Blue Mantis Expands Into Full-Scale MSSP With Launch Of Mantis Protect Service

The 24/7 managed security offering represents a ‘significant investment’ for the solution provider and includes new in-house services such as proactive threat hunting and darkweb monitoring, Blue Mantis CISO Jay Martin tells CRN.

Blue Mantis unveiled a major expansion of its managed security service Wednesday with the launch of a comprehensive new offering, Mantis Protect, which will provide a massive boost to threat response and proactive security at a time of intensifying cyberattacks, Blue Mantis CISO Jay Martin told CRN.

Mantis Protect includes managed Security Operations Center (SOC) capabilities delivered 24/7 by a team of in-house Blue Mantis security analysts and threat hunters, as well as an array of crucial services for ongoing security monitoring and management, according to Martin (pictured).

The new managed security offering represents a “significant investment” in service capabilities and goes well beyond what Blue Mantis had offered previously by working with a third-party MDR (managed detection and response) vendor, according to Martin.

“What it signifies is, we've listened to our customers. We heard where the pain points were with the old solution, and heard what they’re not getting from the [MDR vendors],” he said in an interview. “We feel like we've answered it with Mantis Protect. And we're going to continue to accelerate what we provide those customers as we go forward.”

The bottom line is that Blue Mantis is, for the first time, now operating as a full-scale MSSP with security analysts and threat hunters located in multiple time zones to provide 24/7 coverage, Martin said.

The Portsmouth, N.H.-based company, No. 136 on CRN’s Solution Provider 500 for 2025, has made a number of hires and trained existing staff members for its newly constituted SOC team, which currently includes about 20 security analysts and threat hunters, according to Martin.

“We never had threat hunters before, so we [made those hires]. And we rebuilt an analyst organization from the ground up,” he said.

Core components of the new Mantis Protect service include real-time managed threat detection and incident response — powered by a modern SIEM (security information and event management) platform — as well as managed endpoint protection and email security, according to Blue Mantis.

Meanwhile, the newly added threat hunting service includes curation of threat intelligence specific to each customer and environment, enabling a tailored approach for proactively improving the customer’s security posture, Martin said. That enables the service to provide far more than simply responding to incidents, he said.

The Mantis Protect offering is then rounded out with vulnerability management and newly available capabilities for darkweb monitoring and GRC (governance, risk and compliance) as-a-service, Martin said.

Additionally, Mantis Protect includes managed security service edge (SSE) secure access service edge (SASE) for a modern approach to network security, with capabilities including enforcement of zero-trust access, the company said.

All around, the new Mantis Protect service offering is a recognition of the fact that customers today are looking for more than just basic MDR to ensure they are being fully protected, Martin said.

Customers are “looking for that extended security observability — like threat hunting, darkweb monitoring, GRC as-a-service,” he said. “[Customers] don't have the capability and the skills to be able to meet that demand.”

In addition to the SOC team, a number of other Blue Mantis staffers are also involved with the managed security service through translating the findings from the SOC into business terms for customers, Martin said.

Those staff members are “able to help discern what the analysts are seeing, what our threat hunters are seeing, into business intelligence for the customer,” he said. “That communication to the customer has to be at a business level.”

Looking ahead, Blue Mantis is planning to continue extending its managed security service into next-generation areas such as AI security, deepfake analysis and advanced anomaly detection, according to Martin.

“We're going to continue to accelerate what we provide those customers as we go forward” with Mantis Protect, he said.

Ultimately, when it comes to meeting today’s cybersecurity needs, Blue Mantis recognizes that “customers can't do it themselves anymore,” Martin said. “There's too many technologies you need now to form a really good defense-in-depth strategy.”