In this guide, Bridwell’s cyber security experts explain why SOC is so important and explore the best practices to look for when outsourcing your efforts.
Why is SOC Important?
An SOC is critical in executing preventative measures, and recovery strategies during a breach.
Below, we look at how your SOC maintains the long-term security of your organisation’s digital infrastructure:
- Improved Security Expertise: Each member of an SOC team contributes their unique skills to ensure no area of your cybersecurity infrastructure is left unprotected.
- Enhanced Visibility: Maintaining visibility can be a challenge. This is often due to the complexity of different systems, from IoT devices and cloud computing to remote work setups. This can lead to blind spots where threats remain undetected. A skilled SOC team can achieve visibility across an entire network by implementing different security tools and technologies.
- Saving Costs: What an SOC requires in up-front costs, it makes up for in long-term savings. Data breaches cost a business more than just repair time. They can result in data loss, extended downtime and reputational damage. All of which can lead to a drop in sales and a loss of revenue. A proactive SOC prevents unnecessary threats and reduces downtime, saving businesses money in the long term.
- Regulatory Compliance: Compliance can be critical for navigating complex regulatory landscapes across a wide range of industries. Customer privacy must be protected, and a well-equipped SOC team provides the necessary security infrastructure to meet compliance demands.
- Risk Management: An SOC is a preventative measure against cybersecurity threats. Its role isn’t just to stop breaches, but to work on ways to counter them. This includes a critical analysis of potential security risks and how those risks can be reduced.
- Continuous Monitoring: Threats don’t stop when the workday is over. With continuous monitoring, an SOC can provide coverage 24/7. This means threats can be detected and dealt with at any time of the day, and with an improved incident response time.
SOC Processes
A thriving Cyber Security Operations Centre can be divided into five key processes.
These are designed to deliver targeted interventions for the full risk landscape.
These processes include:
Identification | Prevention | Detection | Response | Recovery |
This process involves activities like monitoring network traffic, system logs or other types of data to identify potential security threats. This can include suspicious login attempts, network anomalies or other attempts at unauthorised access. | Our SOC teams use various techniques to prevent cybersecurity threats flagged by our identification team. These include access controls, firewalls or any intrusion prevention systems. | Once prevention measures have been implemented, our SOC team uses security tools to detect and analyse a threat. Detection methods also include behavioural analysis and anomaly detection. | Once a security threat has been detected, SOC teams will respond quickly and efficiently to contain the threat and minimise damage. This includes methods like blocking network traffic, disabling compromised accounts and isolating infected systems. | After a security incident has been resolved, SOC teams work on restoring compromised systems. This may include system patching, user account recovery, data restoration and more. |
SOC Team Roles
SOC teams comprise several roles, each with specific responsibilities. This ensures every aspect of an organisation’s security infrastructure is covered.
The most common team roles include:
- SOC Manager: Oversees the entire system. They are often experienced cyber security experts capable of providing supervision and guidance to the wider team. An SOC manager needs to make sure the team is compliant with the organisation’s needs and security policies.
- Security Analyst: Tasked with real-time monitoring and analysis. This includes security information and event management (SIEM) systems, intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS) and endpoint detection and response (EDR). Security analysts investigate and monitor security incidents, identify threats and vulnerabilities and respond to security alerts.
- Incident Response Lead: Leads any response strategies to security breaches. They often coordinate with other teams, like IT and legal. This ensures the incident response process is coordinated and executed flawlessy.
- SOC Engineer: Implement and maintain SOC technologies, including SIEM systems, intrusion detection (IDS), firewalls and other security technologies. They also ensure the SOC’s security infrastructure is secure and up to date.
- Threat Hunters: Responsible for actively seeking potential security threats before they become incidents. They use different tools and techniques, including data analysis and intelligence feeds, and often work closely with SOC analysts to respond quickly.
- Forensic Analyst: Investigate data breaches, cyber attacks and other security incidents. They use forensic tools to find the source of an attack and often work closely with law enforcement agencies to gather evidence for legal cases.
Best Practices for SOC Teams
A professional SOC team often follows a set of established best practices to detect and resolve incidents with minimal downtime, including:
Establishing a Clear Set of Procedures Skilled SOC teams have a clear, documented method of incident detection, response and recovery. | Implementing SIEMHaving a robust SIEM system is crucial for SOC teams. This assists analysts in collecting and scrutinising security data from different sources. |
Making Use of Threat Intelligence Skilled SOC teams have access to relevant and up-to-date threat intelligence information to help identify and respond to security breaches effectively. | Regular Vulnerability Assessments Scheduled vulnerability assessments help pinpoint weaknesses in an organisation’s security architecture. |
Incident Response Practice It’s important for SOC teams to practise incident response scenarios to ensure an efficient response time in the event of a breach. | Promoting Collaboration SOC teams need to work collaboratively with other teams, like IT, legal and risk management. This ensures security responses are coordinated. |
Continuous Monitoring SOC teams require 24/7 monitoring capabilities to detect security incidents as soon as they occur. | Frequent Reporting SOC teams need to regularly report on the status of security incidents, vulnerabilities and trends to senior management to keep all aspects of an organisation up to date on potential risks. |
What’s the Difference Between SIEM & SOC?
SIEM and SOC are both critical to your cyber security strategy. But they perform separate functions and roles within any incident response plan.
SIEM (Security Information and Event Management | SOC (Security Operations Centre) |
A cyber security system that collects, analyses and correlates security data from different sources using real-time threat detection. SIEM systems are primarily used by SOC teams within an overall security strategy to monitor and manage security data. Can be used for other security functions outside of SOC. | An SOC team is responsible for monitoring, detecting and responding to security incidents. It often uses tools like SIEM to analyse security data and respond to threats. Members of an SOC actively engage in threat hunting, vulnerability management and incident response. |
In summary, SIEM technology is a tool that assists in data collection and analysis. It is often used by SOCs to monitor and respond to threats.
What is Managed SOC?
Managed SOC is an outsourced service that involves a certified third-party cyber security company providing security monitoring and incident response on behalf of a client.
Often, this makes use of third-party resources and expertise, combined with potential reduced costs that would otherwise be used to maintain a costly in-house SOC team.
Why Bridewell?
- Rapid Time to Value: Within days of signing your contract, our SOC team will be up and running – with our analysts monitoring your organisation during the onboarding process.
- Certified Cybersecurity Specialists: Our SOC team holds certifications from leading industry bodies. We continuously invest in training to keep up to date with current threats and responses.
- Driven by Threat Intelligence: At the foundation of all our services lies a dedication to effective threat intelligence, designed to help your organisation combat threat actors with minimal disruption.
Bridewell SOC Services
Upscale your security operations with enhanced threat detection, cyber intelligence and incident response capabilities, with Bridewell’s fully-managed SOC service.
Bridewell also provides a full suite of managed cyber security services, including Managed Detection and Response (MDR), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Vulnerability & Management Services.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is a SOC Analyst?
A: An SOC Analyst is a cybersecurity professional responsible for monitoring and analysing an organisation’s security systems. Their role is to detect, respond to, and mitigate security breaches, protecting senisitve data and assets.
Q: What is the difference between SOC and NOC?
A: A Security Operations Centre (SOC) focuses on cybersecurity – monitoring and responding to security threats and incidents. A Network Operations Centre (NOC) manages network performance and maintains the uptime and availability of IT services.
Q: What Is SOC Level 1?
A: Level 1 refers to the first tier of analysts in a Security Operations Centre. These analysts monitor security alerts, perform initial investigations and escalate incidents to higher-level analysts. Their primary role is to provide timely detection and response.
Martin Riley
Chief Technology Officer
Managed Security
