Much like insurance, incident response capabilities are something you need to have, but never want to have to use. But this can make it difficult to know the best approach to take until you’re facing an attack, and by that point it can be difficult to change tack.

Today I want to discuss a fundamental decision any company needs to make when it comes to incident response, and that’s whether to maintain an in-house team or outsource it to a managed provider. In simple terms, when your organization is facing the potentially devastating consequences of a cyberattack or breach, do you want to be picking up the phone to call an internal team or an external company?

Both have their advantages and disadvantages, and a “perfect” approach is impossible. But a detailed understanding of the options can help you work with the particular strengths and weaknesses of your business, rather than against them.

The temptation of an in-house approach

It’s easy to imagine the benefits of an entirely in-house incident response team. In an ideal world, this team will have microscopic visibility into every nook and cranny of your business. Then, when an incident occurs, it will be able to respond at the speed of light thanks to the team’s intimate familiarity with your organization’s systems, processes, and data. That speed could be critical when it comes to containing and mitigating the impact of a cyberattack.

With an in-house team, it’s a lot easier for everyone to be on the same page during a crisis. Communication can be more frictionless when it’s between colleagues, ensuring that everyone is informed and aligned when the rubber hits the road. Not to mention the confidentiality advantages.

An in-house team can deliver incident response strategies that are specifically designed to address your organisation’s unique security risks. The result can be a comprehensive approach to crisis management that includes continuity and disaster recovery plans. Ultimately, that means more control for you as a security leader, including over the tools, technologies, and methodologies used by your in-house team.

The limits of DIY (in-house) threat detection and response

Despite the theoretical advantages of an in-house team, there are very good reasons to consider relying on external help. Consider, for example, how much hands-on experience you expect an internal incident response team to get on a monthly basis. For most organizations, I’m willing to bet the answer is “not much.” Now consider how much experience an external incident response team is likely to accrue over the same period.

Fundamentally, a once-in-a-decade cyberattack for your company is likely to be a monthly occurrence for many specialized IR teams, and there’s just no equivalent to the practice that regularly responding to major incidents can offer.

There are other challenges that can be mitigated or even eliminated entirely with outsourcing. Building and maintaining an internal incident response team can be expensive, especially if you need to hire specialised personnel or invest in advanced technologies. Internal teams may also be less objective in their decision-making; they may be biased towards internal solutions or may have a vested interest in the outcome of the incident. Finally, it can be more challenging to scale an internal team when needed to meet the demands of a large or complex incident, which can impact their ability to respond effectively.

Ultimately, a good external team can deliver fresh thinking and new ideas to an incident response strategy and draw from experience spanning an entire industry, while even a skilled internal team is likely to have a far more limited range of experiences to draw from.

The strength of outsourcing threat detection and response

The question is not whether an in-house team will be able to respond to threats to your organization but whether an external team will be able to do it quicker and more capably. It’s not a choice between right and wrong, it’s a choice between good and better.

It’s a choice between paying to build and manage an entire incident response team, versus a more cost-effective approach of only paying for the services you need from an external provider. It’s a choice between building up your own knowledge base versus tapping into an external team with decades of combined ­– and ever-growing – experience. It’s a choice between paying someone on staff to be on call overnight and on weekends, versus having 24/7 coverage written into a contract with an external provider.

When that external team does need to spring into action you benefit from both more specialized knowledge and a broader range of abilities including threat hunting and threat remediation. All of which should be informed by the team’s work with numerous other clients to build a strong foundation in both threat intelligence and threat analysis.

That’s not to say that outsourcing your incident response program won’t come with its own challenges. You have to make more effort to communicate with an external team to make sure its security professionals can access the information they need in time-critical situations, and it can also be difficult to get an external team integrated with all of your organization’s existing processes and systems. You need to be mindful of the security concerns of opening up your most sensitive systems to an external company, and of maintaining an appropriate level of internal expertise so you don’t become overly reliant on your provider if you value autonomy.

But these challenges can be mitigated by picking the right partner and managing the relationship effectively. Communication is crucial, and a well-integrated partnership is an essential part of any incident response solution. Whenever security challenges arise, don’t be afraid to try counter intuitive measures like halting to ensure everything is accounted for.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst

It’s understandably appealing to want to handle as much of your critical business operations in-house and avoid becoming too reliant on external partners. But incident response is an increasingly specialized practice, and it’s difficult to match the experience of an external team who are responding to devastating incidents week after week. When you find the right external team, you’ll see them simply as an extension of your internal security team.

Outsourcing might have its minor tradeoffs, and you’ll have to work harder to set up clear communication channels and integrations with an external provider’s workflow. But when the worst happens and your organization hits a bump in the road of potentially devastating proportions, you’ll be glad to not have to handle it alone.