24/7 SOC Coverage and 68% Lower MTTR With a Remote Cybersecurity Team
Facing a SOC 2 Type II audit, rising alert volume, and a single-shift security bench that couldn't cover nights or weekends, the firm built a 7-person remote cybersecurity pod that now delivers 24/7 SOC monitoring, incident response, and vulnerability management inside Splunk + CrowdStrike + Vanta.
68%
Lower incident MTTR
73%
Lower SecOps operating cost
24/7
SOC coverage across all timezones
Client Snapshot
The Challenge
The firm was operating a single-shift SOC with three analysts covering 9 AM–7 PM ET. Alert volume from CrowdStrike and Splunk was doubling every quarter, SOC 2 Type II audit was nine months away, and a weekend ransomware-adjacent incident had just forced the CTO to personally work a 36-hour response window.
Alert volume outran the shift pattern
Average daily alert volume climbed from 640 to 1,900 in 18 months. First-investigation time stretched to 3.5 hours, and 38% of after-hours alerts were being picked up 10+ hours late. The firm's own risk register now listed alert backlog as a standalone top-5 risk item.
SOC 2 audit gaps were concentrating at the controls layer
Pre-audit readiness review identified 42 control gaps — most tied to continuous monitoring evidence, access-review cadence, and incident-response SLAs. Remediating at the existing headcount would have consumed the security team's entire roadmap for eight months.
Local hiring math didn't match the timeline
A mid-level US SOC analyst cost $110K–$155K fully loaded with a 10–14 week hiring cycle. To build a true 24/7 bench the firm needed 5–6 hires — roughly $720K annual payroll before benefits — and the board had locked security budget at 3.8% of ARR.
Our CTO was on-call for weekend incidents because the SOC had no overnight bench. That's not a staffing problem — that's a single point of failure in the security function. SOC 2 was nine months out and the clock was winning.
The Solution: A Pre-Vetted Zedtreeo Team
Zedtreeo deployed a 7-person remote cybersecurity pod within 11 business days. The pod was structured as a follow-the-sun SOC — three shifts of tier-1/tier-2 analysts, a dedicated vulnerability-management lead, and a SOC 2 evidence specialist — all operating inside Splunk, CrowdStrike, Okta, and Vanta with the client's runbooks and escalation chain.
Team Composition Deployed
A follow-the-sun SOC pod sized to hold a 10-minute triage SLA, a 1-hour investigation SLA, and continuous SOC 2 control evidence without waking the internal team.
Tools & AI Stack Deployed
The pod operates inside the client's existing stack — AWS, Splunk, CrowdStrike, Okta, Vanta, and PagerDuty — with SOC 2 Type II-aligned controls, signed NDAs, background-verified analysts, and least-privilege provisioning from day one. Delivery runs through the client's existing PagerDuty rotation and Vanta evidence workflow.
Execution Timeline
Week 1
Week 1 — Kickoff & Clearance
Requirements call, background checks, NDA + DPA, Splunk/CrowdStrike/Okta access provisioning. Shortlisted pod interviewed by CISO in 48 hours.
Week 2–4
Weeks 2–4 — Onboarding
5-day free trial on live alert queue. Runbooks imported, PagerDuty rotation configured, Vanta evidence workflow mirrored, first incident response led.
Month 2–3
Month 2 — 24/7 Activation
Full follow-the-sun coverage activated. Alert backlog cleared. 42 SOC 2 control gaps closed. First-investigation time drops to 1 hour.
Month 4–6
Months 3–6 — Audit Ready
SOC 2 Type II audit passed with zero exceptions. MTTR compressed 68%. 73% cost reduction booked. Pod extended with 1 red-team analyst.
The Results
Within one quarter, the security function stopped being the weakest operational link and became the audit-ready, always-on function the Series C and the enterprise customer base demanded.
Performance Before → After
Measured improvements across 90 days post-onboarding of the engagement.
ROI: Zedtreeo vs In-House Hire
12-Month Cost Breakdown
| Line Item | In-House (United States) | Zedtreeo |
|---|---|---|
| Salary + Benefits | $850,000 | $260,000 |
| Recruitment | $48,000 | Included |
| HR & Compliance | $32,000 | Included |
| Tools | $48,000 | Included |
| Total Annual | $978,000 | $260,000 |
Client Testimonial
The Zedtreeo SOC pod operates to our runbooks, our SLAs, our PagerDuty rotation — same discipline as our internal team, three timezones deep. We passed SOC 2 Type II with zero exceptions, closed the MTTR gap our board was escalating, and our CTO hasn't worked a weekend incident in six months. 73% cheaper was the easy part; the audit result is the headline.
Roles Deployed on This Engagement
Every role included: AI-tool training, HR management, compliance, and replacement guarantee. Starting from $5 per hour, fully timezone-matched globally.
Build a Team Like US FinTech Platform (name withheld — NDA + SOC 2)'s
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