SOC Vs NOC: What Are The Key Differences?

Modern enterprises rely on extensive, complex, and operationally critical networks. These networks help their employees collaborate, communicate, and give them the tools they need to complete their job. They are also vital to their day-to-day operations, assisting with logistics, computational requirements, data storage, and much more. The security and health of these networks are paramount. Over the past several decades, two ways have propagated of ensuring that these networks remain operational: a network operations center (NOC) and a security operations center (SOC). These two distinct practices have led to a “SOC vs NOC” situation, but organisations shouldn’t be choosing between the two. A SOC and a NOC are designed to work hand-in-hand to protect and maintain a network to the highest level possible. In this blog, we are going to discuss what a SOC and NOC are, as well as how they can be used to maintain a network’s health. We will also cover the key differences between a SOC and a NOC and why it’s vital that modern enterprises utilise both in their IT and cyber security strategies.

A security operations center (SOC) is focused on protecting networks from cyber threats. All SIEM-generated alerts pass through a SOC and are managed by a team of cyber security experts. Fundamentally, a SOC ensures that a network is protected against cyber threats at all times of day, wherever a threat emerges from. At Wizard Cyber, we offer a fully managed SOC service, designed specifically to offer enterprise-level protection for any network. Our SOC provides a variety of integral tools to monitor and detect cyber-attacks:

• 24x7x365, real-time threat monitoring across an entire network
• Comprehensive threat investigation to prevent current and future breaches
• Industry and network-specific threat intelligence allows faster response times against critical threats
• Collection, collation, and analysis of security logs and data
• Development and maintenance of security policies and processes
• Alert management for all alerts generated by the SIEM

These tools, and more, allow a SOC to protect a network from both internal and external cyber threats. All of them combine to lower the risk of a breach and greatly reduce the likelihood that an organisation’s network will be taken offline or adversely affected by cyber-attacks.

Unlike a SOC, a network operations center (NOC) doesn’t deal with cyber security issues. Instead, a NOC focuses on the technology side of the network. Generally staffed by IT experts, the NOC handles all of the day-to-day IT activities, ensuring there are no outages, maintaining the applications and technologies, and organising the network to improve efficiency. A NOC can also be managed by an external partner, but it is generally cheaper to run than a SOC due to requiring far less staff to manage. A NOC relies on a variety of tools and components to function effectively:

• Constant network, hardware, and software health checks and optimisation to ensure the network is running efficiently and problems are detected immediately
• Comprehensive updates and patch management processes
• Swift alert management for the network’s technologies reduces downtime
• Backup and data flow management
• Disaster recovery planning
• Real-time reporting provides management with the ability to make data-led changes

All of these tools combine to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of an enterprise’s network, whilst also assisting the SOC by closing software and hardware vulnerabilities that could lead to cyber-attacks.

We’ve already covered a lot of the key differences between a SOC and a NOC, but we’re going to lay it out here in a bit of an easier format. It’s important to remember that both SOCs and NOCs are highly specialised and made up of teams of experts in particular fields. NOCs focus on ensuring the highest amount of network uptime possible, whilst a SOC detects and responds to real-time cyber threats. Here’s a breakdown of how they differ: SOC

• Detects and responds to cyber threats that target an enterprise’s network
• Tracks, remediates, and manages network vulnerabilities
• Reduces the likelihood of being affected by a data breach
• A strategic and proactive approach to network protection
• Manages and triages SIEM alerts
• Analyses and collates network data to improve security

NOC

• Manages, monitors, and oversees network infrastructure and technology
• Monitors and troubleshoots the network for any outages
• Proactive maintenance and upgrades
• Analyses and reports on network infrastructure data
• Focused on network operations, system health, and performance

Implementing an in-house SOC or NOC can be difficult. If you are determined to do it yourself, just remember that there’s no point in cutting corners. If you decide to slightly understaff your SOC or NOC or reduce its technological capabilities to save money, its effectiveness and efficiency will be drastically cut, costing you even more money in the long run through cyber-attacks, poor management, and inferior technology. One of the best ways to implement a SOC or NOC is to adopt a managed service. Wizard Cyber are a managed cyber security services provider, offering a comprehensive managed SOC service. There are many benefits to using a managed service rather than an in-house solution, such as cost-effectiveness without accepting reduced effectiveness. We would highly recommend using a managed service, especially if this is your first foray into running a SOC or NOC.

Struggling to know where to start? Not sure whether you need a SOC, NOC, or both? Get in touch with Wizard Cyber today. Our expert cyber security consultants will be happy to walk you through both SOC and NOC architecture and discuss our managed services with you.