The Difference between SOC and SIEM
A Security Operations Centre (SOC) and a Security Information and Event Management system (SIEM) work together to provide various cyber security processes and capabilities. Have you ever wondered which one to use or what’s the difference between SOC and SIEM? In this article, we are going to define both SOC and SIEM, as well as examine the differences between them and how they work together to monitor, detect, and respond to cyber threats
Security monitoring and threat detection are essential for your organization’s IT infrastructure to be secure. Without cybersecurity components, your company would be defenseless against hacker intrusions, online threats, and other types of cyberattacks
It’s never simple to find these risks, threats, or breaches. Therefore, finding the appropriate SIEM technology is important. You will need thorough analytics, developed processes, automation, and an experienced team to fully utilize the value of SIEM platforms or software. Here’s where SOC comes into play
We at Wizard Cyber can help you get a comprehensive picture of what’s happening in your company’s network from both SIEM and SOC. However, you will require the assistance of SOC-managed security services like ours, unless you have a competent in-house SOC team. Note that your SIEM platform serves as the foundation for your SOC, which is then held together by SIEM. Now let us define each of these:
What is a SIEM?
A software program or SAAS platform called Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) collects and examines activity from log sources throughout your whole IT environment
SIEM gathers security information from servers, network devices, domain controllers, and other sources to identify dangers, and allows security teams to investigate alarms, SIEM stores, normalizes, aggregates, and applies analytics to that data
How does SIEM work?
SIEM provides a SOC team with two key capabilities:
- Central reporting of security incidents
- Analytics-based alerts identifying a security vulnerability when they fit a specific rule set
A data aggregator, search engine, and reporting system are the main functions of a SIEM. Your entire networked environment is monitored by SIEM to capture enormous volumes of data, consolidate it, and make it easily available to SOC analysts. You may conduct an in-depth study of data security breaches from the organized and readily available data gathered by a SIEM.
Security Information Management (SIM) and Security Event Management (SEM) components make up a platform called SIEM solution, including the following:
- Data Aggregation
- Threat Intelligence
- Security Event Correlation
- Advanced Analytics
- SOC Automation
- Dashboards
- Threat Hunting
- Forensics
Managed SIEM
All the processes of a SIEM are to be managed by a skilled team of SIEM experts. For many businesses, this is cost prohibitive and not a realistic expectation
We, at Wizard Cyber, offer all the necessary technology, human skill, and round-the-clock monitoring for a fraction of the cost of doing it yourself. Complex technology contracts, updates, leasing, or employee management won’t be your responsibility. Instead, you can acquire inexpensive access to a managed SIEM service that leads the market
Given that the data entering the SIEM is always going to be sensitive, this also raises privacy concerns. It might also include information about the systems that feed into the SIEM and confidential data about a company’s operations in addition to information about the people who work for the organization
What is a Security Operations Center (SOC)?
An organisation’s security team oversees evaluating and defending the organization from cyber-attacks. This team is comprised of a Security Operations Center (SOC). Even though SOC analysts collaborate with other teams and departments, they typically operate as a separate independent unit. In essence, the SOC’s job is to monitor whether the security measures implemented by other teams in the business are reliable and, if they are not, to ensure that appropriate damage control is carried out
The managed and co-managed SOC services from Wizard Cyber offer a strong and affordable approach to monitoring, identifying, and reacting to new cyber threats. Multiple SOC locations around the world make up our global SOC: the UK, the Middle East, Asia, and the USA. This enables us to offer our customers industry-leading cyber security capabilities around-the-clock.
Services provided by Security Operations Centers
Monitoring and incident management are the two services that security operations centers offer. These two services play a significant role in how SOCs operate daily
Our SOC, when combined with our multifaceted, Microsoft-certified staff of analysts, engineers, and threat researchers, is always capable of making prompt, fact-based judgments, guaranteeing that your company is secure from any threat. Our SOC uses cutting-edge machine learning and artificial intelligence to instantly identify suspicious behavior and neutralize threats. It is powered by an industry-leading SIEM, Microsoft Azure Sentinel
Monitoring
Utilizing specialist cyber security tools to detect abnormal patterns, monitoring entails reviewing systems for cyber security threats are some of the cyber security technologies connected to a centralized management platform with dashboards that display any alerts for suspicious patterns and activity
Incident Management
The goal of incident management is to neutralize threats by first assessing the threat’s criticality and then applying various incident management methods to the alerts to suspicious actions and patterns. The techniques often combine human management with technological assistance to identify dangers more precisely and attempt to thwart them in their tracks
SOC Monitoring
What should a Security Operations Center monitor? Security monitoring is involved in watching and analyzing an organisation’s systems and environments for security events. An organisation’s network infrastructure, servers, databases, websites, mobile devices, endpoints like computers, and more are in scope for security monitoring
Specialist security tools like breach detection tools are used to protect systems, with some tools providing immediate responses (in real-time) to breaches, such as intrusion prevention systems (IPS) and intrusion detection systems (IDS)
With other tools providing delayed responses, like the SIEM tool, as these tools work by ingesting logs and then analyzing these logs, the delay in getting these logs is responsible for these tools not being able to work in real-time
Analysis
The main objective of the SOC is to make sure that any potential security issues are appropriately identified, thoroughly investigated, and, if possible, steps taken to minimize any immediate effect. It is critical to disclose occurrences because incomplete or inaccurate reporting may worsen a security situation
Vulnerability Management of connected network devices, such as firewalls, switches and endpoints, is another task that SOC teams are responsible for. These tools must be updated with the most recent patches and updates due to management duties.
Fix
Once a threat has been detected, the first steps involve analyse, the next step involves trying to contain the threat. Like containment in security, the threat’s entry point into the system needs to be sealed off and repaired in some way to prevent more harm from being done.
How do you implement a Security Operations Center (SOC)?
The organisations CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) would be responsible for defining the SOC strategy
The way to implement a Security Operations Center involves the following steps:
- Creating a SOC strategy
- Designing and building a SOC solution
- Defining SOC processes and training
The SOC strategy is a crucial component of the overall SOC capabilities because it specifies the capabilities and SOC security tooling that will be used, as well as the expectations for the SOC service
The Security Operations Center’s overall strategy revolves around gathering and analyzing data to make the entire organization safer. The raw data that the SOC team monitors often comes from a range of sources, including internal and external security monitoring systems, and is security relevant. Following that, an alarm is set off, immediately alerting the entire team that the data is not normal
Determining the processes and individuals involved, where incident management, SOC security teams, break-fix teams, etc. are developed, is the final phase of SOC deployment. The SOC team will also be working on defining and drafting an action plan for the Security Operations Center’s next step in security strategy, such as the implementation of new security measures.
Do you need a Security Operations Center or a SIEM?
Businesses that depend on a lot of extremely sensitive data and have the necessary financial resources should think about creating a SOC. Businesses have the option of establishing an internal Security Operations Center or collaborating with an MSSP (Managed Security Service Provider) that provides SOC services, like Wizard Cyber
The most economical and efficient solution for small and medium-sized businesses that cannot create their own SOC may be outsourcing the SOC to a Managed Security Services Provider
In addition to our complete managed services, we, at Wizard Cyber, are also capable of integrating with your current cyber security resources. This co-managed model lets you maintain the in-house knowledge, experience, and infrastructure that you’ve previously invested in while expanding and optimizing your present systems
A SIEM, on the other hand, is also important for your organisation, same as a SOC, but only if you can afford it. SIEM solutions tend to be very expensive, difficult to deploy for some, and reports are often hard to understand. An organisation can’t have a SOC without a SIEM, but can have a SIEM with no SOC.
To learn how we can provide you with a flexible, co-managed service to enhance and grow your present cyber security posture, get in contact with us right now.
