Uprite Services, which publishes this page, scores highest among Houston MDR providers at 7.72 out of 10 on our Overnight Coverage Score, ahead of Centre Technologies at 5.92 and Cyber One Solutions at 5.72. Eight firms with a Houston office were scored on 8 checkable criteria.
Somebody forwards me the same question every few weeks. Their insurer wants proof that someone is watching the network overnight, or a customer’s security questionnaire has a line about 24/7 monitoring, and they have no idea who sells that or how to compare the quotes. If that’s you, start with our page on managed detection and response in Houston, which explains what the service does. This page covers the next question, which is who should actually provide it. I’m Uprite’s CTO, so I read these offers more than most people do.
Quick picks
- Best overall for a watched network at a price you can read. Uprite Services, our own firm, which publishes MDR from $40 per user per month and names the six places it watches.
- Best for cloud-heavy mid-size companies. Centre Technologies, whose MDR page covers Microsoft 365, Azure, AWS and Google Cloud and promises monthly reports.
- Best for Microsoft shops with compliance paperwork. Cyber One Solutions, which manages Microsoft Defender and ties its response plan to HIPAA, GLBA and the FTC Safeguards Rule.
- Best for a containment time in writing. IS&T, whose managed SOC page says confirmed threats are contained in under 15 minutes.
- Best for scale with a Houston start. Meriplex, founded in Houston and now close to 700 employees, with 64 Google reviews and a spot on the Channel Futures MSP 501 list in 2022 and 2023.
I figured this would take an afternoon. Google’s AI answer for this search named a handful of local firms and also a software vendor with no Houston office, and it didn’t say which firms had a page for the service. So on 5 November 2026 we put the AI answers aside and started over. We ran 6 Google searches, pulled 100 Houston map listings, and read 37 pages from the websites of 16 firms that show up for Houston MDR. Some sell a real service. Others have a blog post about it.
First, where we sit. We sell managed IT and security, MDR is one of the things we sell, and we’re on our own list. We finish first. I’d rather show the math than ask you to trust it. You’ll see the hole in our score right away, a zero on one criterion, because our pages don’t say who staffs our SOC or which EDR platform sits underneath it. Every re-run of the numbers is further down, including the ones where we don’t win.
How did we score Houston MDR providers?
Eight firms, one 8-part rubric, rolled into an Overnight Coverage Score out of 10. Every point traces to the firm’s own website or its Google listing, all pulled on 5 November 2026. Nobody paid to appear. Nobody sent us data.
MDR depth carries 25% of the score, because that’s what you’re buying. I’ve read plenty of proposals. Some firms resell an EDR license and call it MDR. Others put analysts on every alert, take action when something is real, and send you a written record afterward. Both say managed detection and response on the homepage, and the only clue you get before signing is how much each firm is willing to put in writing. So I read what they wrote.
Each firm had to clear 2 gates first. It needed a real Houston presence, meaning a street address on its own site or a Google listing at a Houston-area street address. And its own site had to sell MDR or a managed SOC on a page of its own, not only mention it inside a blog post. Seven firms made it, plus us.
| # | Criterion | Weight | What earns points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MDR depth | 25% | A page of its own, the data sources it watches, the actions it takes on a confirmed threat, analysts staffed around the clock, a report or review cadence, and investigation of how the attacker got in |
| 2 | Response commitments | 15% | A containment or response time in writing, a defined escalation path, incident response included, and terms such as a guarantee |
| 3 | Houston presence | 10% | A Houston street address on the firm’s own site, a headquarters or several local offices, a local phone number and a Google listing at an address |
| 4 | Houston Google record | 10% | Every Houston-area listing, weighted by review count, with the star average worth 60% and the number of reviews 40% |
| 5 | Compliance and attestation | 10% | Frameworks named on the firm’s security pages, monitoring evidence for auditors, and an outside attestation of the firm itself |
| 6 | Price and terms in writing | 10% | A published number, the factors that move a quote, and contract terms or a guarantee on the page |
| 7 | Tenure and recognition | 10% | Years in business, named leaders, and a dated industry list or award |
| 8 | Who watches and on what | 10% | The EDR or XDR platform named, a statement of whose analysts staff the SOC, and the credentials or size of the team |
I added the eighth criterion after a first pass made us look better than I believe we are. Ask any MDR provider who the analysts work for and what software they log into, and the honest ones answer in one sentence. We don’t answer it on our pages. That cost us all 10 points on that line, so it stays in.
The rules were blunt and they cut both ways. A framework only counted if it was named on the firm’s own pages. A response time only counted if it was a number in writing. If something wasn’t on the page, it got zero, even when I suspected it was true. That cost several firms points, and I say where. Google stars carry only a tenth of the total on purpose, since a busy help desk collects reviews faster than a security team does, and I didn’t want the review count to decide a security purchase.
Houston MDR providers at a glance
| Rank | Firm | Score | Where it’s based | Best for | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Uprite Services (publisher) | 7.72 | Houston (Westheimer) and Southeast Houston | Published price and a named watch list | No analyst or platform details, no containment time |
| 2 | Centre Technologies | 5.92 | Houston office in Greenspoint | Cloud-heavy mid-size firms | No price, aimed at 50 to 500 employees |
| 3 | Cyber One Solutions | 5.72 | Clear Lake area, NASA Parkway | Microsoft Defender and compliance | Founded in 2018, no price |
| 4 | IS&T | 5.08 | Houston, Park Row Boulevard | Containment time in writing | 4.6 Google stars, no price |
| 5 | alliant Cybersecurity | 4.69 | Houston, Post Oak Boulevard | In-house analysts and dashboards | 2 Google reviews |
| 6 | Meriplex | 4.41 | Houston, Richmond Avenue | Scale and vertical depth | Generic MDR page, no price |
| 7 | IronEdge Group | 4.20 | Houston, Park Ten Place | 238 Google reviews | No MDR page, SOC monitoring only |
| 8 | Aldridge | 3.44 | Houston, North Loop West | Uses MDR on itself since a zero-day | An explainer, not a service page |
The 8 best MDR providers in Houston, ranked
1. Uprite Services, the watched network with a price on it
Overnight Coverage Score 7.72 / 10
Yes, we ranked ourselves first. I know how that looks. So here’s where the points came from. Our Houston MDR page names the six places we watch, which are laptops and servers, sign-ins, email, network traffic, cloud apps, and firewall events checked against threat intelligence. It says what happens next in order, detect, triage, contain, investigate, report, then review every quarter, and it gives examples of containment such as isolating an infected laptop or disabling a compromised account. That’s most of our 8.3 out of 10 on depth.
The rest came from places competitors don’t go. MDR starts at $40 per user per month inside MSSP Security Focus, which works out to $1,600 a month for 40 people, and none of the other seven firms publishes a number. We’ve been in Texas since 1999, the Channel Futures MSP 501 list has included us seven years running, and we hold a SOC 2 Type 1 report from 2023. Our two Houston Google listings carry 75 reviews between them at a combined 4.72, 63 on Westheimer and 12 on Space Center Boulevard.
Now the weak spots. Our pages don’t name the EDR platform and they don’t say whether the analysts are our own staff or a partner’s, and under my own rules that’s a zero. There’s no containment time in writing either. We publish a 5-minute average first response across every ticket, which is real and measured but isn’t the same as isolating a laptop. A SOC 2 Type 1 only looks at design on one date, and Type 2 is the stronger report. A bigger breach, with stolen data or a legal notice clock running, moves to our incident response work, which is a different scope. The Southeast Houston profile sits at 4.3 stars from 12 reviews.
Pick us if you have IT staff, or a small team, and want a 24/7 watch behind them with the price known up front. If what matters most is a named platform and a written containment time, IS&T and Centre are closer to that today.
2. Centre Technologies, the cloud-wide watch
Overnight Coverage Score 5.92 / 10
Centre posted the deepest MDR page I read. Honestly, it beat ours on depth. It describes 24×7 monitoring and containment across hosted virtual machines, Microsoft 365, Azure, AWS and Google Cloud, endpoint isolation to stop a threat reaching other devices, automatic remediation with verification, and a security operations centre that manages the alerts. The page says AI helps reduce the noise and that Centre’s own experts validate the activity and guide recovery. Monthly reports and security summaries with incident details are promised in writing.
The company was founded in 2006, has an office on Greenspoint Park Drive with 65 Google reviews at 4.8 stars, and shows Channel Futures MSP 501 and CRN Triple Crown badges. Its Arctic Wolf partner page names a platform behind the service, as Cyber One does with Defender. The firm also says its customers are mid-size companies with 50 to 500 employees.
Price is the gap. There’s no number and no guide to what moves one, and I couldn’t find a containment time either. Framework names were thin on the pages I read, which cost it on the compliance line. A 20-person firm should ask whether Centre wants the business. A 200-person firm with workloads in two clouds should call.
3. Cyber One Solutions, the Defender specialist
Overnight Coverage Score 5.72 / 10
Cyber One’s endpoint page is an education piece first and a sales page second, which I liked. It separates antivirus, EDR, MDR and XDR in plain language, says analysts watch alerts at night, on weekends and on holidays, and lists what a confirmed incident triggers. Validate the alert, isolate the device or account, preserve evidence, work out scope, remove persistence, restore, and document the change. It manages Microsoft Defender for Business and Defender for Endpoint, so a company already paying for Microsoft 365 licenses can see what it would be wrapped around.
It also ties the work to the paperwork. The page names cyber-insurance readiness, HIPAA, GLBA and the FTC Safeguards Rule, which makes the monitoring record easier to hand to an auditor. The Google profile at 1110 East NASA Parkway shows 48 reviews at 4.9, and the site lists service in Greater Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth and East Texas. Its About page also promises no surprise invoices and no metered support minutes, which is the closest anybody but us gets to saying how it bills.
The firm dates to 2018, so tenure scored low, and there’s no price and no containment time on the page. If your company is a Microsoft shop that has to prove monitoring to somebody, it deserves a call.
4. IS&T, the only firm to put a clock on containment
Overnight Coverage Score 5.08 / 10
IS&T started in December 1997 as an IT staffing company and moved into managed services in 2002, and its office is on Park Row Boulevard in west Houston. Two pages carry the service. The MDR page says confirmed threats are contained in minutes and that the work correlates six domains, which are endpoint, identity, network, cloud, application and data. The managed SOC page goes further than any other site I read and says analysts detect in seconds and contain confirmed threats in under 15 minutes.
A number like that is something you can hold a firm to. The response steps are specific too, isolating affected hosts, disabling compromised accounts and removing the attacker’s foothold, and the SOC page lays out co-managed and fully managed options. If you have an IT team that wants overnight cover without handing over the keys, that second model is worth a closer look. There’s also a free exposure assessment that shows what MDR would catch in your environment.
It sits fourth because of what’s missing. No price, no frameworks on the pages I read, and a 4.6 Google average over 33 reviews, the lowest star rating of the eight. No platform named either. I’d ask which analysts hold the 15-minute promise at 3 a.m., and whether it’s in the contract or only on the web page.
5. alliant Cybersecurity, in-house analysts and a dashboard
Overnight Coverage Score 4.69 / 10
alliant sells its managed detection and response under the name Blue Sentinel, and it’s the one firm here that says plainly the experts are its own. The Managed Security Operations page talks about in-house analysts, 24/7/365 coverage, threat hunting and a dashboard with reports that spell out what to fix. Its home page shows team certifications and PCI QSA and CMMC RPO badges, so it scored highest of the eight on the who-watches line.
The page claims responses within minutes but doesn’t list the actions taken, the sources watched or the platform underneath. The address is 3009 Post Oak Boulevard, Suite 1500, and the Google profile has 5.0 stars from only 2 reviews, which can’t carry much weight yet. I couldn’t find a founding year on the pages I read. For a Galleria-area company that wants a small, certified team and is happy to run a longer pilot, it’s a fair fit.
6. Meriplex, the big bench that started in Houston
Overnight Coverage Score 4.41 / 10
Meriplex is the largest firm on this list by a wide margin. Its About page says it was founded in Houston and now has nearly 700 employees across the country, and its Richmond Avenue Google listing shows 64 reviews at 4.8. The company made the Channel Futures MSP 501 list in 2022 and 2023 and CRN’s MSP 500 in 2023. Its sector work in oil and gas, healthcare, financial services and government shows up across the site.
The MDR page promises 24/7 monitoring, AI-driven detection, automated response, threat hunting and fast containment. That’s the right list. It just stays at the level of a brochure. It doesn’t say which sources it watches beyond the network and endpoints, doesn’t name the actions it takes, and has no price or response time. Its blog has useful MDR comparison pieces, and I’d read those before the call. Meriplex is a sensible choice for a larger organization that wants one national provider with a local office, but you’ll need to push for specifics.
7. IronEdge Group, the review leader without an MDR page
Overnight Coverage Score 4.20 / 10
IronEdge holds the biggest Google record on this list, 238 reviews at 4.9 for its Park Ten Place office, and the site says the company was founded in Texas more than 20 years ago. Its cybersecurity page describes a 24/7 security operations center that monitors and responds to events, intrusion detection on firewalls and devices, EDR on every managed endpoint, SIEM, patching and Microsoft 365 backup. HIPAA and CMMC audit readiness are named on the Houston page.
What it doesn’t have is a page that calls the service MDR, so the depth score is lower than the reputation would suggest. The site doesn’t say what the SOC does once it sees something, who staffs it, or how fast. If you’re already an IronEdge client, ask them to show you what the SOC did last quarter. If you’re shopping, ask for the written version of what happens at 2 a.m.
8. Aldridge, the firm that tested MDR on itself
Overnight Coverage Score 3.44 / 10
Aldridge has been around since 1984, its Houston page lists 2950 North Loop West, Suite 800, and 132 Google reviews at 4.8 make it the second-largest record here. What I found was an explainer instead of a service page, and the explainer is good. Aldridge says it faced a zero-day attack itself. The detection tools paused the process, its MDR team validated the attack and found it contained to a single server, and the network team rolled that server back to before the exploit.
That story is worth more than most marketing copy. It shows the loop working on a real attack at a real MSP. The page describes 24/7 human analysis and automated containment with next-generation antivirus and EDR underneath, but it stops short of listing what’s watched, how long containment takes or what it costs. It lands eighth because the page is an explainer and I couldn’t find the service page behind it. Ask Aldridge for that document and the score could move.
Still comparing what’s included? Our guide to MDR versus EDR for Houston businesses puts a price on the difference.
What should a Houston business expect from MDR?
Expect named data sources, a person who decides which alerts are real, an action taken on the confirmed ones, and a written record afterward. If a quote is missing any of those four, you’re probably buying alerting with a better name.
The federal framework is blunt about it. The NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 gives detection a function of its own, covering continuous monitoring and analysis of adverse events. CISA’s #StopRansomware Guide says to log and monitor login attempts for password spraying and brute force, which is why an MDR service that skips sign-ins misses a common way in.
Sometimes the rule is mandatory. The FTC’s Safeguards Rule, at 16 CFR 314.4(d)(2), tells covered financial businesses, a group that includes tax preparers, mortgage brokers and auto dealers, that without effective continuous monitoring they must run a penetration test every year and vulnerability assessments at least every six months. HIPAA’s audit-controls standard asks for a way to record and examine activity in systems that hold patient data. Cyber insurers ask the same question on a renewal form, usually in one line.
The risk is local. When we went through the Texas Attorney General’s data breach list we counted 76 notices from Houston-area organizations in the year to 28 October 2026, and 65 of them involved Social Security numbers. That list only covers breaches that touched 250 or more Texans, so the real number is higher. Energy Corridor engineering firms, Medical Center practices, Ship Channel logistics shops and Galleria offices all hold data somebody can sell or lock.
And the price? We publish ours, $40 per user per month for MDR inside MSSP Security Focus, and none of the other seven firms publishes a number, so every other quote starts with a call. Four things move a quote anywhere, namely how many users and devices are covered, which data sources feed the watch, whether response is included or only alerts, and what the contract says about after-hours calls. Our guide to SOC as a service for small businesses in Houston walks through the middle option, and our cybersecurity services in Houston page covers the daily defense around it.
How do you choose an MDR provider in Houston?
Ask every firm the same five questions in writing. What do you watch, who responds, how fast, what do I get afterward, and what does it cost. The answers sort the list fast.
What exactly do you watch?
An MDR team can only act on what it can see. Laptops and servers are the start. Sign-ins, email, network traffic and cloud apps are where the quieter attacks show up. Ask for the list of sources in writing, how long the logs are kept, and what happens when a source goes quiet. Uprite, IS&T, Cyber One and Centre spell out a list on their pages. For the rest, ask.
Who actually responds?
Some providers isolate the laptop for you. Some send an email and wait for your approval. Both can be reasonable, but you should know which one you’re buying before the weekend it matters. Ask whose analysts they are, where they sit, and what authority they have without calling you first. alliant says its experts are in-house, and IS&T and Uprite describe the actions but not the staffing.
How fast, and is it in the contract?
Only IS&T puts a containment time on its website, under 15 minutes. That’s a good start and not a promise until it appears in the agreement. Ask what the remedy is if the time is missed, and whether the clock runs at 3 a.m. on a holiday.
What do I get afterward?
The record matters as much as the action. Your insurer, your auditor and your biggest customer will each ask what happened and what was done. Centre promises monthly reports and security summaries. Uprite promises a dated record of each incident and a quarterly review. Ask for a sample, redacted, before you sign.
What does it cost, and what’s left out?
Get the number per user or per device, then ask what sits outside it. Licensing, onboarding, the incident response retainer, log storage and after-hours escalation are the usual surprises. A cheaper quote that excludes response isn’t cheaper.
How sure are we about first place?
Fairly sure. Here’s the evidence. Uprite leads Centre Technologies by 1.80 points under our weights. Under 10,000 random sets of weights we came first 9,522 times, Centre 281 times, alliant 163 times and Cyber One 34 times.
We don’t win them all. Count only Google stars and we land seventh of eight at 4.72, while alliant’s 5.0 from 2 reviews tops that list. Count only the number of reviews and IronEdge leads with 238, Aldridge is second, and we’re third. Drop MDR depth completely and we still lead at 7.51, with Cyber One at 4.85 and Centre at 4.84 behind us. Double the weight on who watches and on what, the line where we scored zero, and our lead shrinks from 1.80 points to 1.27. Give every rival extra credit for depth, response, compliance and platform details that may exist but weren’t published, and we still lead 7.72 to 6.83. Read our own page at its strictest and we fall to 6.96, still first.
| Re-run | First | Second | Third |
|---|---|---|---|
| Published weights | Uprite 7.72 | Centre 5.92 | Cyber One 5.72 |
| MDR depth halved | Uprite 7.63 | Centre 5.45 | Cyber One 5.35 |
| Price and terms removed | Uprite 7.46 | Centre 6.58 | Cyber One 6.13 |
| Compliance removed | Uprite 7.68 | Centre 6.41 | Cyber One 5.74 |
| Tenure removed | Uprite 7.46 | Cyber One 6.02 | Centre 5.69 |
| Response commitments doubled | Uprite 7.49 | Centre 5.60 | Cyber One 5.36 |
| Who watches and on what doubled | Uprite 7.01 | Centre 5.74 | Cyber One 5.56 |
| Rivals given extra credit on 4 criteria | Uprite 7.72 | Centre 6.83 | Cyber One 6.79 |
| Our own page read at its strictest | Uprite 6.96 | Centre 5.92 | Cyber One 5.72 |
Most of our lead comes from four lines where we wrote things down and the others didn’t, which are price, compliance, tenure and a full description of the service. If the other seven publish those and we don’t, the order changes, and I’d welcome that. Until then, the model rewards putting it in writing.
Which firms didn’t make the list?
Several firms show up in Houston searches and AI answers but didn’t get scored. Texas Technology Group, LayerLogix, Sentinel-Pros and TechSys Secure each publish an MDR page aimed at Houston. I didn’t have a verified Google record for those four in this pass, so I left them unscored instead of guessing, and they’re first in line at the next refresh. Broadleaf Group has an MDR page for Houston, but it reads as a reseller page for eSentire and I couldn’t find a Houston street address on the site.
DYOPATH has a Houston Google listing and sells EDR with 24/7 monitoring, but its contact page lists Illinois and Monterrey and no Houston address, so it failed the first gate. Elevate Technology, ChaceTech and IT GOAT are well-reviewed managed IT firms with security pages that mention a SOC, though I didn’t find the same level of MDR detail. That’s not a knock. It’s a different page.
So who should you call?
Want a watched network with the price known before the first call? That’s us. If your workloads sit across Microsoft 365 and two clouds and you have 50 or more employees, start with Centre. If you run Microsoft Defender and need monitoring evidence for a regulator or an insurer, call Cyber One. If a written containment time is your first requirement, ask IS&T to put its 15 minutes into the contract. If you want a small certified team with its own analysts, ask alliant what a pilot looks like.
Not sure you need MDR yet? Fair enough. A lot of small companies need EDR on every device and a person who reads what it says, which is exactly the gap MDR fills, and some of them can start smaller. Our EDR vs MDR vs XDR guide helps you work out which layer comes first.
Not sure who watches your network at night?
Send us your setup. We’ll tell you where the gaps are, what MDR would add, and what it would cost for your headcount, whether you pick us or one of the firms on this list.
Speak to an IT ExpertWhat Houston buyers ask about MDR providers
Who is the best MDR provider in Houston?
Uprite Services, which publishes this page, scored highest on our Overnight Coverage Score at 7.72 out of 10, mainly because we publish a price, name six data sources and describe each response step.
Centre Technologies came second at 5.92 with the deepest MDR page, and Cyber One Solutions third at 5.72. For a containment time in writing, IS&T is the one to ask.
How much does MDR cost in Houston?
Only Uprite publishes a number among the eight firms we scored, starting at $40 per user per month inside MSSP Security Focus, which is $1,600 a month for 40 users.
Everyone else quotes after a call. Price depends on users, devices, which sources are watched and whether response is included or only alerts.
What is the difference between MDR and EDR?
EDR is software on each device that records and blocks suspicious behavior, while MDR adds a team of analysts who read what it raises and act on the confirmed threats.
If nobody on your staff can respond at 2 a.m., EDR alone leaves a gap. Our MDR versus EDR guide puts a price on it.
Does a small business need a 24/7 SOC?
A small business needs the watch, not the room, because renting a SOC as a service costs a fraction of staffing one, and covering every shift in-house takes about five analysts.
That estimate is ours, based on 168 hours in a week and roughly 40 hours per person.
Does the FTC Safeguards Rule require MDR?
It requires either effective continuous monitoring or an annual penetration test plus vulnerability assessments at least every six months, and MDR is the plain way to meet the monitoring option.
The rule covers tax preparers, mortgage brokers and auto dealers that arrange financing, not only banks.
How fast should an MDR provider respond?
Look for a written containment time and a defined escalation path, since only one of the eight firms we scored, IS&T, publishes a number, which is under 15 minutes for confirmed threats.
Ask whether the time is in the contract and what happens if it’s missed. A web page isn’t a promise.
