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What Is a Security Operations Center (SOC)? Everything You Need to Know

by | Dec 20, 2022 | Cybersecurity | 0 comments

The Security Operations Center (SOC) in an organization keeps it safe from all the potential threats that could affect operations, confidentiality, and compliance.

It is a robust, preventative, and responsive system that covers all the bases security-wise before, during, and after a potential breach. Learn more about the different facets of the SOC and its importance in an organization below.

Security Operations Center professionals and software monitor your networks and devices to keep them secure.

What Is a Security Operations Center (SOC)? What Does It Protect?

An organization’s Security Operations Center (SOC) is a centralized function set up to protect the organization from cybersecurity threats.

Besides technology, the SOC also employs people and processes and runs 24/7 to continuously monitor and improve an organization’s security posture.

It prevents, detects, analyzes, and responds to cybersecurity alerts, alarms, and incidents. The SOC also initiates remediation of active data breaches, including viruses, malware, and ransomware.

To protect the organization completely, the SOC takes stock of all the devices, data, tools, and systems that require its protection. The oversight of this critical function is limited only by the information that is not submitted to the SOC for it to include in its strategic planning.

After taking stock, the SOC must develop a thorough understanding of how the various elements work together in the organization and the processes in place to handle data, cyber threats, and any related issues.

Your Security Operations Center will protect your organization from cyber crime and rising threats.

Preparation and Preventative Maintenance

Cybersecurity threats and incidents can prove costly to an organization, regardless of its size. The consequences can include downtime, financial losses, confidentiality breaches, and even legal ramifications with far-reaching effects on business continuity.

It’s much easier to prevent a breach than to respond to one, so two facets of preventative maintenance are essential.

Preparation for a data breach is the first and most important step. What are the current cyber security threats? Have there been any security incidents in the headlines? Are there any new developments in the security space?

Having answers to these and other similar questions can help an organization’s SOC create a robust plan of action to respond to potential security issues, which is the preventative maintenance step.

Moreover, the SOC must have a collection of actions taken routinely to keep the organization’s IT and data systems in good function for preventative maintenance. These include scheduled updates of security systems and policies.

Monitoring and Alerts

The SOC’s speed of response to threats is possible because of its continuous monitoring tools. As soon as suspicious activity is detected, alerts are sent to devices and people responsible for responding to breaches.

With greater automation of the monitoring and response system, the SOC can stay on top of potential breaches.

Recovery and Root Cause Investigation

Despite the SOC’s elaborate preventative tools, incidents can still happen. When this takes place, the security function must work fast to recover any lost data and close the breach to limit losses.

Thereafter, a root cause investigation can be performed to determine the cause of the incident and any security gaps that are yet to be dealt with. If this process is completed correctly, the organization should be better prepared to handle similar threats in the future.

Final Thoughts

A security operations center is an important tool that you can use to help gauge your organization’s cybersecurity. Now that you understand what it is, you can implement this system to safeguard your data.