Information security changes constantly and at a rate beyond comprehension. Hackers too are increasingly becoming relentless, making responding to information security incidents an ever more complex challenge.
Living in a connected world “always-on” technology, where there is insufficient security awareness on the part of the user, cyber-attacks are no longer a matter of “if” but “when.” Information security prevention is not an option anymore. It’s a bare necessity. Antiviruses, Intrusion detection and prevention systems, encryption. patching etc… remain the key control for fighting known attacks; but becoming less effective over time as hackers find new ways to avoid controls.
Being prepared for known attacks is hard enough. But how can an organization build controls for security risks they do not even know about yet?
Organizations are doing more than just improving on their current security posture. They are striving to expand their efforts, taking bolder steps to fight threats. Instead of reacting to threats once they occur organizations are prioritizing efforts to enhance visibility and enable a proactive response process through monitoring, analytics and timely detection.
With the current fast-moving innovations, organizations of all sizes must secure their delicate data about customers, workers, collaborators, inside systems and the sky is the limit from there. Be with the rising improvement of cyber criminals and hacking attempts, this assurance has turned into an undeniably difficult job.
The probabilities of encountering a security incident have risen significantly over the years. An ongoing investigation of organizations in the U.S. discovered one in every four associations will have their information breached annually. The occurrence of a security incident is high, and very expensive. Unprepared and without the correct safety efforts set up, organizations could face these expenses quite regularly, eating away at the bottom line. As per the investigation, it further describes security incidents take average of 206 days to recognize.
Considering these financial impacts organizations are investigating new techniques to shield themselves against potential cyber incidents. Some depend on cutting edge solutions to examine their systems, while others redistribute their cyber security totally to outside specialists. Another successful idea that keeps on developing as a counter measures is Security Operations Centers (here in after referred to as “SOC”) which consolidates and visualizes all possible security risks in to one place.
What is a SOC?
A SOC, is a specially designed physical area for security knowledge experts. Instead of a conventional IT office, a SOC staff fundamentally incorporates a group of well experienced cybersecurity experts and architects and they commit themselves totally to investigating identified IT security threats and incidents. A SOC tries to avoid potential cyber risks by prior recognition and reaction to any occurrence on the PCs, servers and systems it supervises.
“A security operations center (SOC) can be defined both as a team, often operating in shifts around the clock, and a facility dedicated to and organized to prevent, detect, assess and respond to cybersecurity threats and incidents, and to fulfill and assess regulatory compliance.” – Gartner
The advanced SOCs includes and utilizes firewalls, system security tests, security data and occasion, the board frameworks and arrangements that gather and screens information as it moves over the different stages. The SOC group remains in front of potential dangers by examining dynamic feeds, building up views, recognizing special cases, improving reactions and watching out for possible vulnerabilities
A few organizations have an in-house SOC, while others select to outsource. Whichever method the organization choses, they all have the on objective of preventing threats and limiting troubles because of online criminal actions. Through their dynamic investigations and searches, A SOC uses approaches and procedures to construct and keep up the organization’s cybersecurity guards.
What is a SOC comprised of?
Operational SOC contains a security information and event management (SIEM) system, Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), Risk and Compliance Systems and Advanced Cyber Threat Intelligence system components. As for human resources, a SOC comprises of SOC analysts, SOC Engineers and SOC managers.
What are the benefits of having a SOC?
A well-functional SOC is one that gives a protected domain to the business to convey on its center goals in accordance with its vital business growth and vision. Key advantage of having a SOC is, it controls, screen and keep up day today exercises and give a superior safe gatekeeper to associations. For instance, day in and day out checking gives immense safeguard over security occurrences and interruptions early and shields associations from threats.
As a benefit, SOC facilitates proactive checking capability to the organization by analyzing previous malicious exercises which lead to considerable mischief. Also manage logs and reactions which helps to discover where something may have turned out badly. Exhaustive logging of movement and interchanges over the systems can give appropriate experts the intelligence to carry forward the investigations.
SOC decreases the time gap between incident occurrence and response with continuous monitoring and steady observations. Overall SOC protects organizational reputation and saves millions at a time.
Setting up your SOC
It’s up to the organizations to perform a deep analysis and determine which solution is best for them and this will depend on a variety of factors, including budget and regulatory requirements. If an organization lacks skilled persons to manage it’s SOC they face many challenges. The ideal way to safe guard the organization’s security posture is running its SOC as a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP), which can take over the organization’s security and be proactive on behalf of the organization.
If an organization lacks with skilled persons and face many challenges, the ideal way to safe guard the organization’s security posture is running SOC as a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP), This can take over the security and be proactive. But before selecting an MSSP partner, better to perform a independent market validation, including the security maturity of that provider (certified with ISO 27001, PCI DSS), their domain knowledge expertise and service level agreements.
Before establishing a SOC, organizations need to identify key success pillars of a SOC.
- Who is involve with the SOC (people),
- The steps to needed to followed to safe guard the organizational security landscape (process) and
- Tools and technology associates with each of these steps (technology).
Planning a SOC isn’t as straightforward as introducing a SIEM and watching the colorful screens. Apart from that putting correct resources into the correct innovation, security pioneers must guarantee that their procedure lines up with human elements and business needs.
Overall, an effective SOC is a solid establishment for operational magnificence driven by all around planned and executed procedures, solid administration, skilled people and a consistent drive for ceaseless enhancement to remain in front of the digital enemies.
Author: Waruna Sampath