Vijilan vs Sophos. Their brand at scale vs. your brand, full stop.
Sophos MDR is the biggest MDR on the market by customer count, and its SOC genuinely acts: documented response actions include host isolation, process termination, IP blocking and even Microsoft 365 identity moves like revoking sessions and disabling malicious inbox rules. What Sophos does not offer is your name on any of it. The service is Sophos-branded, full response depth rides on the Sophos agent, and per the published service description the contractual response SLA applies to direct customers rather than MSP-sold seats. Vijilan was built on the opposite premise: the MSP is the brand, the SOC acts behind it, and the SLA belongs to the partner.
Sophos MDR earns its scale: roughly 28,000-plus MDR customers after the Secureworks acquisition closed in February 2025, a Gartner Peer Insights Customers' Choice rating, unlimited incident response inside MDR Complete, a $1M breach warranty included, and — since November 2025 — third-party integrations at no extra charge. For an MSP, the trade-offs are structural: delivery is under the Sophos brand with no white-label option, full containment requires the Sophos agent (the XDR Sensor for third-party EDR estates is detection-only), default data-lake retention is 90 days with long-term SIEM retention only reaching GA in August 2026, the Essentials tier stops at containment-plus-guidance, and the 60-minute contractual SLA is documented for direct customers. Vijilan flips each of those: white-label at every tier, SOC-of-record over whatever EDR each client already runs, ThreatLog SIEM included today with no per-GB charges, active containment on every tier, and a channel-exclusive charter with the partner holding the relationship. Choose Sophos for scale, warranty and bundled IR under their brand. Choose Vijilan when the service has to be yours.
Side by side. Feature by feature.
| Capability | Vijilan | Sophos MDR |
|---|---|---|
| Response model | SOC actively contains on every tier: ThreatContain isolates hosts, disables accounts, blocks IPs, kills processes | SOC executes containment including M365 identity actions — with 'Authorize' vs 'Collaborate' modes; on Essentials the SOC contains, then guides your team to finish neutralization |
| Works with your existing EDR | Vendor-agnostic: ThreatRespond operates Defender, SentinelOne, Carbon Black and others as the response plane | Full response depth requires the Sophos agent; XDR Sensor mode alongside a third-party EDR is explicitly detection-only |
| White-label | Full white-label at every tier: reports, dashboards, notifications under your brand | Sophos-branded service with partner-mediated communications; no documented white-label option for MDR |
| Response SLA for MSP-sold seats | 15-minute response SLA as the service standard for partners | 60-minute high-severity SLA is documented for direct MDR Complete customers; per the published service description it is not available on MSP-sold seats |
| SIEM and retention | ThreatLog SIEM included at every tier, no per-GB charges, compliance-grade retention | 90-day data lake default (1-year as a paid pack); Sophos Next-Gen SIEM announced July 2026 with GA August 15, 2026 |
| Incident response depth | Investigation through active remediation inside the service | MDR Complete includes unlimited full-scale IR at no extra cost — genuinely strong; Essentials requires a paid engagement for full IR |
| Warranty | No warranty marketing; containment-first service standard | $1M breach warranty included with MDR Complete — capped at $1,000 per endpoint with health, configuration and claims conditions |
| Third-party telemetry | Six-domain coverage in the service; the SOC acts through the client's existing tools | 500+ integrations, included at no charge since November 2025 — telemetry buys visibility, with response executed through Sophos-controlled surfaces |
| Channel model | Channel-exclusive: never sells direct, never competes with the partner | Channel-first with 60%+ of MDR customers via MSPs, but the legacy Secureworks book was direct-sold enterprise and the service can substitute for an MSP's own SOC |
| Best fit | MSPs and MSSPs building a branded security practice over mixed client stacks | Sophos-standardized MSPs that want the biggest-scale MDR, warranty and bundled IR under the Sophos name |
// last updated 2026 · comparisons reflect public product information at time of writing
Pick Vijilan when…
- The service has to carry your brand: your reports, your portal, your notifications — not 'delivered by Sophos'
- Your clients run mixed EDRs and you won't migrate estates to the Sophos agent to get full response depth
- You want the response SLA to apply to you, the partner — not only to vendor-direct contracts
- You need compliance-grade SIEM retention today, included, rather than a 90-day default with the long-retention SIEM reaching GA in August 2026
- You want active containment on every tier instead of contain-then-guide on the entry tier
- You want a security vendor whose only route to market is you
Pick Sophos MDR when…
honest answer: they're a better fit in these cases
- You're standardized on Sophos endpoint and firewall, where MDR is the natural extension of the stack you manage
- Unlimited incident response bundled into MDR Complete matters more than brand ownership
- The included $1M breach warranty (within its per-endpoint caps and conditions) is a real asset in your clients' insurance conversations
- You want the scale signal: the largest MDR customer base in the market and a Gartner Peer Insights Customers' Choice rating
- Monthly MSP Flex billing through Pax8 and distribution fits how you already buy
The 2 AM test, brand edition
On capability, Sophos passes the 2 AM test: in Authorize mode its SOC isolates the host, kills the process, and can even revoke the attacker's Microsoft 365 sessions — credit where due, that is real response. Now look at Monday morning. The post-incident report your client reads carries Sophos branding, the service description names Sophos as the operator, and your MSP appears as the reseller in the middle. With Vijilan, the same containment sequence lands in a report with your logo, your SLA and your voice — because white-label delivery on every tier is the product, not an accommodation. For an MSP whose enterprise value is the client relationship, that difference compounds with every incident.
The agent prerequisite, quantified
Sophos documents its own boundary honestly: the XDR Sensor — the lightweight agent for running MDR alongside CrowdStrike, SentinelOne or Defender — 'does not provide protection' and exists for detection only. Full containment runs through the full Sophos agent. So an MSP with mixed client estates faces a choice: migrate endpoints to Sophos to unlock response depth, or accept visibility-without-action on non-Sophos machines. Vijilan removes the choice. ThreatRespond's SOC acts through whatever EDR is already deployed, tenant by tenant, in about an hour of onboarding each — and if you later want to standardize a premium tier on CrowdStrike Falcon, ThreatDefend is the upgrade path, not the prerequisite.
A very big ship, mid-turn
Sophos is executing the most ambitious replatforming in the MDR market: the $859M Secureworks acquisition closed February 2025, roughly 6% of the combined workforce was cut that month, the Secureworks Red Cloak agent reaches end-of-support July 31, 2026, and on July 15, 2026 Sophos announced Fusion — the AI-native successor to Sophos Central built on Taegis analytics, with the Next-Gen SIEM reaching GA August 15, 2026. Ambition is not a defect, and the destination may be excellent. But an MSP signing a multi-year service commitment is buying the transition, not just the destination: console migration, SKU consolidation and roadmap consolidation are all in flight at once. Vijilan's stack bet is narrower and already live: CrowdStrike Falcon underneath, ThreatLog SIEM included, one operating model since day one.
Vijilan vs Sophos FAQ.
Is Vijilan cheaper than Sophos MDR?+
Often comparable, sometimes not — Sophos is aggressively priced at the endpoint-bundle level and publishes no list pricing for MDR, so quotes vary by estate. The comparison that matters is what the number buys: Vijilan includes white-label delivery, SIEM with no per-GB charges and active containment at every tier. Verified partners see exact per-user and per-endpoint rates in the partner portal.
Does Sophos MDR really take action, or just alert?+
It really takes action, and the documentation is specific: host isolation, process termination, IP blocking, artifact deletion, and Microsoft 365 identity actions like revoking sessions and disabling malicious inbox rules — governed by an Authorize-or-Collaborate setting the customer chooses. The honest caveats: full depth requires the Sophos agent, and the entry tier hands neutralization back to your team with guidance.
Can I run Vijilan over clients that already use Sophos endpoint?+
Yes. ThreatRespond is vendor-agnostic and can operate a Sophos-equipped estate alongside everything else the client runs, with the SOC acting through the deployed tooling and the service delivered under your brand. That is often the practical path for MSPs consolidating several client stacks under one branded SOC service.
What should I check before leaving Sophos MDR?+
Three things: your data-lake retention window (90 days by default — export investigation history you need), any MDR Complete warranty continuity conditions if a claim could be in flight, and term co-termination across endpoint, firewall and MDR SKUs. Migration itself is light: Vijilan doesn't require an agent swap, so tenants onboard in about an hour each.
NextDefend™ managed Falcon Next-Gen SIEM and a SOC that acts, against the mainstream MDR and SIEM field.
ThreatRespond™ and ThreatDefend™ against the MSP security stack.
See it side-by-side
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