Implementing Security Operations Center (SOC): Strategies for success

According to an estimate, cybercrime will cost companies an estimated $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, up from $3 trillion in 2015. These staggering numbers paint a dismal picture. 

In a world where cyber-attacks are evolving with no end in sight, global organizations are pushed to explore newer, more effective measures to beef up their cybersecurity game. 

More recently, they have been uniting their cybersecurity and technology teams to form a collaborative synergy known as a “Security Operations Center,” or a SOC to combat the onslaught of cyber threats.

The following blog aims to provide a deeper insight into what a SOC exactly is. It gets our readers covered on: 

• What is a SOC?
• Role and significance of a Security Operations Center
• A SOC’s scope of work and responsibilities
• Challenges while implementing a SOC
• Solution approaches
• Lots more

So, without further ado, let’s get started! 

What is a SOC?

A SOC—pronounced as “sock”—is a dynamic entity responsible for streamlining and strengthening an organization’s threat detection, response, and mitigation capabilities. By enabling a synergy between cybersecurity and operations technologies, a SOC ensures a more authoritative approach towards vulnerability management.

The core role of a SOC involves diagnosing, analyzing, and neutralizing threats in a real-time environment while ensuring every digital interaction is well-shielded. This “playing-the-defense” approach facilitates organizations to maintain a constant watch over networks, systems, and applications—and beef up the overall security posture. 

The SOC also ensures the ongoing effectiveness of an organization’s cybersecurity strategy. SOC professionals actively participate in decisions around selecting, deploying, and maintaining cybersecurity technologies while monitoring threat intelligence and acting on insights to keep security defenses up to scratch.

In the age where cyber attacks loom large, a SOC functions as the fulcrum of cybersecurity operations. It plays a critical role in embedding security around an IT’s ecosystem and thwarting threats of every form and scale. 

 Benefits of a security operations center (SOC) 

A SOC provides crucial advantages for organizations. Explore the infographic below for insights into top-tier SOC benefits. 

SOC roles and responsibilities: A closer look

A SOC works in every dimension of an organization’s security net. Its roles and responsibilities fall into three categories. 

1. Preparation, planning, and prevention

• Asset inventory: A S0C keeps a rigorous list of assets, including assets that should be protected as well as methods they should be protected with. This list mentions services, applications, databases, servers, endpoints, and security applications.
• Routine maintenance: An effective plan in which all incident related processes are clearly defined and developed is the first step to address possible dangerous cyber threats. A SOC goes to the root and works out the extensive plan with delineated roles, responsibilities, and metrics responsible for assessing the effectiveness of the response plan in emergency situations.
• Incident response planning:An effective plan in which all incident related processes are clearly defined and developed is the first step to address possible dangerous cyber threats. A SOC goes to the root and works out the extensive plan with delineated roles, responsibilities, and metrics responsible for assessing the effectiveness of the response plan in emergency situations.

2. Monitoring, detection, and response

• Continuous security monitoring:The SOC is charged with the responsibility of undertaking IT infrastructure monitoring around the clock. The SOC staff monitors the functions of servers, network devices, and cloud infrastructure with an aim to identify warning signs and discover vulnerabilities early and keep the malicious attacks as well as brute force attacks at bay. 
• Log management: Log analysis is an indispensable part of diagnosing and remedying threat interventions. SOC analysts perform several tasks, ranging from establishing core activities for threat detection to unveiling signals of probable cybersecurity incidents.
• Threat detection:  It’s a subtle process, requiring acumen, foresight, and an eye for detail. A SOC team activates a spectrum of advanced tools and methodologies to distinguish genuine threats from false positives and rank threats according to severity and scale. Cases with capabilities of causing maximum loss are flagged and spontaneously actionized as the robust first line of defense.
• Incident response: In the event of a security breach, the importance of swift, effective response cannot be underestimated. SOC teams swoop in to safeguard data by resorting to a variety of actions, such as conducting a comprehensive investigation, cutting off compromised systems, and providing remediation measures with the aim of mitigating loss and reinstating normal operations. 

3. Recovery, refinement, and compliance

• Recovery and remediation: Once a security threat is contained, a SOC team focuses on restoration and remediation aspects. This calls for eradicating threats, restoring affected systems, and implementing countermeasures to avoid such incidents in the future. 
• Post-mortem and refinement: One of the key success factors in achieving resilience in the face of cascading cybercrime is on-the-go learning. Not only these security incidents make SOC teams well-versed in the cybercrime domain, but also provide opportunities to improve and overcome. In a never-ending exercises of improving cybercrime resistance, SOC teams tirelessly perform post-incident analysis, look for weak spots prone to vulnerabilities, bridge the trust gaps, and amend security policies
• Compliance management: Compliance with ever-evolving data security and privacy regulations is of utmost importance. A SOC team has its finger at the pulse and brings forth necessary changes to ensure infallible compliance with regulations, such as GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and many more. 

The master plan: How to navigate the complexities of implementing a SOC?

It’s a well-understood fact that a SOC is a strong, multi-layered approach to cybersecurity and an acute business requirement to combat ever-evolving, escalating threats. However, the journey of implementing a SOC is rife with multiple challenges. 

In the following section, we understand these challenges and understand the possible solution approaches. 

Challenge 1: Defining clear objectives and scope

• Explanation: One of the biggest stumbling blocks an organization encounters while implementing a SOC is the lack of a clear understanding of its objectives and scope. Without establishing the SOC’s goals and the extent of what it’s expected to address, organizations may find themselves in a soup where they struggle to comprehend security requirements and risk overspending on resources. 
• Solution: Before diving headlong into the implementation process, conduct an exhaustive assessment and identify critical assets, potential threats, and regulatory requirements. Roping in stakeholders from various business quarters can offer a unique perspective of security needs and priorities and help shape a dependable cybersecurity ecosystem. Notably, establishing a clear vision and understanding helps ensure that every activity around the SOC implementation adds to value generation and makes companies resilient in the face of threats. 

Challenge 2: Selecting the right technology stack

• Explanation: Deciding on the tools and technologies that underpin the SOC poses a tricky challenge for organizations. The bewildering variety makes it daunting for decision-makers to identify the best-fit solutions for the unique business needs. 
• Solution: The winning formula lies in extensive research. Organizations must critically assess tools and technologies and hand-pick on the basis of a host of factors, including but not limited to operational maturity, business objectives, and long-term objectives. Decision-makers must set out on a course of partnering with reliable vendors and peer professionals, who can share advice on different aspects of incident monitoring and response, ranging from SIEM and EDR to threat intelligence solutions. 

Challenge 3: Building an effective, skillful team

• Explanation: No SOC can attain the desired goals without establishing a team with certain necessary attributes and talents. However, organizations tend to stumble in this area. Tapping into the relevant expertise and creating unique talent pools can be challenging due to fierce competition within the job markets. 
• Solution:The key to a SOC’s success is a team dedicated to helping an organization get the most out of its cybersecurity measures. Leaders must identify necessary skills and factor those into minimum qualifications for the roles. Hire with an emphasis on the willingness to upskill and adapt to the advancing cybercrime climate. Organizations can ensure a disruption-ready talent pool by organizing workshops, courses, and certifications. 

Challenge 4: Establishing efficient workflows

• Explanation: Implementing proper workflows and processes is the backbone of a successful SOC implementation. A well-structured infrastructural layer helps speed up SOC operations and ensures an agile response to security incidents. SOC analysts find it challenging to prioritize and react to alerts in the absence of proper processes and workflows, which could lead to delays in responses.
• Solution: It is essential to create streamlined processes for investigations, triage, and escalation that are suited to the niche requirements of the company. There can be an acceleration in the response time by automating all the repetitive processes and using these automation tools. The efficiencies and effectiveness of the SOC are increased by adequately improving and evaluating the procedures under best practices and learning lessons from the previous incidents. 

Challenge 5: Managing alert fatigue

• Explanation: SOC analysts may become too alert, causing them to miss or notice real risks later than they should. An overload of alerts can make it difficult for the SOC team to discern genuine threats, creating gaps in the security blanket and letting threats slip through. 
• Solution: Analysts’ attention can be properly directed towards essential, can’t-miss warnings by introducing advanced, intelligent diagnostic tools based on threat detection, risk sourcing, and even contextual data. Using AI-driven analytics and machine learning to find patterns, trends, and anomalies has proven to boost the mechanism for alerting and detecting cyber attacks. 

Challenge  6: Ensuring compliance with reporting

• Explanation: Respecting and complying with regulatory requirements and industry standards is an overarching goal of a SOC implementation. However, it can all seem out of reach sans proper processes in place. 
• Solution: The real drill is to enable the right reporting systems to monitor and track security breaches, response times, and compliance metrics. The SOC data insights can be drawn out to create detailed reports for internal stakeholders, external auditors, and regulatory agencies to demonstrate the commitment towards cybersecurity compliance and governance. 

Challenge 7: Continuously evolving threat landscape

• Explanation:  The cybercrime is advancing at an explosive rate with malicious actors concocting high-capacity strategies to rob organizations off their data. As cyber attackers turn more cunning with their attacks, organizations must add more muscle to the cybersecurity arm and shift their approach from ‘reactive’ to ‘proactive.’
• Solution: To overcome the lurking threats, organizations must invest in threat intelligence skills to track and filter new risks pertinent to the ecosystem of their businesses. Initiating a ‘hunt’ can assist in identifying security loopholes and latent risks lying low. Also, organizations must stay abreast of changing ‘threatscapes’ and keep sharpening their mitigation strategies to stay ahead of the cyber attackers. 

What are the best practices for SOC implementation?

A SOC’s superpower is its ability to lead organizations confidently in a highly volatile digital climate—but only when implemented with no gaps. Let’s examine the best practices for SOC implementation that can help organizations struggling with a flimsy security landscape. 

1. Governance framework: A SOC team should formally establish roles and accountability within the organization, creating a reference for smooth decision-making and cooperation.
2. Stay agile and adaptive: Consistently track new risks and reengineer SOC methodologies to continue fend off cybersecurity attacks, irrespective of their type and the form of attack. 
3. Incident response planning: Prepare a program that explains input units, roles and communication channels, and periodically testing and corrective sequences based on the past experiences. 
4. Align with business objectives: Share metrics that show how a SOC is enhancing core competencies of an organization while simultaneously ensuring that it’s aligned with broader business objectives. 
5. Embrace automation wisely: Tactically deploy automation technology in a manner that adds to analyst capabilities, while understanding that often the advantages may be realized gradually and become more relevant in time.
6. Regular training and education: Get staff to receive routine training and stay updated with the emerging security threats on the web. Make perpetual learning a new norm. 
7. Continuous improvement: Monitor, upgrade, and improve SOC processes, systems, technologies, and operations by utilizing modern-day, proactive methods that drive best-in-class performance. 

 SOC implementation: Important FAQs

1. Is a SOC the same as a NOC?

   No, a SOC (Security Operations Center) focuses on cybersecurity, monitoring, and incident response, while a NOC (Network Operations Center) deals with network infrastructure monitoring and management.

2. Why should an organization implement a SOC?

   SOC implementation bolsters cybersecurity through its capabilities of round-the-clock, proactive threat and risk detection, mitigation, and incident response, consequently preventing data loss and pecuniary damages. 

3. What are the three pillars of a SOC?

   A SOC is built on three pillars: people, processes, and technology, which represent personnel with right skill sets, optimal processes, and cutting-edge tools for monitoring and response. The base technology includes SIEM for event management, NDR for network threat identification, and EDR for endpoint protection.

4. What are the typical roles and responsibilities within a SOC team?

   Key roles within a SOC team are of a SOC manager, security analysts, incident threat hunters, forensicists, and SOC engineers. 

5. How can an organization measure the effectiveness of a SOC?

   The efficiency of a SOC can be measured by a variety of metrics, including mean time to detect (MTTD) mean time to respond (MTTR), incident closure rate, false positive rate, threat intelligence utilization, training effectiveness, cost per incident, and customer satisfaction surveys.