Businesses face the constant threat of cyber attacks. Hackers are rarely short of resources, imagination or determination, enabling them to aim multiple attacks until they breach the most vulnerable and attractive targets.
Finding and stopping increasingly complex attacks requires a well-defined process that can leverage advanced security analytics, accurate threat intelligence and incident response automation, alongside the correct expertise to identify and prevent incidents based on multiple indicators.
Security Operations Centers (SOCs) act as a central command for cyber defense, integrating multiple related IT security processes in order to provide improved visibility of IT assets and their security status. SOCs can either be built internally by enterprises looking to consolidate their cybersecurity operations, operated in mixed environments and infrastructures by a company and outsourced staff, or they can be fully managed by a Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP).
An SOC implementation, regardless of the delivery model, provides efficiency gains over traditional systems monitoring and even low-maturity Security Information Events Management (SIEM) environments. SOCs reduce the overheads that come with monitoring multiple systems, using events correlation with advanced analytics and cyber defense intelligence to accurately pinpoint risk areas and behavior.
Some of the most frequent use cases for SOCs include inventory of IT assets and configurations, security events correlation and triage, orchestration and automation of security incident response, running vulnerability management programs and even providing strong compliance and audit evidence support where needed.
Application security can also be covered, together with specialized deep/dark web monitoring and ethical hacking or red/blue team drills, helping companies train security teams while finding and fixing vulnerabilities in their infrastructure.
In summary, an SOC can be customized so that it includes all cybersecurity capabilities an organization deems necessary to ensure business resilience against cyber attacks, while also providing full visibility of IT assets and enabling a strong, rapid response to incidents.
