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Practice 02 · Sentry XDR

Managed SOC, built on Microsoft.

A UK-led Security Operations Centre built on Microsoft Defender and Sentinel — structured to reduce risk over time, not just generate alerts. From establishing clear visibility to continuous, intelligence-led improvement, aligned to how your organisation actually operates.

Defender XDR + Sentinel UK-based · UK-cleared analysts Three service tiers Outcome-driven IR retainer included
Outcome-ledRisk reduced over time
UKLondon delivery floor
24×7Monitoring & threat hunt
3 tiersEssential → Elite

Security as a business capability

Cyber security is no longer something that can be contained within IT. It is a business function that directly influences operational resilience, regulatory standing, and organisational trust. Attacks are targeted, often identity-driven, and designed to disrupt operations or expose critical data — so the real question is not whether an attack will occur, but whether you have the visibility, control, and capability to detect, respond, and adapt.

Our managed Security Operations Centre is built to answer that. It provides not just monitoring, but a structured capability — combining technology, expertise, and continuous improvement to deliver protection and response, a clearer understanding of risk, and a measurable pathway toward stronger security.

From reactive security to business outcomes

For many organisations, security still shows up as a reactive function — alerts generated, incidents handled, reports produced — but with limited clarity at a business level. It can be hard to answer simple questions like "are we becoming more secure?" or "where is our greatest risk?"

We take a different approach. Instead of focusing on activity, we focus on outcomes: reducing exposure, improving resilience, and giving leadership confidence in the organisation's ability to operate securely. What matters is not the volume of activity, but its direction and impact.

What we deliver

24×7 detection & responseManaged detection and response across Defender XDR and Sentinel — tier-1 to tier-3 triage by named UK analysts.
Threat hunting & intelMonthly hypothesis-led hunts and sector-curated threat intelligence, written up board-readable.
Incident response — includedAn IR retainer in every run contract — forensics, containment, and rehearsed ransomware playbooks.
Posture managementSecure Score uplift, conditional-access review, and a quarterly board pack with peer benchmarking.
Microsoft-nativeBuilt on Defender XDR and Microsoft Sentinel — no third-party SOC platform bolted on.
UK-based, UK-clearedSC- and DV-cleared analysts on a London delivery floor, with client data held in UK regions.

A tiered approach to security maturity

Every organisation is at a different stage. For some, the priority is establishing visibility and basic response; for others, sharper detection and operational control; for the most mature, a fully integrated, intelligence-led function operating around the clock. Rather than forcing one model on everyone, the SOC is structured across three tiers — and you can move between them as your needs and maturity change.

Three SOC tiers of increasing maturity: Essential Protect for visibility and core monitoring, Advanced Guard for proactive risk management, and Elite Shield for a continuous, intelligence-led 24/7 capability. Essential Protectvisibility & core monitoring Advanced Guardproactive risk management Elite Shieldintelligence-led, 24/7 increasing maturity — move between tiers as your needs change
One foundation, three tiers — from establishing visibility to a continuous, intelligence-led capability.

Essential Protect

  • Structured visibility and core monitoring across identity, devices, and cloud
  • A clear baseline of your security posture
  • Consistent, controlled alert triage — moving off ad-hoc processes

Advanced Guard

  • Deeper analysis, integration, and responsiveness
  • Refined detection, aligned to business context
  • A shift from reactive monitoring to proactive risk management

Elite Shield

  • 24/7 monitoring, advanced threat analysis, integrated response
  • Intelligence-led operations for mission-critical estates
  • Threats detected, contained, and mitigated at a systemic level

See what each tier includes — view the pricing plans →

From visibility to continuous improvement

Whatever the tier, the philosophy is the same: the SOC exists not just to monitor, but to improve. Each engagement begins by establishing a clear baseline of how your environment actually behaves. From there, risk and control gaps are identified — not as isolated findings, but as a structured pathway toward improvement — and the posture evolves alongside your business and the threat landscape.

Continuous improvement loop: establish a baseline, identify risk and control gaps, prioritise and improve, then re-assess — repeating as the business and threats evolve. Baselinehow you behave Identify gapsrisk & controls Improveprioritised roadmap Re-assessmeasure & refine a continuous cycle — posture evolves with the business and the threat landscape
Assessment, enhancement, optimisation — security that is continuously evolving, not static.

How the SOC works

At its core, the service brings together signals from across identity, endpoint, email, and cloud into a unified operational model on Microsoft Defender and Sentinel — so activity is correlated across domains and threats are understood in context, not isolation. Alerts are not simply collected; they are analysed, validated, and prioritised on both technical severity and business impact, so response is effective and proportionate. As you move up the tiers, centralised monitoring evolves into advanced behavioural detection and, ultimately, proactive threat hunting.

SOC pipeline: signals from endpoint, identity, email and cloud feed Defender XDR and Sentinel; the SOC team triages and hunts 24x7; incidents are responded to and contained; lessons feed back to tune detections. Signalsendpoint · identity · cloud Defender XDR + Sentinelcorrelated detections SOC teamtriage · hunt · 24×7 Respondcontain · we phone you closed loop — every incident sharpens the next detection
Signals in, correlated detections, human triage, fast response — and every incident tunes what we catch next.

Embedding security into your environment

Beyond detection and response, the SOC shapes the underlying security architecture — so protection is built in, not bolted on.

IdentityIdentity as the primary control plane — Zero Trust, Conditional Access, and strong authentication, validating access on context rather than location.
DataVisibility into where sensitive data lives and how it's used — classification, labelling, and DLP turn it from an unknown risk into a controlled asset.
DevicesCompliance, encryption, and endpoint detection — devices become an integral part of the security model, not a vulnerability.

Built around your organisation

No two organisations are identical. Through a structured onboarding process we assess your current state, align your Microsoft security tooling, and establish monitoring and response workflows that reflect how your business actually operates — transparent, accountable, and relevant. As you evolve, the SOC evolves with you.

1 · Onboard

  • Connect Defender XDR and Sentinel to your estate
  • Deploy data connectors and baseline the environment
  • Agree SLAs, escalation paths, and on-call contacts

2 · Tune

  • Content engineering — detections tuned to your estate
  • Automation and SOAR to cut noise and speed response
  • Playbooks rehearsed against your real scenarios

3 · Run & hunt

  • 24×7 triage by named, UK-cleared analysts
  • Monthly threat hunts and IR retainer on standby
  • Quarterly board pack — risks, trends, benchmarking

Adapting to the modern threat landscape

Risk keeps shifting — driven by cloud adoption, identity-centric architectures, and the rapid emergence of AI-driven attack techniques. The SOC is designed with this in mind: it protects identity as the primary control point, secures data wherever it resides, and maintains visibility across increasingly distributed environments. Advanced technology paired with expert-led operations gives a defence model that adapts as threats evolve.

Why we include the retainer. The market norm is to bill the run, then bill again for the incident. That makes the SOC the cost centre that is paid more when things go wrong. We bundle IR because we want the SOC team incentivised to detect early. They are paid to keep the run boring.

Compliance & clearance

All Sentry XDR analysts are UK-based, UK-cleared (SC minimum, DV available), and work from our London delivery floor. Client data is held in UK regions. We hold Cyber Essentials Plus. For defence and central-government clients, we can operate under a separate, ring-fenced tenancy with elevated clearance.

Anchor outcomes

UK central governmentMigrated from a legacy SIEM to a Microsoft-native SOC, sharply cutting time to detect and respond.
Critical-national-infrastructure energyHybrid OT/IT SOC, 24×7, with regular on-site incident-response rehearsals.
NHS trust groupDSPT-aligned SOC across a multi-trust group, with a threat-hunt programme that surfaced persistent-access risks.
Customer success
Construction & engineering · Managed SOC on Microsoft

Round-the-clock eyes on the estate — so nothing waits until morning.

A construction and engineering firm needed continuous monitoring across its Microsoft estate rather than alerts that queued unseen out of hours. We run Sentry as a UK-based, UK-cleared managed SOC on Defender XDR and Sentinel — tuned to their environment, with triage, threat hunting, and incident response — so something real is caught, contained, and called in, not left in a queue.

Talk to us about SOC coverage →
24×7UK-based, UK-cleared monitoring
Microsoft-nativeDefender XDR and Sentinel
IR includedresponse on standby, not a paywall

Client named under NDA on request.

Pricing plans

See the indicative tiers and what's included.

Three transparent tiers. From per-seat run to bespoke UK-cleared delivery.

See pricing plans
Start the conversation

From uncertainty to clarity.

Not sure where you stand today, or how your current tools translate into real security outcomes? The first step isn't more complexity — it's clarity. We'll assess your position, define a structured path forward, and implement a SOC aligned to your needs.

Email sentry@scg.world +44 (0) 203 475 9524