What is a Managed Intelligence Provider?
A Managed Intelligence Provider (MIP) is one accountable team that operates an organization’s IT, cybersecurity, physical security, and advisory and AI governance under one accountable operating record. An MSP manages infrastructure and an MSSP watches alerts. An MIP owns the seams between those lanes, and it produces evidence a board and an auditor can use. Point tools prove one framework at a time. Single-lane vendors often own alerts, not the seams across IT, cyber, physical, and advisory. Armorstack is a Managed Intelligence Provider: one accountable team and one operating record your auditor can use.MIP vs MSP vs MSSP
| MSP | MSSP | MIP (Armorstack) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary scope | IT operations: help desk, endpoints, network, cloud | Security monitoring and alerting | IT, cyber, physical security, and advisory and AI governance together |
| What it usually owns | Tickets and uptime | Alerts in its lane; response is often subcontracted or handed back | The operating model across lanes, under one contract |
| Accountability | IT service levels | Security service levels | One accountable operating record across all four portfolios |
| Physical security | Usually out of scope | Usually out of scope | In scope (Citadel: access control, video, and fire and alarm on the same record as identity and cyber) |
| AI governance | Rarely | Rarely | In scope (Verity advisory: vCIO, vCISO, vCAIO) |
| Evidence for auditors | Per-tool reports | Per-tool reports | One operating record mapped to the frameworks that apply |
| Typical gap | Security seams | IT and physical seams | Owned on one operating record |
This table describes typical service models, not specific named vendors. Confirm scope with any provider.
Why the seams matter
Most regulated mid-market organizations buy IT, security monitoring, cameras and badges, and compliance advice from different vendors. Each one reports on its own lane. When an incident or an audit crosses lanes, nobody owns the whole answer. An MIP closes those seams. It is not another dashboard or an MSSP patchwork. It is one accountable operating record across IT, cyber, physical, and advisory.Four portfolios, one operating record
| If the pain is | Portfolio | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| AI adoption ahead of monitoring; the board wants evidence | Verity: strategic advisory and AI governance (vCIO, vCISO, vCAIO) | Governance that holds up for the board and the auditor, backed by evidence |
| Vendor sprawl, uptime, cloud and IT operations | Core: managed IT and infrastructure | Infrastructure that stays observable as workloads scale: one clock, one accountable operating record shared with cyber and physical |
| Shadow AI, MDR quality, alert ownership | Sentry: cybersecurity and AI security operations | 24/7 security operations and managed detection and response. The SIEM is Huntress Managed SIEM. SENTRY Pulse provides service observability; it is not a SIEM. |
| Access, video, and the physical and cyber seam | Citadel: converged physical security | Physical security on the same record as cyber and identity |
How to evaluate an MIP
Ask any provider to answer these questions in writing. Clear scope, owners, and exclusions are evidence of a realistic operating plan.- Which systems, sites, and lanes are in scope, and which are excluded?
- Who owns the response when an incident crosses IT, cyber, and physical security?
- Is there one accountable operating record across all lanes, and how are severity, measurement, and escalation defined?
- Which SIEM and detection tools are used, and who operates them?
- How is AI use governed, and who owns AI risk decisions?
- What evidence will you hand to our board and our auditor, and how often?