
