As cyber attacks become more frequent and more damaging, having the means to detect and analyse a network breach, and manage a response at an organisational level is critical. For many businesses, discrete cyber security tools, such as anti-virus software and firewalls, no longer do that job and, as an alternative, these organisations have implemented security operations centres (SOC) as a central part of their cyber security solutions.
What is a Security Operations Centre?
A security operations centre (SOC) is a dedicated security unit that combines the various aspects of a business’ threat management solution and serves as a centralised hub from which security incidents can be managed.
The scope of the SOC ranges from the identification of and response to threats, to the review of security incidents and their future prevention. The SOC may be an in-house team of experts or an outsourced service which monitors network security 24 hours a day. In a constantly changing threat environment, having a SOC is a way to ensure not just constant vigilance but a prompt and effective security response when an attack occurs.
What does a SOC do?
A SOC should centralise an organisation’s threat management process from end to end. The practical duties and responsibilities associated with the SOC include:
- Maintaining an inventory of critical files and resources, and the measures it has put in place to protect them.
- Developing a formal incident response plan for dealing with cyber attacks.
- Testing security measures and incident response strategies regularly, and updating solutions where necessary.
- Monitoring the business’ network continuously for threats or suspicious activity.
- Developing threat intelligence to counter existing and emerging threats.
- Threat hunting for possible or suspected network breaches.
- Responding to security incidents by enacting the incident response plan.
- Remediating security incidents, including reviewing damage, restoring network functionality, and recovering losses.
- Pursuing an internal review process to prevent future attacks and, if necessary, engaging with authorities over regulatory issues.
Why is the SOC important?
The sheer scale of 21st century cyber threats make the SOC an essential component in many businesses’ security solutions. The better the SOC functions as a centralised hub in a wider framework of systems, the better the business’ security outcomes.
For example, when a network intrusion is detected, an analyst within the SOC may be able to quickly identify the hacker perpetrating it by consulting relevant tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP), while a fellow analyst works to identify a method of remediation based on data from previous attacks. In their oversight role, SOC analysts are best placed to take significant steps, such as restricting access to certain files or initiating a business recovery plan, as soon as they become necessary.
Given its importance, businesses should seek to optimise the capabilities of their SOC, equipping it with the right technology and software tools, the right operational strategies, and the right expertise.
SOC Best Practices
To optimise your business’ SOC, consider the following best practices:
Skills and training: The impact of the SOC, and its automated cyber security processes, will depend on your employees’ expertise and ability to perform under pressure. Ensure your security employees receive sufficient training and professional development, not only in the technical aspects of SOC tools but in a range of security competencies, including regulatory compliance.
Threat intelligence: Your SOC should run on high-quality threat intelligence. Implement tools and strategies to deliver threat intelligence quickly and efficiently, and integrate that insight into SOC workflows.
Testing: Your SOC will be critical to your planned response to security incidents. Test SOC systems and processes regularly to ensure ongoing effectiveness and to spot emerging blindspots or vulnerabilities.
Automation and integration: Work to automate as many of your SOC processes and workflows as possible to maximise the speed, accuracy, and efficiency benefits of the technology you have integrated. Automation is a foundation from which to integrate new innovations, including artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
Monitoring: The SOC should be focused on the prompt detection and mitigation of network threats. With that in mind, it’s essential that you implement effective screening and monitoring systems and strategies, and ensure that analysts understand how to remediate and escalate alerts.
SOC Tools
Your SOC should feature the following key tools and systems:
Security information and event management (SIEM): SIEM tools enable security teams to collect data from an array of sources and analyse it for threat detection and incident response purposes. SIEM tools help SOC analysts develop a holistic view of the threat environment.
Endpoint detection and response (EDR): EDR tools serve as a first line of defence against cyber attacks that target specific system endpoints, which may be devices such as phones or laptops, or secure points within networks such as servers. EDR tools run continuously and may perform automated processes to mitigate and respond to threats.
Threat intelligence: Threat intelligence tools help SOC analysts coordinate the collection of threat data, and develop insight which can be used to prevent and respond to cyber attacks. Threat intelligence tools may facilitate data collection and analysis, knowledge management, entity extraction and data visualisation, and should be integrated closely with all SOC workflows.
Data fusion: Data fusion tools facilitate the unification of multiple data sources as a way of generating greater insight. In cyber security, data fusion enables businesses to collate and correlate data feeds for the production of actionable threat intelligence.
Optimise with Artificial Intelligence
As the threat landscape grows crowded, SOCs must be capable of managing increasing volumes of data in order to stay ahead of potential attacks and keep their businesses safe. That increased burden makes it harder, and slower, for conventional collection and analysis tools to generate meaningful threat intelligence, and for security teams to act on that insight.
Artificial intelligence (AI) represents a critical advantage in the fight against cyber threats, providing advanced analytic capabilities that surpass human security teams, and transform the impact of the SOC within the security framework. With the benefit of generative AI (GenAI), for example, teams can analyse vast amounts of unstructured data in seconds, pulling the most relevant threat information and fusing that data with insight from an array of different feeds for meaningful, real time insight. Meanwhile, machine learning algorithms help SOC analysts extract useful points from that data to predict security weaknesses through analysis of historic attack data.
Labyrinth for Threat Investigations
Ripjar’s Labyrinth for Threat Investigations (LTI) harnesses that analytic power with AI-enhanced threat intelligence and data fusion tools, including round-the-clock monitoring and advanced threat analysis capabilities.
LTI enables seamless integration of SIEM and EDR tools for immediate visualisation of incoming alerts, and applies detailed enrichments from threat intelligence feeds to facilitate deep-dive threat investigations. That insight provides meaningful cyber security advantages, enabling analysts to initiate immediate remediation activities – triggering updates of threat detection rules from within the LTI platform.
LTI’s in-built knowledge and reporting capabilities mean that SOCs can maintain a strong strategic perspective on their threat landscape, while ensuring that businesses always have the intelligence and tools they need to handle their next incident.
Transform your SOC with Labyrinth for Threat Investigations
Last updated: 6 January 2025