The real cost comparison
| Approach | Realistic cost | What you get | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| In-house security hire | Six figures + benefits + tooling | Dedicated attention, institutional knowledge | One person, business hours, single point of failure, hard to retain |
| Managed security | Per device + scoped environment work | Deployed and operated controls, escalation path, documentation | Shared attention; coverage defined by contract, not devotion |
| Co-managed | Managed base + internal owner | Controls run externally, decisions owned internally | Requires a genuine internal owner, even part-time |
| Nothing / ad hoc | $0 until it isn't | Luck | The average incident costs more than years of the alternatives |
The comparison isn't really employee versus vendor — it's operations versus improvisation. Controls that are deployed and then abandoned converge on the 'nothing' row within a year, whoever owns them.
What managed security actually delivers
Strip the marketing and managed security is four commitments: every covered device runs current, configured protection; network and identity policy gets maintained as things change; someone triages what the tools surface, with a written escalation path; and it's all documented well enough to hand your insurance carrier or an enterprise customer's security review.
Nubinity delivers those commitments from New Orleans with published entry pricing — endpoint protection at $16.99/device/month, Hydra managed firewall and SSO scoped per environment — and is deliberately specific in writing about coverage hours and escalation expectations rather than making round-the-clock claims every vendor makes and few honor.
When in-house (or co-managed) is the right answer
- You're past ~75–100 staff with real compliance exposure — an internal security owner starts earning their salary.
- Your business IS the technology — a software company should own more of its security in-house.
- You have a capable IT generalist already — co-managed lets them own decisions while managed delivery runs the controls.
- Regulators or contracts explicitly require named internal roles — though delivery can still be managed.
Co-managed is the pattern we see work most often locally: your person knows the business and owns the decisions; the managed team runs endpoint, firewall, and identity, and brings testing and senior judgment when it's needed. Neither side pretends to be what it isn't.