A Managed Security Operations Center (MSOC) is a significant piece of the cutting-edge security organization, however, it’s just a single piece of how your whole security program ought to be safeguarding your business against assaults. How does an MSOC squeeze into the bigger picture? Here are some things to contemplate as you consider what the essential objective of the MSOC ought to be.
What is a Security Operations Center?
Many businesses are establishing security operations centers (SOCs) in order to monitor, detect, and respond to cyber threats. The term SOC refers to a command center that maintains a high level of situational awareness on behalf of an organization. A SOC monitors assess and report cyber threats to all parts of an organization. One common misconception about SOCs is that they exclusively focus on threat detection; however, their primary goal should be protection rather than detection.
Protection focuses on preventing loss or damage while detection focuses on identifying an issue after it has occurred. Because threats are constantly evolving, it’s important for organizations to have safeguards in place before data has been stolen or destroyed; otherwise, they risk paying even more if/when they must identify and recover from an incident.
What is the importance of a SOC?
A security operations center (SOC) is a monitoring and incident reaction office, regularly staffed by cybersecurity professionals. Frequently colloquially alluded to as the SOC, an organization’s security operations center is responsible for monitoring its organizations, PCs and associated gadgets to distinguish cybersecurity dangers and potential digital assaults in the works. The term likewise alludes to individuals who staff such an office.
While some SOCs are located on-site with all their resources readily available, most modern organizations outsource their security operations centers to third-party vendors who can maintain round-the-clock staffing with experienced network defenders and computer forensics experts, even if their actual networks never go offline.
How Does a SOC Work?
A SOC, or security operations center, plays out various significant capabilities. Its essential objective is to recognize interruptions and framework breaks to restrict harm to an organization’s IT foundation and delicate information, and immediately answer dangers. It may also assist with data breach notifications and provide consultation on compliance requirements with laws such as PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard). The SOC employs highly trained analysts who are responsible for monitoring networks for signs of intrusion, attempting to identify potential threats, implementing policies designed to limit damage from cyberattacks and assisting incident responders when necessary.
What Does a SOC Do?
Whether you’re in charge of a small business or a Fortune 500 company, you must protect your information and your customers’ personal data. This means that your network needs to be as secure as possible at all times.
Asset Discovery
The primary role of security operations centers (SOCs) is to monitor network activity in order to detect incidents. While incident response may be one component, a SOC’s main responsibility is asset discovery: The process by which it identifies and catalogs every device on a network and its current state.
That includes everything from IP addresses, hostnames, and firewall rules to workstations, servers, printers, mobile devices, virtual machines (VMs), IoT endpoints like sensors or cameras—even business logic components embedded within custom applications. Once identified, SOC personnel should add identifying information such as location and manufacturer so they can easily track devices across changes in an organization’s structure or IT infrastructure.
Behavioral Monitoring
The goal of behavioral monitoring in your SOC should be to detect and alert you as quickly as possible when someone or something not authorized attempts to access your network. Behavioral monitoring involves capturing and analyzing traffic (using sniffers, IDS/IPS, etc.) while looking for abnormal behavior. When something gets flagged, a notification should be sent to the SOC team via email or some other communication channel that’s quick enough to stop attackers before they impact critical assets.
Maintaining Activity Logs
There are different types of activity logs. This data helps you understand what happens on your network and in your organization so that you can detect any security breaches or other unauthorized activities. To keep track of all activity, including who accessed what and when, a variety of systems are available. The type you choose depends on your organization’s size and resources. For example, if you have 10 employees in one office and they only use it during working hours, then a simple log may suffice.
Alert Ranking
The primary goal of a SOC is to respond as quickly as possible to security alerts generated by its various network security tools. While responding quickly, an effective SOC will leverage data analysis and forensics capabilities to accurately determine whether or not an alert represents a real threat to its organization. If it does, a timely response will be initiated by calling upon internal resources such as incident responders, IT personnel and other team members. If no threat exists, then appropriate responses can be drafted for future consideration if any similar activity occurs in the future.
Incident Response
When security incidents occur, SOC teams need to be able to respond quickly and efficiently. Because response time can vary widely depending on multiple factors, it’s crucial that SOC teams know how long their response time usually takes in order to make data-driven decisions. They also need a way to understand what’s causing delays in their processes so they can address any underlying issues.
Conclusion
The essential objective of a security operations center is to distinguish, answer, and caution on assaults and interruptions. To do so actually it will take an examination group that can assess all information got progressively. The second most ideal choice is recruiting an oversaw security administrations supplier (MSSP) to deal with examination for you.
If neither of these options are possible at your organization, then I highly recommend using SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) software tools to help automate much of your monitoring and alerting. Most importantly, don’t forget about people! A great SOC analyst should be able to use many different tools while understanding them at a fundamental level; they should also understand how their organization operates so they can perform root cause analysis when anomalies occur.
