What is SOC?
What is a Security Operations Center (SOC)?
A security operations center (SOC) is a team that analyzes and monitors all the cybersecurity equipment so as to prevent cybersecurity events. SOC uses relevant IT departments and technologies to improve an organization’s security posture and to address problems when needed.
Resources of SOC
SOC collects any kind of log out of available devices because of the prevalence of threats. SOC acts as a commanding center over an organization’s IT systems including yet not limited to networks, servers, and endpoints.
Operationalization of SOC
SOC designates how to manage every incident and warning within a log and analysis data. In addition, it executes a cyber incident response in case of a cyberattack.
SOC is usually directed by a SOC manager. SOC personnel architecture includes incident responders, SOC analysts (levels 1, 2, and 3), threat hunters, and incident response manager(s). In an organization structure, SOC reports to a chief information security officer (CISO) who sequentially reports to either a chief information officer (CIO) or a chief executive officer (CEO).
Personnel & Organization
Personnel & Organization structure of a SOC
The pivotal aims of SOC are to monitor, detect, inquire and respond to cyberthreats around the clock.
Personnel Structure
Security operations teams are responsible to monitor and protect a plethora of valuables, such as intellectual property, personnel data, business systems, and brand integrity. In order to defend an organization against cyberattacks, security operations teams shall work in congruence with.
Organization Structure
SOC is a center for warnings deriving from information flow from and security rules of SIEM logs and correlation rules, and EDR rules -- a threat intelligence platform. While assessing the warnings, relevant personnel shall manage and have acquaintance with various systems -- exploit detection, risk and compliance, user and entity behavior analytics, and endpoint detection to name a few.
10 Benefits
10 major functions fulfilled by SOC
01
Asset Inventory Management
SOC is responsible for all utilized sources. SOC employs all available cybersecurity tools to protect various devices, processes, and applications.
What a SOC protects?
SOC is unable to protect unregistered devices and data. Without registration of assets, SOC cannot ensure total security and visibility. Therefore, it can be stated that there must no security blind spots for exploitation. Not only shall SOC monitor endpoints, internal servers, and applications, but also it should evaluate risks posed by traffic between mentioned assets.
How the SOC protects?
SOC shall conduct a complete study on all available cyber security tools and asset inventory possessed by the relevant company. Therefore, SOC creates ample opportunity for the prevention of unaware data leakage and cyber security attacks.
02
Preventive Care for Cyber Hygiene
An equipped team or cyber incident response plans could be insufficient to prevent the occurrence of problems. Therefore, relevant IT departments should implement precautionary measures in accordance with SOC personnel in order to avert mentioned problems.
Preparation
Team members must possess specialist knowledge of new firewall rules writing, novel trends in cybercrimes, and the development of fresh cyber threats. In addition, studies on new trends in cybersecurity allow a company to create and maintain a cybersecurity guide and contribute to prospective cyber hygiene.
Preventive Care
To minimize cyberattacks, preventive care involves; monitoring outputs deriving from leak detection scanners, handling detected security vulnerabilities, periodically strengthening and maintaining extant systems, updating to security wall policies, and lastly compiling warning notices for black and white lists.
03
Continuous Monitoring and Checking
SOC analyzes every warning notice around the clock through various tools so as to detect suspicious IT activities. Constant monitoring for warning signs is one of the most acceptable techniques in order to get SOC suddenly noticed by posed threats. One of the monitoring tools shall at least be SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) or EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response). Mentioned software technologies can be used for the analysis of differentiation between daily-based operations and real-time threats.
04
Alert Severity Levels and Management
SOC is in charge of the following tasks in case of a notice being issued out of monitoring devices: scrutinizing every alert, eliminating false positives, determining real threats and their aggression level, and lastly preparing a response to the extant notice. Thanks to the mentioned processes, the most severe cases are prioritized.
05
Response to Threats
When the cyber security specialists decide that a warning notice is an attack, the following measures are taken: shutting down or isolation of the relevant computer or endpoint, terminating malicious activity processes or preventing it, removing the infected files, and lastly restoring the relevant material to pre-attack condition. The aim is to respond to the threat before the escalation of severity.
06
Recovery and Remediation
After the occurrence of an incident, the specialists perform actions so as to restore the affected systems and recover lost or compromised data. These actions could include rebuilding, rebooting, and reconfiguration of the endpoints or deploying relevant backups in order to handle ransomware in case of ransomware attacks.
07
Log Management
A SOC is responsible for collecting, maintaining, and continuously monitoring the cyber and network activity logs of the organization. Collected data helps to create a baseline for designating a normal network activity. Therefore, the existence of cyber threats can be observed. In addition, a plethora of SOC prefers SIEM so as to amass and correlate logs with data flow deriving from operating systems and endpoints.
08
Root Cause Investigation
The security operations center is supposed to determine what happened when, why, and how in the aftermath of an incident. During this determination, SOC utilizes logs and relevant sources in order to trace the problem back to the source, and takes measures so as to prevent ulterior problems.
09
Security Improvement
Cyber attackers constantly improve and change their attacking strategies and tools. Security operations teams shall antecede the cyber attackers; therefore, teams shall keep the systems up-to-date.
10
Compliance Management
SOC’s duties and responsibilities can be found in many articles of KVKK (Personal Data Protection Law of Türkiye), GDPR, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS. In the aftermath of an absolute SOC installation process, an organization can strengthen its status in terms of regulation and compliance. In addition, it can protect an organization from reputational damage and legal complaints deriving from a breach.
