Unlock the Potential of 24/7 SOC With Continuous Testing

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Unlock the Potential of 24/7 SOC With Continuous Testing

Regardless of industry or size, all businesses can encounter risks to their electronic or physical assets including brand integrity, business systems, intellectual property, and data. That is why it’s increasingly crucial to be able to detect security threats quickly and take the appropriate action.

In light of this reality, Companies are now exploring more advanced methods to defend themselves, making around-the-clock security services or monitoring offered by 24/7 SOC (Security Operations Center) grow in popularity.

So what is SOC and what does it do? Read on!

What is a Security Operations Center (SOC)?

A security Operations Center (SOC) is a central function within a company. Its main function is to continuously monitor, detect and prevent vulnerabilities and threats on your devices and networks while responding to all security incidents.

While not all Security Operations Centers are the same, they are normally staffed by malware analysts, network engineers, SOC analysts, and other professionals who use network-based and enterprise monitoring security tools.

Large companies may organize their Security Operations Center analyst into tiers, so that complex issues can be handled by a SOC team with more experience.

The benefits of an effective and dedicated SOC

The value of SOC has huge benefits for organizations and offers a number of added value benefits. They include:

• Security expertise
• Reduced costs
• Continuous monitoring or protection
• Improve business reputation
• Effective and efficient response
• Increased threat prevention
• Security system administration

1- Security expertise

SOCs consist of security experts who are trained in responding to and detecting threats. These specialists often include threat hunters, forensic investigators, compliance auditors, security analysts, and other security professionals.

The diverse skills and expertise that these individuals hold can help your company better its security posture

2 – Increased threat prevention

Aside from threat hunting, a SOC helps prevent any cyber threats from occurring in the first place. It implements increased cyber threat prevention strategies and technologies, which include prevention systems\intrusion detection, malware protection, and firewalls.

3 – Reduced costs

A centralized Security Operations Center enables a company to lower costs in many ways. A SOC can help you focus and prioritize the most serious threats.

It also reduces the need for manual intervention – you can automate certain tasks and use intelligent analytics for threat detection. A SOC can also help lower costs associated with potential damages and downtime.

4 – Continuous protection

Cybercriminals will never ever take a break and commonly do their attacks on weekends or after hours to increase their probability of success.

This means that minimizing cybersecurity risk needs 24\7 monitoring of the company’s data and IT infrastructure.

5 – Faster incident response times

Implementing a Security Operations Center in place means you’ve got a SOC team dedicated to responding to potential threats.

That is where threat intelligence comes to play. Threat Intelligence for Security Operations allows security teams to gather and parse incidents in real-time, helping them prevent the attack before it strikes the company. Threat intelligence can also help in assessing alerts by enriching alerts with context and decreasing false positives.

6 – Improve business reputation

Having a SOC in place can improve your business reputation since it shows your vendors and clients that you take data security seriously. Improved SOC services can help strengthen relationships and build trust with key stakeholders and partners.

What are the different models of SOC available?

One advantage of outsourced SOCs is the infrastructure is in already place. The many deployment regions or regional availability means more security and faster.

Here are the common models for deploying a Security Operations Center within your company:

  1. Dedicated SOC – The business sets up its own security team or professionals within its workforce.
  2. Virtual SOC – The organization’s security team often works remotely and doesn’t have a dedicated facility.
  3. Co-managed SOC – The internal IT of the enterprise is merged with an outsourced vendor to manage cyber threats needs jointly.
  4. Global SOC – A group (high-level) that usually oversees smaller security operations centers across a large region.

24/7 SOC

Cybercrimes have become common events for all businesses and dealing with them is a top priority. To better the detection of these threats, many organizations are betting on the analysis of data activity and continuous security monitoring.

SOC is currently undergoing an exciting transformation. Next generational SIEMS (security information and event management) that include capabilities like SOC automation, sun model, and machine learning open up new possibilities for SOC professionals.

Lara