The Importance of 24×7 Monitoring & Response
Is your business open 24x7x365? Whether you answer “Yes” or “No”, it does not matter to cybercriminals. If your business is visible on-line, the cybercriminals are working to get in 24x7x365. Are you certain one of them is not inside your network right now? Unfortunately, this is the reality for all businesses today. Managing cybersecurity risk is not just an IT focus – it is now a boardroom topic. If you are a small to medium-sized business and still in denial that your organization isn’t a target, consider this, according to the Verizon 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report, 56% of the cybersecurity incidents occurred in small businesses. In addition, small businesses are slower to detect the incident with less than half of SMBs (47%) reporting being able to detect them in less than a day. Meaning the bad guys have days, or in many cases weeks to roam inside the network undetected. These statistics reveal the grim cybersecurity situation for most small to mid-size businesses today.
Many SMBs have spent the last year investing in cybersecurity tools, beefing up password policies, adding two-factor authentication, and increasing cyber security awareness training efforts. These are all effective strategies, but who is monitoring and responding to those cybersecurity tools during and after hours?
Enter a SOC.
What is a SOC?
A Security Operations Center (SOC) is a centralized function employing people, processes, and technology to continuously monitor and improve an organization’s security posture while preventing, detecting, analyzing, and responding to cybersecurity incidents.
3 Benefits of a SOC
- 24×7 Monitoring & Response. The keyword in the long definition of a SOC above is “continuously” meaning a SOC is 24x7x365. Why is that important? Because, according to the statistics above, every business is a target and cybercriminals are awake 24x7x365. The longer that an attacker has access to a system the more damage that can be done. Some hackers can move laterally in a network within an hour of the initial attack, making the next day’s response almost irrelevant. By having continuous monitoring and response it dramatically increases the likelihood of detection and remediation before considerable damage is done.
- Decreased Cost of Breaches and Operations. By minimizing the time an attacker has within your environment you dramatically reduce the overall cost of the breach, reducing the costs the breach may incur via data loss, lawsuits, and reputation damage. A SOC will also work diligently to remediate the issues as soon as they occur reducing the overall downtime and impact on your operations.
- Security & Expertise. SOCs are more than just detecting incidents they spend a large majority of time threat hunting to prevent attacks from happening in the first place. They also work on a wide variety of organizations in a range of industries, meaning they can apply lessons learned to your organization and have a direct pulse on the day-to-day threat landscape.
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!