Security Operations Centre: What Is It and Why You Need One
.What is a Security Operations Centre?
A Security Operations Centre (SOC) is essentially an organisational command centre comprising specialised security personnel, processes and technologies that continuously monitor for malicious activity while preventing, detecting and responding to cyber threats and incidents.
We often refer to the Security Operations Centre as a centralised command, where telemetry aggregates across the organisation’s IT infrastructure from network devices, computers and cloud-based applications. As threats have proliferated over the past decade, the industry has responded by cultivating a layered approach to security resulting in the adoption of multiple point products that generate volumes of threat data that must be monitored.
The increasing responsibility involved with analysing huge volumes of data and using it to identify and respond to possible threat incidents has resulted in the growth of the Managed Security Operations Centre as a Service business model.
What are the benefits of a Managed SOC service?
- Cut cybersecurity headcount costs and counter the skills shortage
- Reduce dwell time and financial impact should a breach occur
- 24/7 365 monitoring and around the clock protection
- Enhanced threat triage, remediation and incident isolation
- Leverage security stack insight and compatibility
1. Cut cybersecurity headcount costs
When it comes to hiring, cyber security skills are scarce. The Cybersecurity Workforce Study Report by (ISC)² estimated that by 2021, the global cyber security skill shortage would exceed 4 million unfilled positions. Even if talent could be found, hiring it wouldn’t be cheap.
Partnering with a Managed SOC gives your business immediate access to security expertise without the financial burden of hiring the skills internally.
2. Reduce dwell time and financial impact
Dwell time is the period of time a threat or attacker goes undetected on the network after initial access has occurred. Every minute an attacker dwells inside the network, the greater the potential for damage. Managed SOCs can cut the dwell time from months to minutes. Thus reducing the financial and operational impact should an intrusion occur.
3. 24/7 365 monitoring
Cyber criminals don’t keep office hours. Businesses are under relentless assault around the clock, but your security team needs to sleep sometime. A 24/7 Managed Security Operations Centre service is never offline and it doesn’t stop working when business owners are asleep. Instead, it proactively hunts and monitors for threat indicators, even on weekends and holidays. A Managed Security Operations Centre service monitors around the clock. This keeps the threat radar circulating in order to root out advanced TTPs (tactic, techniques and procedures). These TTPs signal malicious hosts, networks and cloud artifacts long before a breach occurs.
4. Enhanced threat triage, remediation and incident isolation
Numerous products throughout the layers of security churn out masses of threat data. This is where security analysts perform triaging. In essence, they determine whether a threat needs to be escalated to an incident status. Some security solutions provide remediation guidance. Others offer a remediation solution to fix the threat, while others offer a combination of the two. When a critical threat is escalated to an incident, in many cases the necessity of stopping the spread to other devices is vital. This is where device isolation comes into play. A managed SOC service will isolate and contain the threat until the remedy is applied.
5. Leverage security stack insight and compatibility
Most managed Security Operations Centre service providers have already invested in the necessary stack of security technologies, in so doing bringing together the best of the available vendors. This covers security elements such as firewalls, next-gen antivirus, email security, DNS, authentication and the like. Working with a managed Security Operations Centre service provider that supports your existing layers of security delivers immediate insight across major attack vectors. This consolidates your threat telemetry into a single pane of glass for complete visibility. Additionally it means that compatibility is no longer a worry for your IT teams.
Additional benefits of a managed SOC service worth mentioning
- Log management and storage retention
- Threat correlation with events and intelligence
- Forensic investigation capabilities
- Reduced technology stack investments
- Remote/home worker threat coverage
Conclusion: A managed Security Operations Centre service augments and relieves the burden on your IT team.
Partnering with a specialist Security Operations Centre reduces the significant financial costs associated with finding and keeping an internal team of cyber security personnel. It frees existing IT resources from spending most of their time addressing the increasingly complex challenges of triaging threats and incident investigations.
Long story short? Partnering with a company that offers Security Operations Centre as a Service comes with major operational and financial benefits. Speak to CLOUDBOX today and let us take care of your Security Operations Centre function, 24/7 365.