A company falls victim to a cyberattack every 39 seconds!
Having a Security Operations Centre (SOC) has always been critical to an organisation’s overall cybersecurity strategy. SOC is a platform that detects and prevents cybersecurity threats. However, not all organisations may be able to build an in-house security team.
What are the implications? If there is no functioning SOC, the organisation could be at risk for major delays in detecting and responding to incidents.
Developing a complete and clear understanding of SOC roles, responsibilities and disciplines is essential for building an effective SOC. So if an enterprise is thinking of building a SOC, the following step will help in making a start.
Structuring security operations team
What is a SOC? It’s a team of experts who detect, analyse and respond to cybersecurity incidents. For a SOC to be successful, it requires support from organisational leaders, the right kind of investment and a highly motivated and skilled team.
It is crucial to select a leader who can create business opportunities, ensure that the SOC has full visibility and can allocate sufficient resources for the SOC to perform at its optimum best.
Tools for analyst retention
Analysts are pillars of SOC. However, most SOC employees have a painful experience performing their jobs. Having an understaffed SOC or a high turnover of security talent can have adverse impacts on the organisation’s security posture. So how do SOC leaders overcome these challenges? Having hands-on training courses, workshops, community events, and tool-specific training can help foster consistency and aid SOC in doing their jobs effectively. Having confidence-building opportunities is another great way to have a more secure operations centre.
Choosing technologies and services
Selecting the tools that work best for an enterprise can be tricky, but not impossible. Just need to choose technologies and services that fit the maturity and objectives. Some recommendations include:
- Maximising the flexibility and capabilities of the SOC by leveraging cloud-based SaaS offerings.
- Investing in threat intelligence tools and capabilities.
- Using firewalls, intrusion-prevention systems and intrusion-detection systems.
- Relying on cybersecurity analytics such as SIEM, log management, and SOAR.
Understanding the costs involved
According to PwC’s 2022 Global Digital Trust Insights report, “investments continue to pour into cybersecurity” with 69% of responding organisations predicting a rise in their cyber spending for 2022. For SOC to be effective, enterprises need to allocate people, technology and other assets. Building a SOC is a major commitment for all businesses. Therefore, aligning SOC objectives, budget usage and metrics for measuring performance become critical. This leads to overall cybersecurity effectiveness.
Takeaway
Without the proper personnel, processes, and technology, any SOC can fail to secure an organization’s IT environment. Not having an efficient SOC may result in mitigating risks and implementing solutions becomes nearly impossible. Thus the bottom line is that a SOC needs resources to do its job efficiently.
About the author:
Shomiron DasGupta, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at DNIF – HyperScale SIEM
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