BlogFrom Visibility to Observability: How MSSPs and MDR Providers Transform Telemetry into Cyber Resilience
14 June 2025
From Visibility to Observability: How MSSPs and MDR Providers Transform Telemetry into Cyber Resilience
Recently, when doing some work in OpenSearch and the Elastic SIEM, I noticed that whenever I start searching, I always begin with a tile labeled “Observability.” In Security Operations we focus on “Telemetry” and “Visibility.” In practice, our work is primarily focused on “observability,” or, in other words, contextualizing the events, logs, activities, actions, and data we collect from our technologies to create actionable insights. As you will see in this blog post, data alone is insufficient. Security teams are overwhelmed with telemetry from endpoints, networks, cloud environments, and user behavior. However, visibility without understanding is merely noise. In contrast, observability is the ability to derive actionable insight from that noise—to connect signals, surface anomalies, and enable rapid response. For Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) and Managed Detection and Response (MDR) providers, observability is no longer just a feature. It has become a foundational capability.
Visibility is passive. It answers the question: “Can we see what’s happening?” Observability goes further. It asks: “Can we understand why it’s happening, and what to do about it?”
In traditional IT security, visibility involved collecting logs, flow data, and events from disparate systems. But these artifacts were often siloed, unanalyzed, or delayed. They lacked the cohesion and context necessary to support real-time threat detection and response. Observability stitches those pieces together. It treats logs, metrics, and traces not as endpoints, but as evidence in a broader investigation.
MSSPs and MDR providers, like OneAxiom, are uniquely positioned to operationalize observability at scale. They ingest and normalize telemetry across multiple customers and environments. But more importantly, they apply context, correlation, and analytics to derive insight. This is how they shift from reactive monitoring to proactive defense.
Key capabilities that enable this shift include:
• Telemetry Aggregation and Normalization: Collecting data is only the first step. MSSPs must normalize telemetry across vendors and formats to enable correlation. This includes endpoint detection and response (EDR), security information and event management (SIEM), network detection and response (NDR), and identity data.
• Enrichment with Threat Intelligence: Raw data gains meaning when enriched with threat intelligence feeds, known indicators of compromise (IOCs), and contextual data such as asset criticality and user roles.
• Behavioral Analytics and Machine Learning: Advanced MDR providers use machine learning to detect deviations from normal behavior, flagging subtle lateral movement or privilege escalation attempts that signature-based tools might miss.
• Correlation Engines and Detection Rules: These systems look for patterns across time and telemetry. A failed login, followed by a privileged access request, followed by data exfiltration—each alone might be benign. Together, they tell a story.
• Human-Led Investigation and Threat Hunting: Tools don’t make decisions; people do. MSSPs and MDRs pair automation with expert analysts who validate findings, conduct root cause analysis, and orchestrate response actions.
True observability enables four critical security outcomes:
1. Faster Detection: By connecting the dots across domains, MSSPs reduce dwell time, the time an attacker is on a system or network. Behavioral anomalies or correlated signals can be surfaced within minutes, rather than days.
2. Targeted Response: With enriched telemetry and contextual understanding, response actions can be precise. Instead of quarantining a device based on a generic alert, MSSPs can isolate only the affected process or user session.
3. Operational Efficiency: Observability reduces alert fatigue. Instead of chasing noise, analysts focus on high-fidelity signals, reducing time to triage and increasing confidence in actions taken.
4. Strategic Insight: Over time, observability provides trend data that supports strategic decisions: which assets are most targeted, which controls are most effective, and where investment should be focused.
Achieving observability isn’t plug-and-play. MSSPs and MDR providers must overcome:
• Data Volume and Velocity: Ingesting massive telemetry streams in real-time requires scalable, high-performance infrastructure.
• Tool Sprawl: Customers bring diverse security stacks. Providers must unify disparate data sources into a common operational picture.
• Noise vs. Signal: Sophisticated filtering, scoring, and analyst workflows are needed to separate actionable insights from benign anomalies.
• Maintaining Context: Observability depends on retaining context over time and across systems. This means rich metadata, historical baselines, and an understanding of business operations.
Observability is a key differentiator for IT leaders and cybersecurity executives considering MSSP or MDR services. It's not about dashboards or alerts—it's about outcomes. Can the provider detect threats others miss? Can they respond effectively without disrupting operations? Can they evolve their detections as threats shift?
When done right, observability fosters trust. It provides transparency into security operations, measurable improvements in response times, and defensible risk reduction. It shifts the security conversation from "what happened?" to "what did we learn, and how will we adapt?"
Cybersecurity is no longer a static discipline. As adversaries grow more agile, so too must defenders. Observability is the foundation for that agility. It turns raw telemetry into insight, insight into action, and action into resilience. MSSPs and MDR providers that master this capability don’t just react to threats—they stay ahead of them.
In the end, visibility shows you what is. Observability reveals what matters. The difference isn't just semantic. It's operational. It's strategic. And in today’s cyber threat environment, it’s essential.