What Is a Security Operations Center (SOC) in Cybersecurity?

What is a Security Operations Center (SOC)?

A security operations center or SOC (pronounced ‘sock’) consists of a team of security experts who focus on providing situational threat awareness and managing the business’ overall security posture. A SOC serves as a correlation point, taking in data from an organization’s IT assets, including infrastructure, networks, cloud services, and devices. Using the data, SOC activities focus on managing, monitoring, analyzing, preventing, and responding to existing and potential threats and ensuring the business is protected from attack.

While in the past, a SOC was often defined as a physical room in which security professionals worked, today cloud-based security and remote work means that a SOC is defined more as a core security function and less as a physical structure.

Other Names for a Security Operations Center

A security operations center is also sometimes called an information security operations center (ISOC), a network security operations center (NSOC), a security intelligence and operations center (SIOC), a global security operations center (GSOC), a security intelligence center, or a cybersecurity center.

What does a Security Operations Center do?

A SOC team is responsible for managing the ongoing operational activities associated with an enterprise’s network and infrastructure security. While security operations team members may contribute knowledge or expertise to developing security strategy or designing security architecture, a SOC team primarily focuses on detecting, analyzing, investigating, remediating, and responding to security incidents and threats. SOC functions usually include: [1] 

• Management and maintenance — Oversight and administration of security tools, including updates and patches.
• Surveillance — Monitoring of event logs on networks, systems, devices, and infrastructure for unusual or suspicious activity.
• Threat prevention and detection including intelligence gathering to help deter potential threats and attacks.
• Incident analysis and investigation — Forensic examination to determine the incident or threat’s source and the extent to which it has infiltrated and affected business systems.
• Threat or attack response — Coordination of an approach to effectively manage and contain the threat or incident.
• Recovery and remediation — Retrieval of lost or stolen data and an examination of what assets have been compromised, as well as addressing vulnerabilities and adjusting security monitoring and alerting tools and SOC procedures.
• Compliance and risk management — Oversight of federal regulations or industry-recommended best practices on such things as ISO 27001,  the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and payment card industry data security standards (PCI DSS).\

Who needs it?

A wide range of business sizes and industries can benefit from building out a SOC infrastructure of their own. Specifically, businesses operating in the financial, healthcare, technology, retail, energy, and education industries are most likely to benefit from a security operations center framework.

Businesses that operate in the aforementioned industries regularly process, store, and manage massive sets of sensitive data. Additionally, businesses in these industries must often adhere to highly stringent regulations; businesses that fail to adhere to these regulations may suffer heavy financial and reputational penalties.

Regardless of the industry in which a business operates, however, digital footprints create more opportunities for threat actors to exploit security vulnerabilities in the absence of a team with dedicated SOC responsibilities. Startups and SMEs are not invulnerable to cyber threats either, and there is no supporting evidence that indicates threat actors are more likely to target larger businesses than startups and entrepreneurs.

Why is a SOC important?

In order to improve threat monitoring, detection, and response capabilities, security operations centers are essential. Security Operations Center services provide critical support related to identifying, protecting, and remediating such dangers as malware, ransomware, breaches, insider threats/privilege misuse, supply chain attacks, phishing, denial of service attacks, cyber-espionage, etc.

What are common SOC Challenges in Cyber Security?

One of the most pervasive issues when it comes to managing a SOC is the dynamic threat landscape. Cyber threats are evolving rapidly, and SOC responsibilities must keep up with these constant changes. Teams must be responsible for staying abreast of new tactics, techniques, and procedures that threat actors use.

Integration issues present another hurdle. Organizations often deploy a myriad of security solutions to fortify internal controls. However, these diverse systems might not be inherently designed to communicate with each other, leading to potential blind spots and reduced effectiveness in threat detection and response.

It's also important to combat the pressure that comes with having to respond to threats in real time. This pressure can lead to fatigue and decreased efficiency among staff and necessitates a strategic approach to workforce management, technology integration, and threat intelligence.

How to address them?

While there are certainly some hurdles standing in the way of successful implementation and management of a SOC, they're also far from insurmountable. Businesses that adopt a proactive defense that is characterized by anticipation and preparedness can confidently address the most common SOC challenges in cybersecurity; the incorporation of a robust and reliable threat intelligence platform with regular cybersecurity assessments is one of the best ways to proactively address many common SOC challenges.

A threat intelligence platform can help organizations analyze and make better sense of potential security threats. This analysis can instantly turn sets of raw, uncategorized data into actionable insights that allow organizations to preemptively fortify their defenses. A proactive stance toward defense that's enriched by real-time intelligence also improves the ability of SOC teams to confidently navigate the intricate landscape of modern cybersecurity.

Organizations can most effectively incorporate threat intelligence platforms via strategic partnerships with cybersecurity consultants like us. We make it easier for organizations to plug up any gaps in expertise by advocating for regular security audits and "red teaming" exercises that continuously test and refine your SOC's capabilities. Ultimately, organizations can address the most common SOC challenges that come up in cybersecurity by focusing on a multi-faceted and proactive stance toward their security operations.

SOC Tools and Technologies

The components of a SOC focus primarily on tools and technologies that assist security experts in monitoring, analyzing, investigating, and responding to security incidents, such as:

• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Solution — Provides real-time event monitoring, analysis, and alerts. SIEM components may include data aggregation, threat intelligence, correlation, machine learning, alerting, dashboards, compliance, data retention, and forensic capabilities.
• Asset Directory — Provides insight into the systems, devices, and tools operating in your IT environment.
• Behavioral Monitoring — Assists security experts in creating a baseline when using machine learning or behavior modeling to identify security concerns.
• Intrusion Detection System — Helps security experts detect an attack in the initial phases.
• Endpoint Detection and Response — Provides visibility and containment options.
• Network Detection and Response — Captures, analyzes, and helps to block threats.
• Log Collection and Aggregation — Offers log availability and retention through a centralized repository to assist with analysis.
• Automated Malware Analysis and Sandboxing — Provides an understanding of malware purpose and generates indicators of compromise (IOCs).
• Disassembler and Debugging Technologies — Assists security teams when reverse engineering and analyzing complex binaries to determine threat purpose, functionality, and capabilities.
• Threat Intelligence Platforms — Collects and aggregates internal and external sources of information for investigation.
• Cross-platform Acquisition Hardware and Software — Provide acquisition of forensically sound disk and memory images across operating systems.
• Case Management, Indexing, and Preliminary Analysis Capabilities — Captures case-related data and tracking information, performs analysis, and gathers results for investigation.
• Cloud-based Acquisition Solutions — Collects data from third-party services, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft 365, Google, iCloud, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and performs data analysis.
• Mobile Acquisition Hardware — Acquires forensic images from mobile devices and performs analysis for investigation purposes.
• Remote Collection Capabilities — Pulls artifacts, system information, and forensic images remotely, without the need for local access.

SOC Team Roles and Responsibilities

Security operations center teams often include the following roles:

• SOC Manager — Oversees the SOC team. Assesses and reviews incident and compliance reports. Reports on SOC activities to business executives.
• Security Analyst — Involved with proactive monitoring, threat detection, analysis, and investigation.
• Compliance Auditor — Helps to standardize processes. Oversees compliance protocols.
• Threat Responder — Involved in activities associated with threat and incident response.
• Forensic Investigator — Examines and analyzes a threat’s structure, components, source, purpose, and the extent to which it has infiltrated and affected business systems.

Benefits of SOC Outsourcing: Working with a SOC-as-a-service (SOCaaS) Provider

Outsourcing your SOC activities to a managed security service provider (MSSP) offers unique and cost-effective benefits over attempting to manage a SOC in-house.

• Reduction of cybersecurity costs—The creation and maintenance of an internal SOC can cost a significant amount of money, particularly in terms of staff and technology. A SOCaaS provider can be extremely cost-effective, since they provide expert staff and technology and take responsibility for maintaining and upgrading the technology.
• Easier oversight of increased security alert volumes—With advanced data monitoring tools, the number of security alerts is increasing dramatically. Analysis and investigation of these alerts take up resources—both staff and technology—which can be burdensome for internal SOCs and carry an added risk if an alert is missed due to alert fatigue. Outsourced SOC services ensure the necessary staff and automated tools to manage and investigate alerts.
• Management and maintenance of security tools—The number of tools and technologies required to effectively operate a SOC could be 15, 20, or more. In addition to purchasing and installing these tools, expert staff is required to manage and maintain them, including ensuring upgrades are applied when necessary. A SOCaaS provider has the staffing and expertise necessary to oversee these complex security technologies.
• Incident response—An effective SOC needs to operate 24/7. A SOCaaS provider has the staff and technologies necessary to ensure no alert, anomaly, incident, or attack gets missed, particularly if it occurs on a weekend or late in the evening.
• Staff Augmentation—The expense and challenges associated with the cybersecurity skills gap make finding qualified and available expertise difficult. Outsourced SOC solutions can offer expert staff augmentation to increase a business’ security operations center staffing needs.

Next Steps

To ensure maximum security in the fast-changing world of threats and cybercrime, a security operations center is an essential component in your arsenal of security tools and technologies. Working with a SOC-as-a-service provider can ensure your business receives the mission-critical attention it needs for threat detection and prevention. Schedule a customized security consultation today with one of the GuidePoint Security experts to help you determine your security operations center needs.