Managed security service providers (MSSPs) working in industrial and OT environments operate under constant pressure. Customers expect 24×7 coverage, tight service level agreements (SLAs), and clear proof that cybersecurity spend is reducing risk. Internally, MSSPs must control costs, avoid analyst burnout, and differentiate in a crowded market.
To do that, metrics matter. But not all metrics serve the same purpose. In practice, OT MSSPs work with three broad groups of performance metrics:
This article organizes those three types, gives concrete examples, and then shows how quantified vulnerability management and cyber risk quantification can strengthen the metrics story for both MSSPs and their industrial customers.
External metrics are the numbers customers expect to see in contracts, dashboards, and quarterly business reviews (QBRs). They are the primary scorecard for judging whether an MSSP is doing its job.
Almost every security operation center (SOC), managed detection & response (MDR), MSSP metrics framework starts with timebased KPIs such as:
Industry SOC metrics guides from vendors such as Splunk treat MTTD and MTTR as core indicators for incident response effectiveness, and these same metrics show up in MSSP contracts and scorecards. (Splunk)
For OT MSSPs, these metrics are often framed around preventing or minimizing operational disruption in industrial control systems, not just IT systems.
Customers also care about how incidents are handled end-to-end:
SANS SOC surveys explicitly list “downtime per incident,” “time to discover all impacted assets,” “thoroughness of eradication,” and “losses accrued vs. losses prevented” as KPIs that customers ask MSSPs to report. (AI Security Automation)
These metrics answer the question: “Are you doing meaningful work for us, or just closing tickets?”
Coverage and Visibility
Boards and CISOs increasingly focus on coverage: what portion of the estate is actually monitored. Typical external coverage metrics include:
Channel-focused sources and SOC metric guides recommend “estate coverage across identity, endpoints, network, infrastructure, and SaaS” as a headline KPI for security services, which OT MSSPs adapt to industrial assets and networks. (DeNexus)
Detection quality is another external lens:
MSSP KPI guidance from vendors such as Heimdal highlights SLA compliance, NPS, and churn as critical custome rowned metrics that providers must track closely. (Scribd)
These external metrics define how industrial customers score their OT MSSP—tactically (daytoday service quality) and strategically (renewal and expansion decisions).
Internal metrics are the provider’s own view of performance. They are often more detailed than what customers see and are used to manage the SOC, platform, and overall MSSP business.
To avoid analyst burnout and missed alerts, MSSPs track operational workload:
SOC metrics guidance and SANS SOC surveys both emphasize using these metrics to balance human effort and automated tooling within a SOC. (Splunk)
OT MSSPs also watch:
Beyond analyst workload, internal metrics track platform health:
These inform decisions about tuning, architecture changes, and vendor/tool consolidation.
At the business level, MSSPs monitor:
And they aggregate security outcomes internally:
Internal metrics like these determine whether the MSSP can scale OT security services profitably while maintaining or improving outcomes.
Customer-facing metrics are the curated subset of external and internal metrics that an MSSP deliberately packages and sends to clients. They provide the narrative in:
These metrics aim to answer three questions for the customer:
Weekly or operational reporting typically focuses on what is happening right now:
For OT MSSPs, this is often broken down by plant or OT network segment so OT teams can directly see what is happening in their environments.
Monthly reports are where most MSSPs tell their value story:
This reporting is often accompanied by a short executive summary highlighting major incidents handled, key improvements, and recommended next steps.
Quarterly and annual reviews zoom out to strategy. Here, customer-facing metrics typically include:
SANS SOC and MSSP surveys note that customers increasingly ask for financial indicators such as “monetary cost per incident” and “losses prevented” alongside these technical metrics, especially in QBRs. (AI Security Automation)
The content above describes metrics that are already common in MSSP practice, where many OT MSSPs struggle is linking these metrics to financial impact and prioritizing vulnerabilities by business risk rather than purely technical severity.
The research behind this article highlights how customers are asking for:
This is where quantified vulnerability management and cyber risk quantification can complement your metrics strategy.
For vulnerability-focused metrics in OT environments, quantified vulnerability management platforms such as DeRISK QVM help MSSPs go beyond CVSS and exploitability to rank OT vulnerabilities by their contribution to financial risk, not just technical severity. DeRISK QVM translates vulnerabilities and controls into financial risk metrics, including dollars at risk, which can be embedded directly into customer-facing reports and QBRs. (DeNexus)
For broader, portfolio-level metrics, cyber risk quantification platforms such as DeRISK CRQ can translate OT cyber exposure into risk quantified in monetary terms, using both inside-out telemetry and outside-in threat data. This provides OT stakeholders, CISOs, and CFOs with board-level cyber risk metrics—such as value-at-risk (VaR) and risk trends over time—that complement traditional MSSP performance metrics. (DeNexus)
By integrating quantified vulnerability management and cyber risk quantification into external, internal, and customer-facing metrics, OT MSSPs can:
Book a 15-min demo today to learn more about DeRISK CRQ and DeRISK QVM