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CompTIA, an industry leading cybersecurity training organization, defines a Security Operations Center (“SOC”) as “a team of experts who proactively monitor an organization’s ability to operate securely.” Let’s dissect this definition:
- Team of experts: Individuals who have countless years of experience, understand cybersecurity thoroughly, and are very knowledgeable about threat actor behaviors.
- Proactive monitoring: The experts are monitoring security dashboards to triage and remediate any detected alerts quickly.
- Operate securely: Fully implemented SOC can monitor all parts of the IT infrastructure including anomalous activity from highly privileged accounts to rogue assets on the network enabling the business to focus on productivity and revenue generation.
SOCs are critical for the success of a cybersecurity program. SOCs monitor the IT environment for anomalies, triage those events, and remediate them, 24 hours a day by seven days a week. SOC Personnel stand at the ready to dive into any alerts to investigate before the anomalous action can proliferate throughout the network. In addition to analysts monitoring the environment, SOCs can have a multitude of supporting cybersecurity skill sets to further decrease the likeliness or successs of a cyberattack:
- SOC analysts: Individuals dedicated to watching dashboards for alerts, triaging alerts, and executing response procedures according to their defined playbooks.
- Threat hunters: individuals who will proactively look for evidence of compromise based on threat intelligence.
- Digital forensic analysts: Individuals who can trace and recreate activity from various artifacts throughout the IT environment.
- Cybersecurity engineers: Individuals who specialize in cybersecurity infrastructure to maintain the health of cybersecurity tools and rulesets.
- Ethical hackers (red team): Individuals who “think like an attacker” and attempt to exploit IT and business processes to continually harden cybersecurity operations.
SOCs have diverse skills to monitor, detect, respond to, and remediate any threats to an organization stemming from internal or external causes. SOCs can play a pivotal role in providing confidence to the business, shareholders, industry partners, insurance providers, and customers. When designed and implemented correctly, SOCs can significantly reduce the success and devastating effect of cybersecurity attacks.
Every company can benefit from a SOC
While all SOCs are designed to monitor, detect, and remediate with a goal to mitigate cyberattacks, each SOC can be customized to specifically address the needs of the business. Smaller companies can benefit from SOC-as-a-Service providers by outsourcing security services to subject matter experts. Whereas, larger companies may find more value by sole sourcing their own SOC to monitor their global operations. Regardless of the size of the company, security operations can be implemented in many different ways, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
The cybersecurity industry is saturated with SOC professional services that range from SOC monitoring and detection to SOC advisory consultants. These SOC professional services, in addition to monitoring and detection, can test SOC operations, enhance playbook processes, train staff, and maintain security rulesets. They can even help to identify viable SOC-as-a-service companies as part of defining requirements and managing the request for information (RFI) process.
Choosing the right path to implementing a SOC can be as simple as necessary. The following are three common ways to implement a SOC into your security program:
- SOC-as-a-Service: Outsource all monitoring and detection to a cybersecurity company who specializes in security operation monitoring. The outsourced organization usually provides all the experience, necessary equipment, personnel, and playbooks to integrate the SOC into the business’s security program. This approach may be applicable to smaller companies or startups who do not have the budget to purchase the necessary hardware and software or hire necessary personnel.
- In-sourced SOC: Build a security operations center within the organization. Requisite hardware, software, and personnel are sourced by the company and maintained by its personnel. This approach may be applicable to medium sized companies who are looking to reduce spend on external services or for larger companies who are looking to have granular insight into their security operations monitoring.
- Hybrid SOC: A blend between insourcing and outsourcing SOC monitoring and detection. A hybrid solution would leverage the best of both worlds enabling depth of expertise within the organization’s environment (insourced) and industry expertise across industries (outsourced). This approach can benefit any organization because resources are essentially shared to augment capabilities throughout the program. Internal personnel would work directly with external personnel daily and benefit from knowledge sharing from the subject matter experts.
Choosing the best implementation strategy for your organization should start with defining the requirements for the cybersecurity program. Those requirements will lead to the correct implementation method for the SOC.
Implement and enhance your SOC now
Large or small, every organization can benefit from SOC services. SOCs provide dedicated resources with diverse skill sets to monitor, detect, triage, and remediate malicious activity that threaten organizations revenue generating capabilities. SOCs are not a “one-size-fits-all” and can be customized to meet their organizations needs. While SOCs may seem complex, there are professional services that can assist with the identification, qualification, implementation, and maturity of SOC services.
