What is SOC in Cybersecurity?

SOC stands for security operations center. SOC is a team or facility dealing with security issues within an organization. The goal is to detect, assess, and respond to security threats, increasing the organization’s resilience and helping to meet regulatory requirements.

There are different models for a SOC strategy, from in-house operations to outsourced resources. Large companies might have a dedicated facility where the SOC team supervises the site and controls access, alarms, vehicle barriers, and video surveillance. Other organizations might have only a team with specific security roles. Not all organizations have a 24/7 SOC because it requires specialized staffing and significant investments.

Key Functions of a Cybersecurity Operations Center

In cybersecurity, SOC focuses on protecting digital assets from cyber threats to prevent data breaches and business disruptions. Some of the specific functions include:

• Monitoring systems, networks, devices, databases, internet traffic, and users.
• Detecting cyber incidents and responding to issues as they arise.
• Investigating and validating reported threats to discard false positives.
• Implementing security measures and best practices, such as patch management.

SOC benefits in cybersecurity include:

• More control over the organization’s digital assets, contributing to better compliance.
• Improved risk management with real-time threat detection and response.

How to Build a Security Operations Center

A successful SOC implementation has people, processes, and technology as its pillars. You’ll need to:

• Develop a cybersecurity strategy — a critical step is securing leadership buy-in for identified projects.
• Hire security professionals with the skill set required for technical and leadership roles and responsibilities. You’ll need a team of engineers and analysts to analyze data, track down threats, handle, or escalate incidents.
• Determine which technology to use to shield your organization from cyber threats. Your tech stack might include asset management software, security monitoring tools, threat detection solutions, and incident management platforms.
• Establish the processes and procedures on how an incident is detected, investigated, escalated, and remediated.
• Ensure your organization has an incident response and disaster recovery plan in place.

In cybersecurity, an effective SOC requires continuous monitoring of your network and digital assets. To detect vulnerabilities and threats, organizations need security tools capable of unified asset discovery and ongoing behavioral analysis of every type of device in your environment.