Security Operations Centre ; With cyber attacks and data breaches on the rise, businesses of all sizes need to focus on protecting their assets. However, creating a full-time in-house IT security team may not be feasible due to budget constraints and competing priorities in .
Here you will learn what a SOC is and the basic functions of a SOC, as well as the different models and roles involved. It’s important to know the best practices for SOC security so you can research your options and choose the best provider.
- What is a Security Operations Centre?
- Benefits of a SOC
- How SOC’s Operate
- SOC Job Roles
- Models
- Best Practices
- FAQs
What is a Security Operations Hub?
The Security Operation centre helps protect all areas of the company’s IT infrastructure, including but not limited to networks, software, and legacy data. Security Operations Centre (SOCs) are centralized location within the organization. That houses a security team responsible for monitoring the company’s Cybersecurity threats. . SOCs serve a variety of functions to achieve the primary goal of defending against cyberattacks.
How it Happens
A security operations centre operates continuously, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to track events recorded in the organization’s system. However it decide how these events will be handled. They are usually supported by a team of engineers, and security managers who work together to immediately respond to security threats.
A SOC is a good funding to consider if you want to sleep easy at night knowing your network is always protected from hackers. Basically, you can completely trust this team to deal with security issues in real time and protect your network. The Security Operations Center is also constantly looking for ways to improve the organization’s security position and prevent future cyberattacks.
Benefits of a Security Operation Centre (SOC)
With technology playing a key role in every industry around the world, cybersecurity must be a priority for every organization. The SOC model has proven to be effective in many situations, and we will explore some of the key benefits below. Just keep in mind that by outsourcing your IT security activities, you inherit a certain level of risk.
Cost-Effectiveness
Employee salaries are the biggest cost in their budget for most companies. Employing a full team of cybersecurity professionals requires a large initial and ongoing investment. By adopting the SOC model, you pay for a service with clear terms and less liability.
Less Downtime
When a website or app goes down, it often means lost revenue or a negative impact on a company’s reputation. Using a SOC can minimize these effects and shorten incident resolution time. Even the most reliable uptime monitoring tools aren’t perfect, which is why implementing a security operations center creates redundancy in your network. Your internal staff has so many conflicting priorities that it could be beneficial to outsource cybersecurity activities to a SOC.
Customer Trust
A single data breach, like the Capital One data breach, can make a customer think twice before trusting a company with their private information. With so little room for error, putting a security operations centre to work with 24/7. This monitoring systems gives anyone dependent on network and data a sense of confidence.
How SOCs Work: 7 Key Responsibilities
Until the recent rise of cloud computing, standard security practice was for a company to choose a traditional malware scanning solution. Either via download or, in the old days, on a CD-ROM that arrived in the mail. They would add to this a firewall installed at the edge of the network . After that they would be convince that these measures would ensure the security of their data and systems. Today’s reality is a very different environment, with threats spreading across the network.
SOC functions as a main function within an organization. With that employs can uses tools to continuously monitor security posture to detect and prevent suspected malware and cybersecurity incidents. In this context, it provides a layer of leased expertise to a company’s 24/7 cybersecurity strategy. That networks and endpoints are constantly monitored. If a Susceptibility is found or an incident is discovered. The SOC will liaise with the on-site IT team to respond to the issue and investigate the root cause.
Function Skills
- Asset Survey – For a SOC to help a business stay secure, they must have a complete inventory of the assets they need. Otherwise, they may not be able to protect the entire network. An asset survey should identify every server under the company’s control, as well as any other actively used cybersecurity tools.
2.Log Collection – Data is the most important part in SOC to function properly, and logs are the first source of information about network activity. This must configure direct sources of business systems so that data is collected in real time. Obviously, humans can’t digest such large amounts of information, which is why AI algorithm-driven log analysis tools are so valuable to SOCs, though they come with interesting side effects that humanity is still trying to eliminate.
3.Preventative maintenance – At best, the SOC can prevent cyberattacks from occurring by being proactive with its processes. This includes installing security patches and periodically adjusting firewall policies. Since some cyberattacks begin as insider threats, a SOC must also look for risks within the organization.
4. Continuous monitoring – A few minutes can be the difference between blocking an attack and letting it destroy an entire system or website. SOC tools run scans on the corporate network to identify potential threats and other suspicious activity. To be ready to respond to a cybersecurity incident, the SOC must be vigilant in its monitoring practices.
5. Alert management: Automated systems are great for finding patterns and tracking scripts. The human element of a SOC proves its worth when it comes to analysing automated alerts and ranking them base priority. SOC staff need to know what responses to give and how to verify that an alert is legitimate.
6.Root Cause Analysis – After an incident has occurred and been resolved, the work of the SOC is just beginning. Cybersecurity experts will analyse the root cause of the problem and diagnose why it happened in the first place. This is part of a continuous improvement process. This security tools and rules being modified to prevent the same incident from happening again in the future.
7.Compliance audits: Companies want to know that their data and systems are secure. However that they are managed legally. SOC vendors are required to perform regular audits to confirm compliance in the regions in which they operate.
SOC Job Roles
Those with a background in cybersecurity, a SOC provider is a great place to build a career. Let’s review some of the main positions involved in running a SOC.
SOC Manager
They are the leaders of their organization. That means they have high-level responsibilities under them. Including hiring/firing, budgeting, and prioritization. They commonly report directly to the management level, especially the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).
Compliance Auditor
They essentially function as the quality control department, ensuring that SOC members follow protocols and adhere to the government or industry regulations. They play a key role in standardizing processes within a SOC.
Incident Responder
Incident responders are the people paid to respond to alerts as quickly as possible. They use a wide range of monitoring services to classify the severity of alerts, and once an alert is determined to be a large-scale issue, they contact the affected business to begin recovery efforts.
SOC Analyst
They are responsible for reviewing past incidents and determining the root cause behind them. They have many years of professional cybersecurity experience. Instrumental in understanding the technical aspects of breaches and how to prevent them.
class="wp-block-heading">Threat Hunter
They are the proactive team members who run tests on a network to identify areas of weakness. The main object is to find vulnerabilities before a hacker can use them with an attack and improve overall data security.
SOC Models
Until now, we have focused on a third-party SOC processor model. The company in question pays a third-party SOC provider to handle their cybersecurity needs. However, there are several other SOC architecture patterns that can work in a similar way.
Dedicated or Internal SOC
The company is creating its own cybersecurity team within its workforce. If you decide to run your own dedicated SOC, you’ll need the staff and expertise to fill all the SOC roles, from manager to analyst.
Virtual SOC
In a SOC model SOC manager becomes even more critical in terms of Handling people across multiple sites. The security team does not have a dedicated facility and often works remotely
Global or Command SOC
This is a globally distributed organization. Often prefer the global SOC model because it allows them to implement strategic initiatives. Moreover standardize procedures down to the analyst and threat hunter levels.
Co-Managed SOC
The company’s internal IT is closely associated with an external provider to jointly manage cybersecurity needs. This is one of the most cost-effective models. Though you won’t have to use all the roles and can work with your partner’s compliance auditor to ensure proper procedures.
SOC Best Practices
Implementing Automation
These Security Operations Centre teams must be as efficient as possible. They should implement automation security operations IT tools that use artificial intelligence to identify patterns.
Cloud Approach
It used to be that you could install a firewall at the edge of your data centre and make sure everything inside was protected. They need to analyse how all the elements of a cloud infrastructure interact and where vulnerabilities can hide.
Think Like a Hacker
Cybercriminals are always looking to invent new forms of attack that businesses and individuals don’t see coming. To stay ahead of them, cybersecurity SOC teams must take the same creative approach. If they spend all day worrying about outdated threats, they will be blind to new types of attacks on the horizon. Penetration and chaos testing are crucial SOC activities because they force teams to look for vulnerabilities that exist in unexpected places.
FAQs
Q: Do you need a Security Operations Centre?
A: It is essential for protecting company data, systems and other resources. With a SOC agreement, you can be sure that your network is protected against attacks.
Q: What is a SOC Monitor?
A: This means that every server, and database must be within reach of the Security Operations Center . These tools and teams should monitor all traffic on a network from external sources.
Q: The difference between NOC and SOC?
A: NOC is a network operations centre. It primarily focuses on minimizing downtime and meeting service level agreements. Moreover SOC looks at cyber security threats and vulnerabilities.
Q: What is the difference between SOC and SIEM?
SIEM helps aggregate events for analysis and can help provide context to security events. A SOC is a group of people and tools that work together. Moreover a SIEM is a tool that they use.
Closing Thoughts
working with an experienced SOC partner like Varonis, you can get all the benefits of a SOC at a lower cost.