A SOC is the Security Operations Center of an organization which is a centralized unit that manages and strengthens the cybersecurity posture of an organization. Comprising a team of cybersecurity professionals, the SOC team monitors the organization’s systems, networks, applications and databases, ensuring that no security threats, vulnerabilities or incidents arise. Essentially, a SOC is the first line of defense, working to identify risks and mitigate them before any significant damage is done. The full form of SOC is the Security Operations Center.
The Core Meaning and Purpose of a SOC
The core meaning of SOC focuses on providing a proactive cybersecurity strategy, which is why a SOC is always on the lookout for any malicious activity. Unlike other SOC-less organizations that until a security system is breached focus on an organization’s existing security, SOC takes a step forward. SOC stands for a dedicated center which is a combination of the latest technology and human expertise, protecting an organization’s digital assets. What is SOC? A Security Operations Center.
Important Responsibilities of a SOC
A SOC has a diverse range of responsibilities all aimed at preserving a healthy security posture. The SOC responsibilities can be summarized into a few categories:
- Continuous Monitoring: As part of their SOC responsibilities, the SOC team has to monitor the entire network traffic for SOC as well as all user activities and system logs for any unusual and potentially harmful behaviors around the clock.
- Threat Detection and Analysis: For potential threats to be classified, SOC analysts need to employ a number of different tools. Once the SOC team has detected a threat, it moves to assess the SOC threat’s details and its consequences. This assessment has to filter through a lot of network traffic to find the few harmful activities masked between a lot of genuine ones.
- Incident Response: When security incidents are detected, SOC teams need to activate some specific action plans, designed for each type of incident. These activities detail for the team how to quickly isolate and neutralize the specific threat plus any relevant containment, damage assessment, and recovery activities. For example, patch any security gaps and restore all deleted data.
- Vulnerability Management: A SOC also actively works to stop potential threats. These proactive SOC activities include, but are not limited to, filling security gaps that would have allowed hackers to compromise the organization’s networks and software.
- Compliance and Reporting: The SOC oversees adherence to compliance requirements as well as relevant security frameworks and industry benchmarks. The SOC also prepares management and stakeholder reports which highlight the organization’s security posture and the performance of the security controls deployed.
The SOC Team: Roles and Responsibilities
The SOC team is a unified SOC team that comprises professionals with diverse and tailored competencies.
- SOC Analyst: SOC analysts are the most integral component of a SOC. They monitor and analyze security alerts and attend to day-to-day SOC operations. They monitor possible threats to the SOC and escalate incidents to higher-tier analysts or the SOC manager if needed. SOC analysts are the first to respond to cyberattacks. They are the SOC’s frontline defenders.
- SOC Manager: A SOC manager oversees the entire SOC operation. They take charge of team leadership; team management, team security plans, and the day to day operation of the SOC. SOC Managers are the heads of the SOC who drive the strategy for the organization’s cybersecurity posture.
- Threat Hunter: Within a SOC (Security Operations Center), a threat hunter performs the more proactive functions of the SOC. Their focus is to locate potentially harmful threats that have evaded more basic security controls. In an effort to remain proactive, threat hunters look for sophisticated techniques that could lead to hidden, malicious activities.
- Incident Responder: The incident responder is the first to act as soon as an incident is confirmed. From that moment, the incident responder is in charge, and is responsible for executing the appropriate incident response plan, containing the threat, and recovering from the incident as fast as possible.
SOC Tools and Technology
Every SOC has a specific purpose, and in order to achieve that purpose, a defined set of SOC tools is necessary.
- Security Information and Event Management (SIEM): A SOC has a specific, useful set of tools for basic strategy goals, and a SIEM is the most important, acting as a “central nervous system.” A SIEM system aggregates and analyzes log data from various servers, network devices, and applications, providing a more holistic view of the organization’s security.
- Intrusion Detection/Prevention Systems (IDS/IPS): These systems also monitor and log for malicious activity on the network and policies and rules defined. An IDS would alert on activity deemed as suspicious and thus qualifies as a security violation, whereas an IPS can (and does) take action to stop the violation from occurring.
- Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR): These tools focus on laptops, desktops, and servers. These tools look for malicious activities on endpoints, and thus monitor and analyze activity for detection and response to risks.
- Threat Intelligence Platforms: With these technologies, SOC teams can access information on evolving and future threats in real-time which helps them proactively deal with attackers.
- Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR): Through the automation of repetitive security processes, SOCs are enabled to deal with more challenging and important incidents.
Benefits of a SOC
There are several important reasons to implement an SOC.
Improved Threat and Response Management
A Security Operations Center (SOC) offers continuous monitoring and detection of security threats to an organization. This continuous focus helps them identify and deal with monitoring and alerting suspicious activity systems and processes that require prompt action before they become bigger problems. A SOC employs processes and technologies that help the organization to quickly and accurately detect and respond to security incidents.
Eliminating Blackout Times to Enhance Detection and Response
An organization can always respond to security problems promptly. With well-configured SOCs, the amount of time for engaging and disengaging systems can be reduced significantly. Rapid response systems also help decrease the amount of downtime and loss of an organization, ultimately protecting the reputation of the SOC. This has become exceptionally important in recent years.
Proactive Security Posture
Traditional incident response security measures practitioners employ are quite often reactive leaving organizations vulnerable. A SOC adapts active incident response measures by engaging in active vulnerability assessments, threat hunting, and persistent system monitoring. These activities allow organizations to proactively fortify defenses minimizing impact of adversaries proactive attempts.
Improving resilience against attacks enhances organizational SOC. A SOC-presence moves the security paradigm from reactive damage control to manage risk minimization. Amplifying risk-awareness and moving towards holistic security and preparedness culture.
Improved Compliance
Compliance due to legal frameworks and industry standards is a matter of concern to every industry. A SOC assists in compliance due to its capabilities to generate detailed logs, audit trails, security events, and system snapshots. Scoped security reports generated by a SOC help organizations ease audit compliance and legal or industry obligations.
Thus, the evidence provided by a SOC fortifies organizations SOC presence and strengthens the response to compliance inquiries or audits. These records assist in proving due diligence and reduce the penalties, fines, and damage to reputation due to non-compliance.
Centralized Security Management
A SOC integrates all security activities within one location, providing a consolidated control center. This SOC Model improves intra-team coordination, threat visibility, and overall security strategy enhancement. Rather than functioning separately, teams work better together using common tools and information.
Due to centralization, blending intelligence, alerts, and responses simplifies managing incidents. Access to all vital information enables organizations to identify patterns, prioritize threats, and allocate resources improving security.
Cost Reduction
Setting up a SOC comes with initial costs, but prevents costly breaches and downtime, saving organizations money. Cyberattacks incur costs from remediation, loss, legal action, and damage to reputation, all of which can be mitigated by a SOC.
In addition, resource allocation improves with a SOC due to optimized security operations. Streamlined security operations, automated monitoring, and incident response enhances staff workload and improves efficiency in managing security. Economically, these savings balance the initial setup and operational costs over time.
Dedicated SOC
A dedicated SOC is a fully in-house facility built and managed by an organization. This approach gives the organization the most control and flexibility in security operations. It is usually preferred by organizations with big budgets and a complex environment because this model fully ensures that the organization’s specific requirements are met.
However, the organization needs to have all the required resources, which in this case means having the required infrastructure, tools, and skilled personnel to fight SOC. In addition, the organization already incurs additional ongoing maintenance costs which in this case, mean dedicated SOCs are more expensive and more restrictive to smaller organizations.
Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP)
An MSSP allows organizations to outsource their SOC functions to a third-party provider. This model is cost-effective, as it eliminates the need for in-house infrastructure and staff. MSSPs use proprietary tools, along with their highly trained experts, to provide quality security monitoring and response services for multiple clients at the same time.
MSSPs provide a more cost-effective and easily accessible solution for organizations that do not have resources for advanced security capabilities. Regardless, the main concern remains that when services are outsourced to MSSPs, the organizations do not have as much control, which is a concern to organizations with strict data sensitivity requirements.
Hybrid SOC
An MSSP alongside an internal security team operates a hybrid security operation center (SOC). This model allows organizations to maintain a degree of control and customization over their security operations while delegating resource-heavy tasks to external experts. This model is a balance between control and expense.
This hybrid model is best for companies wanting to supervise critical systems while utilizing external resources for continuous monitoring and advanced threat analysis . This model of SO provides flexibility, and hybrid scopes of work and ensure scalability and adaptability to evolving security needs.
Virtual SOC
A virtual SOC does not have a physical office and employees work from multiple remote locations. This model is optimal for organizations that are too small to afford and/or are space constrained for a dedicated SOC. This allows them to receive monitoring and response services at a lower cost.
Today, cloud technologies, and advanced communication systems, enable a virtual SOC to operate as a single, integrated entity off-site. A virtual SOC provides remote access to specialized monitoring and incident response services without requiring investment in a physical SOC.
SOC Challenges
Building and operating a SOC comes with a number of challenges.
Talent Shortage
One of the hardest issues SOCs confront on a global scale is a distinct lack of rival cybersecurity professionals. SOC analysts, threat hunters, and SOC managers are in high demand, and currently there is a shortage of qualified cybersecurity professionals. Many organizations become desperate in the effort to acquire these professionals, which leads to a saturated market. Because hiring and keeping these professionals in the organization becomes difficult, the competition among these organizations increases.
Existing teams face added responsibilities in the form of increased workloads as a result of this shortage. Furthermore, many organizations are unable to maintain 24/7 coverage in monitoring and incident response, leading to gaps. This makes them increasingly vulnerable to exploitation by cybercriminals.
Alert Fatigue
For SOC analysts, the problem of excessive security alerts has turned into a recurring problem. Of the many alerts, the majority are infectious or of a lower tier and thus are disregarded, but a handful of them do require attention and need to be looked into. This is more noise than an analyst is used to which can lead to desensitization and eventually, alert fatigue. This condition along with decreased efficiency becomes a vicious cycle in threat detection.
SO teams then become more vulnerable to a fall in morale and an increase in the turnover problem. Even worse, analysts could fall into the trap of ignoring the alert because of the average alert volume and as a result, critical threats could go unnoticed.
Integration Complexity
A SOC integrates multiple information security tools such as SIEMs, firewalls, intelligence services, and endpoint security services. Achieving integration of all managed technologies into a single system is, among other things, highly technical in nature. Security operations center (SOC) integration, if executed poorly, has the potential to create operational blind issues or overtime in security funnels.
As an organization tries to scale, the problem escalates. Every single additional integration takes configuration, monitoring, and maintenance, driving the effective SOC function to operational chaos. In the absence of planned architecture, the architecture SOC suffers from slowed operational tempo as security gaps further create operational overhead in stopping investigations.
Budget Constraints
Setting up a SOC comes at a financial burden, with resources allocating additional funds to hiring security staff, disabling robust technologies, and offering critical training. Aside from small and mid-sized businesses, these SOCs lead to big operational holes with undeserving an entire organization on a critical core.
Instability eventually translates to a stronger focus on cybersecurity, undermining the SOC effectiveness and security posture. Adopting a hybrid SOC model outsourcing in the form of remote SOC staff offering a lower-priced alternative seems financially more favorable.
SOC vs NOC
It is quite common to associate a Security Operations Center with a Network Operations Center, both of which are integral to an enterprise’s IT ecosphere. A NOC primarily concerned with performance, has a specific focus as opposed to SOC.
NOC’s priorities lie on the use and retention of the network and is therefore, focused on network operations, monitoring, and overall network functionality. As Network Performance and Availability are critical functions for system recovery and operations, the NOC team deals with the Network Performance and Availability monitoring for outages, performance issues, and any to the network.
SOC’s defend organizations operating on the network and systems from any potential malicious attacks and breaches. A SOC defends both the logical and physical integrity, monitoring and scanning systems for data breaches and leaks. Hence, corporate malfeasance was from the physical nature.
Summarily, one could make the blanket statement that a NOC is focused on “is it working” and cyber physiologically, as to a SOC it is, “is it secure.”
Summary
In modern cybersecurity strategies, a Security Operations Center (SOC) is critical. By using a centralized, proactive, and expert-led approach, a SOC enables organizations to defend against and protect their digital assets from omnipresent and complex threats. Whether a dedicated SOC, MSSP, or hybrid SOC is chosen, having SOCs protects organizations from risks, improves compliance, and helps maintain business continuity. With SOC, organizations achieve their objectives seamlessly while shielded from risks and threats. SOC managers and SOC analysts, who comprise the SOC team, are the silent defenders of corporate security, serving from the shadows to protect the rest of us from the cyberspace threats
