While the number of SOC teams varies depending on the size of the organization and industry, most have roughly the same roles and responsibilities. A SOC is a centralized function within an organization that leverages people, processes, and technology to continuously monitor and improve an organization`s security posture while preventing, detecting, analyzing, and responding to cybersecurity incidents. SOC analysts are organized into four levels. First, SIEM alerts are routed to Tier 1 analysts who monitor, prioritize, and review them. The real threats are forwarded to a Level 2 analyst with more in-depth security experience, who performs a more in-depth analysis and decides on a mitigation strategy. The function of the Security Operations Centre (SOC) is to continuously monitor, prevent, detect, investigate and respond to cyber threats. SOC teams are responsible for monitoring and protecting business assets, including intellectual property, human resources data, business systems, and brand integrity. The SOC team implements the company`s entire cybersecurity strategy and acts as a focal point of collaboration in coordinated efforts to monitor, assess, and respond to cyberattacks. While every business is different, there are some basic functions and best practices for security operations today that represent due diligence. An appropriate threat management process begins with a plan and includes discovery (including baseline calculation to promote anomaly detection, normalization, and correlation), selection (based on risk and asset value), analysis (including contextualization), and scope (including iterative investigations). Threat management processes feed into prioritized and characterized cases in incident response programs. A well-defined response plan is absolutely essential to contain a threat or minimize the damage caused by a data breach. Learn how security operations centers work and why many organizations rely on SOCs as a valuable resource for incident detection.
Many security leaders focus more on the human element than the technological element to “directly assess and mitigate threats rather than relying on a script.” SOC staff continuously manage known and existing threats while striving to identify emerging risks. They also meet the needs of the business and the customer and operate within their risk tolerance. While technological systems such as firewalls or IPS can prevent basic attacks, human analysis is needed to resolve major incidents. All of these assessments help prioritize the investments or frictions needed to respond to threat management implementation. Consultants and penetration testing can help compare organizational strategy and maturity and examine the security response to attack status to get an up-to-date measure of an organization`s ability to detect and mitigate malicious events. When compared to peer companies, this audited review can help justify and explain the need to redirect or invest in operational cybersecurity resources. For best results, the SOC should keep abreast of the latest threat information and use that information to improve insider detection and defense. As the InfoSec Institute points out, the SOC leverages enterprise data and correlates it with information from various external sources that provide threat and vulnerability insights. This external cyber intelligence includes news feeds, signature updates, incident reports, threat descriptions and vulnerability alerts to help the SOC keep pace with evolving cyber threats. SOC staff must constantly feed the SOC`s monitoring tools to stay on top of threats, and the SOC must have processes in place to distinguish between real and non-threat threats.
Before establishing a SOC, an organization should define its cybersecurity strategy to align it with current business objectives and issues. Managers refer to a risk assessment that focuses on what is needed to maintain the company`s mission, and then provide feedback on the objectives to be achieved and the infrastructure and tools needed to achieve those objectives, as well as the skills required of employees. The “framework” of your security operations results from both the security tools you use (e.g., software) and the people who make up the SOC team. Effective visibility and threat management relies on many data sources, but sorting out useful, up-to-date information can be challenging. The most valuable data turned out to be event data generated by countermeasures and IT assets, indicators of compromise (IoC) generated internally (via malware analysis) and external (via threat intelligence feeds) and system data available from sensors (e.g. host, network, database, etc.). After an incident, the SOC is tasked with finding out exactly what happened when, how, and why. During this investigation, the SOC uses log data and other information to trace the problem back to its source, preventing similar problems from occurring in the future. There are several agreed best practices for operating a SOC. Before a SOC can succeed, it`s important to select the most effective SOC model for each organization, equipping the team with the best security specialists and deploying the right tools and technologies. For many Security Operations Center (SOC) teams, detecting malicious activity on the network is like finding a needle in a haystack.
They are often forced to compile information from multiple monitoring solutions and navigate through tens of thousands of daily alerts. As a result, critical attacks are missed until it`s too late. The main benefit of a security operations center is improved incident detection through continuous monitoring and analysis of data activity. By analyzing this activity across an organization`s networks, endpoints, servers, and databases continuously, SOC teams are critical to ensuring rapid detection and response to security incidents. 24/7 monitoring via a SOC gives organizations an advantage in defending against incidents and intruders, regardless of the source, time of day, or type of attack. The gap between the time it takes attackers to compromise and the time it takes businesses to detect is well documented in Verizon`s annual data breach investigation report, and a security operations center helps organizations close that gap and stay on top of the threats their environments face. The SOC continuously scans Internet traffic, networks, workstations, servers, endpoints, databases, applications, and other systems for signs of security incidents. SOC staff may collaborate with other teams or departments, but they are typically associated with employees who have a high level of IT and cybersecurity skills or are outsourced to third-party vendors. Most SOCs operate around the clock, with employees working in shifts to constantly record activity and mitigate threats.
A Security Operations Center (SOC) is a command center for a team of IT professionals with information security expertise (infosec) who monitor, analyze, and protect an organization from cyberattacks. These are the actions that most people think of when they think of the SOC. Once an incident is confirmed, the SOC acts as a first responder, performing actions such as stopping or isolating endpoints, stopping malicious processes (or preventing them from running), deleting files, and more. The goal is to respond as much as necessary while having the least possible impact on business continuity. Unlike a SOC, a NOC team only addresses issues related to network performance and availability.
