How to get started with Huntress managed EDR

Global ransomware patterns

The August 2026 ransomware surge reached 997 worldwide attacks. It averaged exactly 32 incidents per day. This total exceeded the February 2025 record of 988 attacks. Businesses accounted for 861 of these August incidents, a 24% increase from July. Healthcare providers saw a 30% rise in attacks. Incidents climbed from 53 to 69. Utility companies saw the biggest spike, as attacks doubled from five in July to ten in August. Law firms experienced a 52% increase, and technology companies saw a 42% rise. Qilin and The Gentlemen led the surge. They accounted for more than 26% of August attacks. Qilin claimed 157 incidents, and The Gentlemen claimed 107. In the United States, Nutex Health Inc. reported unauthorized activity, and Cedar County Memorial Hospital experienced network disruption. Attacks in the U.S. increased by 28 percent last month. Manufacturers saw a 23% increase with 12 confirmed incidents, while retail sectors rose by 30% with eight confirmed attacks. The City of Fort Scott in Kansas and the City of Mitchell in South Dakota both noted nearly a week of disruptions. Small businesses face a unique threat because ransomware makes up 88% of their attacks.

The Sophos rivalry

I recommend Huntress Managed EDR for organizations lacking an in-house security analyst. While Sophos works well for users deeply embedded in the Sophos ecosystem, I find it much more expensive than the Huntress alternative. Huntress provides a 24/7 human-led SOC that triages every alert and sends a plain-English report with remediation steps to help your team respond to every single threat detected in your environment during a long and busy holiday weekend. You already know that an automated bot cannot replace a human analyst during a high-pressure ransomware event. Huntress handles host isolation and ransomware-canary detection to stop attackers. One limitation exists: direct purchases require a 50-endpoint minimum, which prevents very small offices from buying without a partner. Microsoft Defender for Business is the best value for teams already paying for Microsoft 365 Business Premium. Bitdefender GravityZone is the best budget option for those who prefer self-managed EDR. SentinelOne is the choice for autonomous response through on-device threat mitigation for organizations needing one-click rollback capabilities to restore their files. For those with larger budgets, CrowdStrike Falcon scales from a few seats to global enterprise. Small business breaches cost an average of $3.31 million, and downtime costs $53,000 per hour. A single attack could lead to a 19% bankruptcy risk for a small business.

Deploying Huntress

Huntress sells Managed EDR for Linux, which protects cloud workloads and on-premise servers. This purpose-built agent detects unauthorized privilege escalation and lateral movement. The solution includes persistent foothold detection to find malicious processes in cron jobs or system services. Huntress also provides Managed ISPM to harden Microsoft 365 identity posture, which addresses the fact that identity-based attacks accounted for 79% of all critical and high-severity incidents. This service handles the deployment of hardening policies to cover Exchange and SharePoint along with Teams. A new Learning Mode lets administrators preview which users would be affected by a policy before enforcement. This product works effectively on distributions like Ubuntu, RHEL, CentOS, and Debian. It delivers 24/7 human-led monitoring through the Huntress SOC.

I select Huntress because it manages Microsoft Defender Antivirus at no extra cost. This integration improves threat monitoring and response with an 8-minute MTTR. Can companies achieve total security if they only focus on endpoint protection?