You can install and implement great cybersecurity solutions and follow established cybersecurity best practices, but that won’t make you invulnerable. As important as it is to have baseline defenses in place, it’s equally — or more — important to be able to identify when those defenses have been breached and respond as quickly as possible. That’s where a Security Operations Center, or SOC, comes in. The standard mix of firewalls, spam filters, antimalware software and other network and endpoint security tools will help you avoid the vast majority of cyber threats. New attack tools, techniques and procedures continuously evolve the threat landscape and may slip through those defenses, though, so you need to be vigilant about monitoring for suspicious or malicious activity inside your network.
4 Benefits of a Security Operations Center
There are relatively few organizations that have the skills and resources necessary to effectively defend against the vast array of threats circulating today. Here are four reasons it makes more sense for organizations to work with a trusted third-party to provide SOC services.
Cybersecurity Experts
There have been reports for years about a shortage of IT and information security talent. Even if you can find and hire someone, people with the right skills don’t come cheap and you must also invest in ongoing training and education to ensure they stay up to date on current and emerging threats. A SOC will already have cybersecurity experts in place with the skills you need, so you can focus on building and growing your business.
Continuous Security
Threats don’t have office hours. Monitoring for attacks for 40 hours a week, Monday through Friday is not good enough when your network is under virtually constant siege from automated attacks, or cybercriminals around the world who operate in a different time zone. Attacks happen 24/7, so you need to have security experts in place monitoring your network 24/7 as well.
Reduce Complexity of Security Investigations
If and when a security incident does occur, a SOC streamlines the effort involved in investigating. The SOC correlates information and data from across various sources. The comprehensive visibility into the network environment makes the SOC uniquely suited to simplify the process of drilling into logs and forensic details to understand the root cause and methods of propagation for an attack.
Reduce Cybersecurity Costs
The SOC manages the entire process of monitoring your network environment for suspicious or malicious activity. Whether you’re protecting an on-premise data center, a cloud infrastructure or a hybrid environment, a SOC helps you avoid the costly investment in hiring and training an internal cybersecurity team.
A Security Operations Center Just Makes Sense
A SOC acts as an extension of your internal IT team—expanding the capacity to monitor, detect, and respond to threats. Working with a SOC simultaneously offloads the high costs associated with hiring and retaining an in-house security staff and addresses the time-consuming and complex challenges of identifying threats and conducting security incident investigations. For most organizations, partnering with a third-party SOC for managed detection and response offers clear and significant tactical, operational and financial benefits.
