Every category where a model named Sophos MDR for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant	Since September 2026
Managed detection and response	Security operations	13%	3 of 67	0%	47	accepted challenger	▼−1Since September 2026: 11% → 10%, −1 point. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
Extended detection and response	Security operations	2%	13 of 58	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Defender XDR at 40%	newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 2% now.
Endpoint detection and response	Security operations	0%	13 of 55	0%	4	under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Defender for Endpoint at 30%	=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
AI SOC agents	Security operations	0%	96 of 104	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Dropzone AI at 24%
Client-side protection	Security operations	0%	104 of 120	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by cside at 13%
Network detection and response	Security operations	0%	83 of 102	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer at 21%

Movement

Since September 2026, Sophos MDR held within the floor in all five categories: no change cleared 11 points.

Best category · MDR · by segment

Small business▼−5Since September 2026: 5% → 0%, −5 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.

0%from 5% in September 2026

Inside the floor by 6 pointsRank 2 → 10 of 42

Mid-market▼−1Since September 2026: 11% → 10%, −1 point. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.

10%from 11% in September 2026

Inside the floor by 10 pointsRank 3 of 65, unchanged

Enterprise=heldSince September 2026: 2% → 2%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.

2%from 2% in September 2026

Inside the floor by 11 pointsRank 6 → 8 of 60

All categories · Mid-market

Category	September 2026	Now	Change	Reading	Rank
XDR	0%	2%	newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 2% now.	New this edition	Rank 13 of 58, unchanged
MDR	11%	10%	▼−1Since September 2026: 11% → 10%, −1 point. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.	Within noise	Rank 3 of 67, unchanged
EDR	0%	0%	=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.	Within noise	Rank 27 → 13 of 55
AI SOC agents	0%	0%	newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now.	New this edition	Rank 96 of 104, unchanged
NDR	0%	0%	newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now.	New this edition	Rank 83 of 102, unchanged

Shares here are read over the models both editions asked, so they can differ by a point or two from the standing above, which counts every model in this edition.

The floor is 11 points of share, measured: how far the models move a leader on their own when the same questions are asked twice with nothing changed. A larger change is movement; a smaller one is noise, and both are shown. Movement is read over the twelve models both editions asked; GPT-6 Luna, Muse Glimmer 30B joined this edition and are in the standing but not yet in the comparison. How the floor is measured · The editions

By model

How each model treated Sophos MDR across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.

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Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	2	1	3
GPT-5.4 mini	0	2	1	3
Gemini 3.5 Flash	1	3	3	7
Perplexity Sonar	1	2	1	4
Grok 4.20	1	3	1	5
Mistral Small	2	1	0	3
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	5	1	6
Llama 4 Maverick	0	1	1	2
Qwen 3.7 Flash	1	2	0	3
Kimi K2	2	2	0	4
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	2	1	3
MiniMax M2.5	0	2	1	3
GPT-6 Luna	2	2	0	4
Muse Glimmer 30B	0	3	2	5

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct35 labels4

Paraphrase29 labels7

Comparative39 labels5not counted in share

Budget-constrained18 labelsNone

Scale-constrained5 labelsNone

Negative6 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative132 labels in all, every segment counted; 11 of the 16 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“Start with Arctic Wolf if you want a partnership approach with dedicated support, or Sophos MDR if you prioritize cost-effectiveness” Kimi K2 · MDR · direct prompt · first choice

“My default pick: Sophos MDR for a mid-market B2B company that wants a managed SOC without replacing its whole security stack.” GPT-6 Luna · MDR · direct prompt · first choice

“Best for Lean Teams Seeking a Fully Managed, Consolidated Ecosystem: Sophos Intercept X & Sophos MDR” Gemini 3.5 Flash · XDR · direct prompt · first choice

“Choose Sophos or Arctic Wolf if you want to simplify your stack and consolidate vendors.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · MDR · comparative prompt · first choice

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

No model argued against it.

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Sophos MDR, over the 132 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Sophos MDR was named but was not.

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ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Huntress Managed EDR82 of 13251Compare →

Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response73 of 13219Compare →

CrowdStrike Falcon Complete48 of 13212Compare →

SentinelOne Singularity MDR36 of 1320Not among the top eight

Expel MDR31 of 1322Compare →

Rapid7 MDR30 of 1322Not among the top eight

eSentire MDR26 of 1321Not among the top eight

Red Canary25 of 1322Not among the top eight

CrowdStrike21 of 1324Not among the top eight

ESET PROTECT MDR15 of 1322Not among the top eight

A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Sophos MDR. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 131 of the 132 answers that named Sophos MDR and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

huntress.com74

mdrproviders.io63

intezer.com56

kaseya.com52

gbhackers.com48

cynet.com45

expertinsights.com40

sophos.comYour site38

learn.g2.com36

cybersecuritynews.com34

448 of the 486 domain citations in answers naming Sophos MDR came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

huntress.com/cybersecurity-insights/managed-detection-response-vendors57

intezer.com/guides/mdr-providers49

kaseya.com/blog/best-mdr-providers48

gbhackers.com/best-mdr-services-compared40

mdrproviders.io/providers/size/mid-market38

cynet.com/security-foundations/managed-detection-and-response/mdr-solutions-why-they-are-c37

learn.g2.com/top-mdr-providers35

expertinsights.com/endpoint-security/the-top-managed-detection-and-response-mdr-solutions33

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Search and answers

Where Sophos MDR stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.

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In search

Google, US estimates

Searches for its name, Google: 590 a month (“sophos mdr”)
AI search demand for its name, est.: 36 a month
Its own site: It sits on Sophos's site (sophos.com), so there are no site figures for it alone

In answers

This edition

Share of first choices

13%

rank 3 of 67 in MDR

Segment leader

37%

Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response

First choices: 11 across its categories
Named in: 132 answers
Its own site cited: in 131 of the answers that named it

Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read September 28, 2026; AI search demand is its modeled, directional estimate, not a count of queries to any assistant. The answers are this edition's. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.

Names read as Sophos MDR

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Sophos MDR; a claim can dispute any of them.

Sophos 3Sophos MDR Essentials 3Sophos Intercept X & Sophos MDR 1Sophos Intercept X with XDR / Sophos MDR 1

Follow Sophos MDR

An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.

Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.

The company

Sophos is the company behind Sophos MDR.

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On record

Company records

Also from Sophos: Sophos Central, Sophos Email, Sophos Endpoint, Sophos Endpoint / Intercept X, Sophos Firewall, Sophos Firewall XGS, Sophos ITDR, Sophos Intercept X and 15 more

In its own words

Stated by the vendor, not checked

Positioning: Fully managed, 24/7 detection and response for the agentic era.
sophos.com/en-us/protect-with-mdr
For: Commercial; Mid-Market; Enterprise
sophos.com/en-us/protect-with-mdr
Price stated: contact for pricing sophos.com/en-us/protect-with-mdr
Integrations claimed: 176 sophos.com/en-us/protect-with-mdr
Customers named: Vancouver Whitecaps FCESCO TechnologiesINEOS
Not stated on the pages read: Starting price, free plan or trial, certifications, hosting

What Sophos MDR's own pages state, read September 28, 2026: sophos.com/en-us/protect-with-mdr, sophos.com/de-de/form/mdr-toolkit, sophos.com/de-de/digital/mdr-value, sophos.com/de-de/digital/mdr-experts, sophos.com/de-de/digital/mdr-toolkit. A claimed page can correct any of them.

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Sophos MDR's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Sophos MDR, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives

A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for Sophos MDR by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:

where Sophos MDR is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
who was chosen in the answers that did not name Sophos MDR, and every reason the record gives;
a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.

Badges

Wins only: a badge exists where Sophos MDR is ranked in a category's top three this edition. Three sizes, one file each, light and dark; the code is under each.

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Sophos MDR is among the products AI models recommend first in Managed detection and response this edition. Each badge says so in the buyer's words, names the edition, and links to the standing. The next edition issues a new badge; this one stays true as a record of October 2026.

Wide · 320 × 104 Website, beside other badges

Show the code

<a href="https://it-ai-index.com/security/managed-detection-and-response/"><img src="https://it-ai-index.com/badges/2026-10/sophos-mdr--managed-detection-and-response-wide.svg" alt="Among AI models' top three in Managed detection and response, October 2026 Edition, IT AI Recommendation Index" width="320" height="104"></a>

Copy the code as it is. The link is part of the badge: it points at the Managed detection and response standing, where the claim can be checked.

Square · 240 × 240 LinkedIn, slides

Show the code

<a href="https://it-ai-index.com/security/managed-detection-and-response/"><img src="https://it-ai-index.com/badges/2026-10/sophos-mdr--managed-detection-and-response-square.svg" alt="Among AI models' top three in Managed detection and response, October 2026 Edition, IT AI Recommendation Index" width="240" height="240"></a>

Copy the code as it is. The link is part of the badge: it points at the Managed detection and response standing, where the claim can be checked.

Compact · 200 × 56 Email signature, footer

Show the code

<a href="https://it-ai-index.com/security/managed-detection-and-response/"><img src="https://it-ai-index.com/badges/2026-10/sophos-mdr--managed-detection-and-response-compact.svg" alt="Among AI models' top three in Managed detection and response, October 2026 Edition, IT AI Recommendation Index" width="200" height="56"></a>

Copy the code as it is. The link is part of the badge: it points at the Managed detection and response standing, where the claim can be checked.

Badges read on light and dark pages. Alt text carries the claim, the category, the edition and the index, so it stays a citation where the image does not load.