Almost every organization today has two or three cyber defenses in place such as a firewall, email filtering, or antivirus. These basic tools that once kept you fully protected are no longer enough to defend against sophisticated cybercriminals.
Defensive equipment is in place to keep out the things that you have configured it to keep out. But what about the things we don’t know about? How do you defend against those? The answer seems clear, right? You need to have a team working around the clock that can keep your security perimeter consistently updated against new and evolving threats.
That’s where having a Security Operations Center, or a SOC, for short comes in.
What is a SOC?
A SOC is a centralized function within an organization employing people, processes, and technology to continuously monitor and improve an organization’s security posture while preventing, detecting, analyzing, and responding to cybersecurity incidents.
A SOC acts like the hub or central command post, taking in telemetry from across an organization’s IT infrastructure, including its networks, devices, appliances, and information stores, wherever those assets reside. The proliferation of advanced threats places a premium on collecting context from diverse sources. Essentially, the SOC is the correlation point for every event logged within the organization that is being monitored. For each of these events, the SOC must decide how they will be managed and acted upon.
- McAfee
Still not convinced you need a SOC? Here are 5 reasons you may change your mind in 2022:
- Continuous Proactive Monitoring
A SOC will monitor and scan your network 24/7 to flag any abnormalities or suspicious activities. If anything is detected it will create immediate alerts of any emerging threats, giving a team the best chance to prevent and mitigate the threats before any harm is done. The SOC’s tools use behavioral analysis to “teach” systems the difference between regular day-to-day activities and actual threat behavior.
- Threat Response
Once a threat is detected, a SOC acts as first responders performing actions like shutting down or isolating endpoints, terminating harmful processes, deleting files, and more. The goal of a SOC is to respond as quickly as possible while having the smallest impact on day-to-day operations.
- Recovery & Remediation
In the aftermath of a detection, a SOC will work to restore systems and recover any lost or compromised data. When successful this will allow the network to go back to the way it was before the incident.
- Security Refinement and Improvement
A SOC is a team of highly trained cybersecurity experts who work on a variety of networks. As cybercriminals are constantly refining their tools and tactics so are members of the SOC to stay ahead of them. This team is dedicated to continuously finding new ways to stop the criminals.
- Compliance Management
Many of the SOC’s processes are guided by best practices but some are governed by compliance requirements. The SOC is responsible for continuously auditing their systems to ensure compliance with regulations, which will help keep you protected from reputational damage and legal challenges resulting from a breach.
You may be asking yourself, “Can you afford a SOC?”
Staffing a SOC internally can be expensive, especially for SMBs, with the average security analyst salary starting at $90,000 per year and you will need more than one to cover things 24x7x365. A fully-staffed 24x7x365 team could easily cost more than $1 million per year, factor in the cost of software, hardware, and the training they need you are looking at more than $2 million per year. For most small to mid-size businesses these numbers are cost-prohibitive, which is why it is estimated that 69% of businesses will outsource security to Managed Service Provider within the next 12-months. Outsourcing gives you access to a team of experts who are already working 24x7x365 at a fraction of the cost of doing it in-house.
Cybercriminals never sleep and cybercrime is on the rise. Employing a SOC shows your clients, employees, and third-party stakeholders that you are serious about privacy and data security. You’ve worked hard to build a solid business reputation, don’t let one bad actor be the reason that all changes. For more information on The Purple Guys Security Operations Center (SOC), give us a call today!