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Security Operations Center (SOC)
What is a Security Operations Center?
A Security Operations Center (SOC) is a centralized location where a team of Information Technology (IT) security experts manage and maintain an organization’s cybersecurity posture by monitoring, identifying, detecting, and responding to potential security threats and maintaining the organization’s security tools and infrastructure.
What Does a Security Operations Center Do?
Threat Intelligence Gathering
To stay ahead of potential threats, SOC teams collect threat intelligence data from public threat intelligence feeds, security vendors, cooperative industry groups, and other sources. This data can be analyzed to identify cybersecurity trends and potential security threats to the organization.
Vulnerability Management
SOC teams follow emerging vulnerability reports and run regular vulnerability scans on the organization’s IT infrastructure to identify and remediate system vulnerabilities that could be exploited by a cyber attacker.
Proactive Security Monitoring
Proactive security monitoring is one of the most important functions in the SOC. SOC teams use security monitoring software tools to continuously monitor network traffic, system logs, and user behavior for signs of a potential cyber attack. Proactive security monitoring accelerates the timeline for incident response, giving SOC teams the chance to prevent attacks and/or remediate systems before users are negatively impacted.
Alert Management and Triaging
SOC teams configure security monitoring tools to send alerts when anomalous activity is detected that could indicate a security incident. SOC teams spend time optimizing these alerting systems to identify genuine threats while avoiding false positives. Alerts are categorized by severity, ranked by priority, and triaged to security analysts who investigate the alerts to assess the threat and determine next steps.
Incident Response
When a security incident is detected and validated by analysts, incident response teams follow a series of defined protocols to contain the breach, eradicate any malicious elements from the organization’s network and IT systems, and restore normal operations.
Disaster Recovery and Systems Remediation
Enterprise SOC teams work to develop and implement business continuity and disaster recovery planning. When a security incident disrupts normal business operations, SOC teams implement disaster recovery protocols to restore operational systems and prevent data loss.
Root Cause Investigation
Forensic analysts in the SOC conduct root cause investigations to determine the underlying causes of a confirmed security incident and recommend improvements to the organization’s security posture that can prevent future incidents.
Security Tool Management
SOC teams are responsible for selecting, deploying, managing, and maintaining the security tools and technologies needed to support organizational cybersecurity readiness objectives. These include security monitoring and alerting tools, threat detection systems, access controls, threat intelligence feeds, and more.
Security Awareness Training
SOC teams, especially in-house enterprise SOC teams, are frequently involved in producing and delivering security awareness training to other areas of the business. This involves educating employees about security best practices, as well as simulating social engineering or phishing attacks to train employees on threat recognition.
Access Control Management
SOC teams use identity and access management software tools to manage user access to secure enterprise networks and systems. Preventing unauthorized or unnecessary access to enterprise network assets and data helps organizations reduce data theft risks, mitigate insider threats, and comply with data privacy/security standards and regulations.
Top Benefits of a Security Operations Center
Prevent Unplanned Operational Downtime
A successful cybersecurity attack against an organization’s IT infrastructure can result in unplanned operational downtime for customer-facing applications and services. Unplanned downtime often results in negative consequences for the enterprise including revenue loss, reputational damage, and customer churn. Enterprise SOC and Network Operations Center (NOC) teams work together to identify and block security threats that could cause an unplanned operational disruption.
Prevent Unauthorized Network Access
A malicious actor can weaponize unauthorized access to your enterprise network by stealing your data, defrauding your company and employees, damaging your operational systems, or using your IT resources for malicious purposes. A security operations center helps prevent malicious actors from gaining unauthorized access to your network.
Avoid a Costly Data Breach
When a malicious actor steals sensitive data from your organization, the consequences can include reputational damage, regulatory penalties, and legal liability. Through proactive security monitoring and other cybersecurity activities, a SOC helps reduce the likelihood of a costly data breach.
Security Operations Center Roles and Responsibilities
Director of Incident Response
This role oversees the incident response team and coordinates incident detection, response, and remediation activities inside the SOC.
SOC Manager
This role is responsible for the daily operations of the SOC, including security monitoring activities, vulnerability management, and gathering threat intelligence.
Security Engineer
This role is responsible for selecting, designing, implementing, and maintaining the organization’s security infrastructure and tooling.
Security Analyst
This role is responsible for monitoring network traffic, cloud and system logs, and alerts from security tools to detect and identify potential security incidents.
Threat Hunter
This role is responsible for proactively hunting for hidden cybersecurity threats within the organization’s network infrastructure.
Forensic Analyst
This role is responsible for analyzing system logs and other data from digital systems to diagnose or determine the root cause of a security incident.
3 Types of Security Operations Center You Should Know
Internal SOC
An internal SOC is owned, operated, and managed by the enterprise itself, usually in close proximity to its data centers.
Managed SOC
In a managed SOC, the enterprise outsources its security operations to a third-party Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP). The MSSP owns and manages the SOC, supporting the customer enterprise with proactive security monitoring, incident response, threat detection, and other security capabilities.
Hybrid SOC
A hybrid SOC combines the elements of Internal and Managed SOC models. Some elements or functions of the SOC are maintained by the enterprise in-house, while others are outsourced to an MSSP.
Security Operations Center Tools and Technologies
SOC teams deploy a variety of cybersecurity tools and technologies to deliver on their core functions and objectives. Some of the cybersecurity technologies found in a SOC could include:
Firewalls
A firewall is a network security device or application that controls and filters network traffic based on security rules established and implemented by the SOC. Firewalls play an active role in identifying malicious network traffic and blocking malicious actors from accessing the enterprise network.
Antivirus Software
Antivirus software continuously monitors enterprise networks and endpoint devices to detect, identify, and remove malicious software (malware) programs from an organization’s IT infrastructure.
Identity and Access Management (IAM)
SOC teams use IAM software to help ensure that an organization’s sensitive data and systems may only be accessed by authorized employees. IAM software tools allow SOC teams to establish user roles with specified network/data access permissions, assign those user roles to authorized employees of the business, and authenticate user identity to ensure that only authorized users can access the secure data.
Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)
MFA is an approach to user authentication where users require more than one method of authentication (e.g. username and password, biometric scan, physical security device, etc.) to access a secured system. SOC teams implement MFA to help ensure that secure networks and systems are accessed only by authorized users.
Threat Intelligence Feeds
Public and private threat intelligence feeds provide SOC teams with valuable information about new and emerging threats that could impact organizational cybersecurity. Information from threat feeds is used to assess the organization’s security posture, patch newly-discovered vulnerabilities, and upgrade the organization’s defenses against emerging cyber threats.
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
NTA software tools are deployed by SOC teams to monitor and analyze network traffic for unusual patterns that might indicate a security breach.
Intrusion Detection System (IDS)
IDS tools support proactive threat detection by monitoring networks and IT systems for signatures of known attack types or anomalous activity that could indicate an unfolding attack. When a potential threat is detected, the IDS generates an alert that will be reviewed and investigated by the SOC incident response team.
Intrusion Prevention System (IPS)
IPS tools are similar to intrusion detection software, but with the added capability of preventing detected threats with automated actions like intentionally dropping suspicious packets or shutting down a suspicious connection.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
SIEM systems aggregate security log and event data from throughout the organization’s IT infrastructure into a centralized location. From there, SOC teams can correlate security data from various sources to monitor for security incidents, hunt for threats, and support incident response.
Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR)
Some SOC teams deploy a SOAR software solution that integrates multiple security tools and acts as a centralized platform for managing the incident response process.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions combine endpoint detection and monitoring with other threat detection and response tools, allowing SOC teams to efficiently monitor IT infrastructure for security risks. XDR solutions correlate security data from multiple sources to identify incidents, prioritize the most threatening incidents, and generate alerts.
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