What Is The Role Of A SOC?

A security operations center (SOC) is the single most important part of an enterprise’s cyber security strategy and infrastructure. A well-run SOC handles a huge array of cyber security processes, ensuring that every aspect of an enterprise’s infrastructure is protected from cyber threats. Whilst iterations of SOCs have been around for a long time, the modern approach to the SOC is a relatively new concept. Many enterprises know that they need a SOC but aren’t sure about the role that a SOC plays in their wider strategy, as well as how it integrates with their other cyber security tools and processes. In this blog, we are going to take a deep dive into a SOC and the role it should play in a successful cyber security strategy. We will discuss the responsibilities of a SOC, the challenges that it should help an enterprise overcome, how it integrates with the rest of your tools and processes, and much more. We will also briefly cover the managed approach and how it can help enterprises achieve a higher level of SOC functionality.

A SOC has many responsibilities, all structured around protecting an enterprise against cyber-attacks. SOC teams are made up of an extensive array of different specialists, from analysts and threat researchers to investigators and co-ordinators. They all work together to manage security, investigate, and remediate security incidents. We have categorised these responsibilities into several different areas: Alert management One of the SOCs primary responsibilities is managing the alerts that are generated by the various cyber security tools, such as the SIEM. These alerts have to be organised and prioritised, investigated, and remediated. Analysts within the SOC team will often need to provide extra assistance in finding relevant data that can be attached to alert tickets to assist threat investigators. This is a vital function of a SOC and one that can quickly become overwhelming if managed incorrectly. It’s common for enterprises to receive hundreds or even thousands of alerts a day, so proper alert management is critical. Investigation of incidents Some alerts generated by the system require more investigation than others. Every SOC team should employ several threat investigators. These are experts who specialise in looking deeper into alerts to determine if they pose a threat to the enterprise’s infrastructure or not. Threat triaging and prioritisation As we mentioned in alert management, every alert that is generated by the system needs to be accurately triaged and prioritised. Whilst modern solutions can automate aspects of this process, it still requires a dedicated and expansive team of SOC analysts to manually take over this process frequently. Once threats have been triaged and prioritised, the SOC has to respond to them depending on the alert’s severity, whilst also ensuring that the SOCs resource utilisation is optimised and risk is minimised. Incident response One of the primary responsibilities of a SOC, incident response takes many different forms but involves accurately and appropriately responding to and remediating threats. This part of the SOCs processes can be difficult and requires engagement with a variety of internal and external stakeholders. Different tools are utilised depending on the threat and a plan must be created and followed to ensure that nothing is missed, and remediation is completed properly. Data monitoring & reporting Well-run SOCs have complete visibility of the infrastructure they protect and manage. With this visibility comes a wealth of data, taken from every possible connector available to them within the infrastructure. This includes endpoints, networks, storage devices, the cloud, and much more. A SOC is responsible for collecting, collating, and monitoring this data, as well as reporting to necessary stakeholders about the health and effectiveness of their cyber security. Infrastructure management A SOC must constantly adapt to the changing threat landscape. As new technologies and solutions are developed and new threats emerge, it’s the job of the SOC to investigate and utilise new cyber security solutions and technology to better protect the infrastructure they manage.

Enterprises face many challenges when embarking upon the creation and maintenance of a SOC. The challenges we cover below are why many enterprises opt for a managed approach to cyber security, allowing them to eliminate many of these challenges whilst also maintaining extremely high levels of protection. Employing experts One of the largest challenges involved with a SOC is staffing it. Cyber security is still a growing industry and the demand for skilled staff vastly outweighs the supply. Unfortunately, the training and educational side of the industry has yet to catch up with the appetite, leading to rising wages and arduous, competitive hiring processes. The staffing bills alone for a SOC can run into millions of pounds a year, making the prospect of running an in-house SOC often unpalatable.  Excessive overheads Beyond staffing, the simple upkeep of running a SOC is very expensive. Leasing space, purchasing and upgrading technology, software licensing, training, HR, research and development. All of these and more add together to make owning and operating a SOC costly. Money can be saved in several areas but adopting a cost-crunching approach to running a SOC is often a bad idea. Unfortunately, to achieve exceptional cyber security protection, you simply have to spend a lot of time and money to achieve it. Cutting budget in the wrong places can easily lead to poor quality protection. Alert fatigue Many in-house SOCs face issues with alert fatigue. This occurs when the system is producing alerts faster than the SOC team can appropriately deal with them. In these cases, the team becomes further and further behind with alerts, leading to longer response times, increasing likelihood of cyber-attacks causing operational disruption, and team members becoming overworked. 24x7x365 coverage We’ve already spoken about the excessive overheads and costs involved with running a SOC, but we haven’t discussed achieving 24x7x365 coverage. Due to the evolution of the cyber threat landscape, it’s become increasingly important that enterprises have true 24x7x365 protection for their infrastructure. Having gaps of 7-8 hours where no member of the SOC team is on-hand to deal with threats leads to much higher chances of cyber-attacks successfully breaching your infrastructure. Unfortunately, achieving 24x7x365 coverage is exceedingly expensive, especially with an in-house SOC. The staffing costs alone rise dramatically when employing people during off-peak hours and the overheads go up if you’re employing in-office staff. Reducing operational disruption A SOC has to respond to cyber threats without causing unnecessary operational disruption. If a SOC falsely flags legitimate business processes as cyber threats, it can put a lot of strain on the rest of the organisation and lead to loss of business or reputational damage.

Is your enterprise looking to improve their current SOC arrangement or are you just beginning your cyber security journey? Are you looking to cut back on your SOC overheads whilst maintaining an industry-leading level of cyber security protection? Get in touch with Wizard Cyber today.

Our cyber security experts will be happy to talk you through our managed SOC services and answer any questions you might have.

Wizard Cyber’s managed SOC services offer state-of-the-art, 24x7x365 global cyber security protection for your entire network infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of doing it yourself.