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2026 Gartner® Market Guide for MDR

Move Beyond Alerts. Demand Outcomes From MDR.

Managed detection and response is evolving. Security leaders now expect more than monitoring and notifications; they need:

  • Rapid investigation

  • Active containment

  • Exposure context

  • Outcomes aligned with business risk.

Download the 2026 Gartner Market Guide for Managed Detection and Response to understand how the market is changing and what to evaluate when selecting an MDR provider.

Discover your MDR Roadmap

Cutting Through the MDR Noise

Know What Modern MDR Requires

Understand the core capabilities Gartner identifies across detection, investigation, active response, threat hunting, and incident management. 

Evaluate Providers Beyond the Platform

Learn why outcome-driven MDR must operate across technologies and deliver more than the recited output of a single vendor’s tools. 

Prepare for What Comes Next

Explore how AI, automation, cloud services, identity context, and proactive exposure management are reshaping MDR delivery. 

More Telemetry Is Not More Protection 

Most organizations already have the signals.

The real challenge is determining which one's matter, understanding their potential impact, and acting quickly enough to contain the threat.

An MDR provider should not add another layer of alerts for your team to interpret. It should investigate activity, establish context, coordinate response, and deliver clear actions aligned with your business risk.

The 2026 Market Guide for Managed Detection and Response can help security leaders separate genuine MDR outcomes from services that are MDR in name only.  

What Should You Demand From MDR?

Action! Not notification + −

Modern MDR should provide rapid investigation and immediate disruption or containment. Not simply send an alert and hand the problem back to your team.

Context across the environment + −

Endpoints are only part of the attack surface. Effective MDR increasingly requires visibility across identities, cloud services, SaaS applications, exposures, and business-critical assets. We cover this area quite well with Meridian.

Proactive risk reduction + −

Buyers are asking MDR providers to go beyond reactive detection by identifying and helping mitigate the exposures attackers could exploit next.

AI with accountable human oversight + −

Automation can accelerate analysis and response. Experienced security professionals provide the judgment, transparency, and business understanding required to act confidently.

Improvement you can measure + −

Your provider should demonstrate how detection engineering, response actions, exposure management, and automation improve over time.