Mishcon de Reya LLP

The situation

Mishcon de Reya, a major law firm, recognised that visibility into their critical infrastructure was inadequate. Threats could move through their networks without detection. Incident notifications, when they arrived, often came too late or lacked the detail needed to act quickly. The firm handled sensitive client information and complex transactions, the cost of a security gap was severe.

They wanted to build security capability but recognised they didn’t need to employ every specialist in-house. Instead, they needed a partner who would extend their team rather than work at arm’s length.

What SCC did

SCC proposed a hybrid approach: Mishcon’s in-house team would own strategy and response decisions, while SCC’s Security Operations Centre would provide the eyes and ears. To avoid overwhelming the firm with data, SCC developed a phased onboarding plan, using risk-based assessment to identify which workloads mattered most.

Within the first 90 days, they had integrated over 400 event sources, systems and tools throughout the firm’s infrastructure that could signal threats. Each source fed into a unified monitoring platform. The SOC team would watch continuously and alert Mishcon’s security team when something required attention.

What changed

Threat detection became real. Incidents that would have gone unnoticed before now appeared on screens, flagged by trained analysts who understood what they were looking at. Mean time to detect compressed significantly. Mean time to respond improved because the firm’s security team received clear, actionable alerts rather than noise.

Joe Hancock, Head of Cyber Security, said the firm “wanted a supplier we could collaborate with to tailor the service to our specific needs” and required “rapid and effective detection, followed by a swift response.” The relationship delivered exactly that. The SOC became an extension of their team, available 24 hours a day, speaking their language.

What the client learned

Mishcon discovered that outsourcing monitoring didn’t mean losing control. By choosing a partner who understood collaboration over transactional service, they gained capacity without compromising visibility or decision-making. The firm now spots threats in near-real time and responds from a position of knowledge rather than reaction.