A security operations center selects, operates, and maintains the organization’s cybersecurity technologies. It continually analyzes threat data to find ways to improve the organization’s security posture.
The chief benefit of operating or outsourcing a SOC is that it unifies and coordinates an organization’s security tools, practices, and response to security incidents. This usually results in improved preventative measures and security policies, faster threat detection, and faster, more effective and more cost-effective response to security threats.
Understanding Security Operations Center
A security operations center (SOC) – sometimes called an information security operations center, or ISOC – is an in-house or outsourced team of IT security professionals that monitors an organization’s entire IT infrastructure, 24/7, to detect cybersecurity events in real-time and address them as quickly and effectively as possible.
It can also improve customer confidence, and simplify and strengthen an organization’s compliance with industry, national and global privacy regulations.
In the SOC, internet traffic, networks, desktops, servers, endpoint devices, databases, applications and other systems are continuously examined for signs of a security incident. SOC staff may work with other teams or departments but are typically self-contained with employees who have high-level IT and cybersecurity skills or outsourced to third-party service providers.
Most SOCs function around the clock, with employees working in shifts to constantly log activity and mitigate threats.
Before establishing a SOC, an organization must define its cybersecurity strategy to align with current business goals and problems. Department executives reference a risk assessment that focuses on what it will take to maintain the company’s mission and subsequently provide input on objectives to be met and infrastructure and tooling required to meet those objectives, as well as required staff skills.
SOCs are an integral part of minimizing the costs of a potential data breach. They not only help organizations respond to intrusions quickly but also constantly improve detection and prevention processes.
What a Security Operations Center does
SOC activities and responsibilities fall into three general categories:
Preparation, planning and prevention
- Incident response planning. The SOC is responsible for developing the organization’s incident response plan, which defines activities, roles, and responsibilities in the event of a threat or incident – and the metrics by which the success of any incident response will be measured.
- Routine maintenance and preparation. To maximize the effectiveness of security tools and measures in place, the SOC performs preventative maintenance such as applying software patches and upgrades and continually updating firewalls, whitelists and blacklists, and security policies and procedures. The SOC may also create system back-ups – or assist in creating backup policies or procedures – to ensure business continuity in the event of a data breach, ransomware attack, or other cybersecurity incident.
- Asset inventory. A SOC needs to maintain an exhaustive inventory of everything that needs to be protected, inside or outside the data center (e.g. applications, databases, servers, cloud services, endpoints, etc.) and all the tools used to protect them (firewalls, antivirus/anti-malware/anti-ransomware tools, monitoring software, etc). Many SOCs will use an asset discovery solution for this task.
- Regular testing. The SOC team performs vulnerability assessments – comprehensive assessments that identify each resource’s vulnerability to potential threats, and the associated costs. It also conducts penetration tests that simulate specific attacks on one or more systems. The team remediates or fine-tunes applications, security policies, best practices and incident response plans based on the results of these tests.
- Staying current. The SOC stays up to date on the latest security solutions and technologies, and on the latest threat intelligence – news and information about cyberattacks and the hackers of perpetrate them, gathered from social media, industry sources, and the dark web.
Monitoring, detection and response
- Continuous, around-the-clock security monitoring. The security operations center monitors the entire extended IT infrastructure 24/7/365 for signs of known exploits and suspicious activity.
For many SOCs, the core monitoring, detection and response technology has been security information and event management, or SIEM. SIEM monitors and aggregates alerts and telemetry from software and hardware on the network in real-time, and then analyzes the data to identify potential threats.
- Log management. This is the collection and analysis of log data generated by every network event. While most IT departments collect log data, it’s the analysis that establishes normal or baseline activity and reveals anomalies that indicate suspicious activity. Many hackers count on the fact that companies don’t always analyze log data. This can allow their viruses and malware to run undetected for weeks or even months on the victim’s systems. Most SIEM solutions include log management capability.
- Threat detection. The security operations center team sorts the signals from the noise – the indications of actual cyber threats and hacker exploits from the false positives – and then triages the threats by severity. Modern SIEM solutions include artificial intelligence (AI) that automates these processes and ‘learns’ from the data to get better at spotting suspicious activity over time.
- Incident response. In response to a threat or actual incident, the SOC moves to limit the damage. Actions can include:
- Root cause investigation, to determine the technical vulnerabilities that gave hackers access to the system
- Shutting down compromised endpoints or disconnecting them from the network
- Isolating compromised areas of the network or rerouting network traffic
- Pausing or stopping compromised applications or processes
- Deleting damaged or infected files
- Running antivirus or anti-malware software
- Decommissioning passwords for internal and external users.
Many XDR solutions enable SOCs to automate and accelerate these and other incident responses.
Recovery, refinement and compliance
- Recovery and remediation. Once an incident is contained, the security operations center eradicates the threat and then works to the impacted assets to their state before the incident (e.g. wiping, restoring and reconnecting disks, end-user devices and other endpoints; restoring network traffic; restarting applications and processes). In the event of a data breach or ransomware attack, recovery may also involve cutting over to backup systems and resetting passwords and authentication credentials.
- Post-mortem and refinement. To prevent a recurrence, the SOC uses any new intelligence gained from the incident to better address vulnerabilities, update processes and policies, choose new cybersecurity tools or revise the incident response plan. At a higher level, SOC team may also try to determine if the incident reveals a new or changing cybersecurity trend for which the team needs to prepare.
- Compliance management. It’s the SOC’s job to ensure all applications, systems, and security tools and processes comply with data privacy regulations. Following an incident, the SOC makes sure that users, regulators, law enforcement and other parties are notified per regulations, and that the required incident data is retained for evidence and auditing.
Types of Security Operations Centers
There are several SOC models an organization can implement. These include the following:
- Dedicated or self-managed SOC. This model has an on-premises facility with in-house staff.
- Distributed SOC. Also known as a co-managed SOC, this model has semi-dedicated full-time or part-time team members who work in-house alongside a third-party managed security service provider (MSSP).
- Managed SOC. This model has MSSPs providing all SOC services to an enterprise. Managed detection and response (MDR) partners are another form of a managed SOC.
- Command SOC. This model provides threat intelligence insights and security expertise to other, typically dedicated, security operations centers. A command SOC is not involved in the actual security operations or processes, just the intelligence side.
- Fusion center. This model oversees any security-focused facility or initiative, including other types of SOCs or IT departments. Fusion centers are advanced SOCs and work with other enterprise teams, such as IT operations, DevOps and product development.
- Multifunction SOC. This model has a dedicated facility and in-house staff, but its roles and responsibilities extend to other critical areas of IT management, such as the network operations centers (NOCs).
- Virtual SOC. This model does not have a dedicated on-premises facility. A virtual SOC can be enterprise-run or fully managed. An enterprise-run SOC is generally staffed by in-house employees or a mix of in-house, on-demand and cloud-provided employees. A fully managed virtual SOC, also known as an outsourced SOC or SOC as a service (SOCaaS), has no in-house staff.
- SOCaaS. This subscription-based or software-based model outsources some or all SOC functions to a cloud provider.
Building a winning SOC team
SOCs are staffed with a variety of individuals who play a role in overarching security operations. Job titles and responsibilities that may be found in a SOC include the following:
- A SOC manager is the employee responsible for managing the everyday operations of the SOC and its cybersecurity team. It is also a part of the SOC manager’s role to communicate updates with the organization’s executive staff.
- The forensic investigator is in charge of identifying the root cause and locating the source of all attacks, collecting any available supporting evidence.
- A SOC security analyst reviews and organizes security alerts by urgency or severity and runs regular vulnerability assessments. A SOC analyst maintains skills such as knowledge of programming languages, systems administrator (sys admin) capabilities, and security best practices.
- An incident responder handles successful attacks or breaches, implementing the practices necessary to reduce and remove the threat.
- A security engineer develops and designs systems or tools that are necessary to carry out effective intrusion detection and vulnerability management capabilities.
- A compliance auditor ensures all SOC processes and employee actions meet compliance requirements.
- A threat hunter reviews data collected by the SOC to identify hard-to-detect threats. Resilience and penetration testing (pen testing) may also be a part of the threat hunter’s routine schedule.
Benefits of a security operations center
When implemented correctly, a security operations center can provide an organization with numerous benefits, including the following:
- improved incident response times and practices;
- uninterrupted monitoring and analysis for suspicious activity;
- decreased gaps between the time of compromise and mean time to detect (MTTD);
- centralized software and hardware assets for a more holistic security approach;
- customers and employees who feel more comfortable sharing sensitive information;
- minimized costs associated with cybersecurity incidents;
- more transparency and control over security operations; and
- effective communication and collaboration;
- established chain of control for data, which an organization needs if it wants to prosecute those attributed to a cybercrime.
Security Operations Center best practices
There are several agreed-upon best practices for running a SOC. Before a SOC can be successful, it is important to select the SOC model that is most effective for the given organization, staff the team with the best security specialists, and adopt the proper tools and technologies.
Next, implement security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) processes whenever possible. Combining the productivity of an automation tool with the technical skills of an analyst helps improve efficiency and incident response times. It also enables the SOC to function more effectively without interruption.
A SOC is only as effective as the strategies it has in place. Managers should implement operational protocols that are strong enough to ensure a consistent, fast and effective response.
SOCs rely heavily on the knowledge of individual cybersecurity team members. Managers should provide ongoing training to stay on top of emerging threats, cybersecurity incident reports and vulnerabilities. SOC monitoring tools should be updated to reflect any changes.
Other SOC best practices include ensuring full visibility across a business, collecting as much data as possible as often as possible, taking advantage of data analytics and developing processes that are easier to scale for growth.
Recommended Articles
- Digital Pathology: What It Is, Benefits & All to Know
- Security Architecture: What Is It & What Are the Benefits?
- What Do Data Scientists Do: All To Know About Data Scientists
- Data Migration: Meaning, Strategies & Best Practices
- Network Performance Monitoring: What It Is & All to Know
- What Is SOAR In Cybersecurity? Definition, Tools & Benefits
References
