Security Operations Center (SOC) Best Practices [New List of 2024]

Managing security is not solely about products and technologies. As a security leader in your company, it is crucial to consider numerous other factors when setting up a Security Operations Center (SOC). Some things include understanding the business plan and requirements, the capability and skill set of people who will be part of the SOC, individual and team responsibilities, budget, etc.

Why do you need a SOC?

The sad truth is that you cannot stop all hacks and attacks. Even the best and most advanced security systems deployed on every endpoint can eventually fail.

When such a situation arises, the only important thing is securing your enterprise's data and removing the threat. Additionally, your objective is to ensure a minimum dwell time for the threat in your servers and systems. This is possible only if you have a system that is constantly monitored. Moreover, you should know what to monitor.

Many enterprises have established a Security Operations Center to tackle this problem precisely and be better prepared for a worst-case scenario. A Security Operations Center is an essential part of your cybersecurity team that evaluates, establishes, and enforces security policies in your organization. They're also the ones who will respond in case of an incident.

How does a SOC work?

A security operations center is an organization's frontline defense that proactively responds to cyber threats. The kinds of tasks it usually performs are:

• Monitoring and detection

  A SOC uses specialized tools like SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) to oversee systems, networks, and data flows. These tools assist in identifying suspicious activities or potential threats in real time.

• Threat identification

  A SOC uses advanced technologies, such as threat intelligence and machine learning, to identify known and unknown threats. It also classifies a detected threat as a security incident or a false positive.

• Incident response

  If an attack is confirmed, the SOC initiates an immediate response to contain the threat. This could involve isolating affected systems, blocking malicious traffic, or neutralizing malware to prevent further damage.

• Investigation

  Following containment, the Security Operations Center (SOC) thoroughly investigates the incident's root cause. Analysts meticulously examine logs, data, and system activities to understand how the breach transpired and assess its overall impact.

• Recovery and reporting

  The SOC collaborates with IT teams to reinstate normal operations and resolve vulnerabilities. A comprehensive report detailing the incident, response measures, and suggestions for enhancing security is generated.

Challenges faced by a Security Operations Centre

1. Skill shortage

The human ability to quickly identify, analyze, prioritize, and respond to security crises defines the success of SOCs. While multiple tools are available in the market, allowing firms to gather and manage huge volumes of data securely, human expertise is necessary in many situations to remediate threats.

SOCs are literally struggling with the skill shortage, with many complaining of staff being poached by rival companies. Tuning the correlation rules for threat detection and triaging the security alerts are two significant areas that demand human intervention as they struggle due to the increasing skill shortage.

2. Budget constraints

Despite the increasing prominence of SOCs, firms are struggling to obtain the funds needed to hire and maintain adequate capability. Lack of funds and reluctance to invest are among their significant roadblocks.

3. Inadequately documented processes

Many SOCs face trouble as they either lack documented processes or are letting the documented ones stagnate. Incident response solutions need constant documentation with well-defined response workflows. Adaptable, portable, and wholly integrated procedure management systems are the key. 

How to set up a security operations center (SOC) [5 Best Practices of 2024-25]

Setting up an effective Security Operations Center can be daunting and difficult. Here are some best practices we've learned from some of the CIOs who've been able to do this well.

1. Understand what a SOC does

This might sound basic, but trust me, many of us still make the mistake of not understanding what a SOC is supposed to do. A good security operations center monitors your systems and data 24/7. It monitors all of your enterprise endpoints and the network, identifies potential security issues and incidents, and handles them promptly and effectively. 

Do not confuse them with the IT helpdesk. As a rule of thumb, the help desk is for employee-related IT issues, while the Security Operations Center is more for the whole organization.

2. Set up the right infrastructure

A crucial part of a good Security Operations Center is using the correct tools and products. Without these, your team will be helpless in case of a breach. They might not even know there was a breach. Make sure you evaluate and purchase the best tools and products based on your organizational exposure and infrastructure. Some popularly used products are:

• Endpoint Protection Systems

• Firewalls

• Automated Application Security

• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Tools

• Asset Discovery Systems

• Data Monitoring Tools and more.

Good Read: What is SOC 2 and TSC along with Compliance and Certification

3. Set up the right team

A good SOC needs a great team. You need individuals with different skill sets, including specialists for:

• Monitoring the system and managing alerts

• Incident manager to analyze each incident and propose action

• A threat hunter to discover possible incidents internally

All these skills require a lot of training and experience in things like intrusion detection, reverse engineering, the anatomy of a malware, etc. Ensure you have a budget not just to hire this team but also to ensure they continue to be well trained.

4. Create an Incident Response System

An incident response team is extremely crucial to building a successful Security Operations Center. A good incident response team within the SOC can decide the best way to assign and manage the incidents detected and enact on a defined action plan. They can also help establish a repeatable workflow based on incidents detected. They are also an essential communication element between the business, legal and PR teams in case of an incident that requires an org-wide redressal.

The incident response team has to be as proactive as possible. They need to strictly follow a predefined response rulebook or help build the same based on experience.

5. Defend, defend, defend

Last, but definitely not the least, one of the primary objectives of a Security Operations Center is to be able to defend the perimeter. There have to be teams that focus on detection and teams that focus on prevention. The SOC team needs to gather as much information possible to help get better at this.

The more data and context the SOC collects, the more events per second and flows per interval analysts must manage. While this is true, the obvious observation is to keep false positives to a minimum so that analysts spend their time effectively.

Security tools used by SOC teams

A modern SOC needs to be abreast with all the latest security tools to assure smooth functioning. Traditional tools used in SOC are:

• Governance, risk and compliance (GRC) systems

• Security information and event management (SIEM)

• Vulnerability scanners and advanced penetration testing tools

• Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS)

• Wireless Intrusion Prevention

• Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS)

• Firewalls and next-generation firewalls (NGFW) 

• Log management systems

• Cyber threat intelligence feed system

Advanced SOCs have advanced their stint with next-generation tools, specifically SIEMs, which provide advanced behavioral analytics, machine learning, and threat-hunting capabilities with built-in automated incident response. Modern security tools and technologies allow SOC teams to promptly and efficiently find and combat cyber threats.

Security Operation Centre ( SOC ) process

Step 1 - Identify and triage events

The primary step is to employ the best security technologies available in the SOC market, strengthening the SIEM capabilities. With technologies protecting the network, businesses can mitigate the threats to normalize and enrich their data.

If the team builds a robust SOC, relying on SIEM to normalize and enrich data, threat identification and damage control are simplified.

Step 2 - Prioritize and analyze

If the enterprise’s Security Operations Center identifies the underlying threats, they will need a strong process to prioritize, plan, and immediately remediate the issue. Whenever an alarm fires, security experts need to qualify and triage them before planning the action effectively. Prioritizing alarms allows analysts to focus on cyber threats that seem riskiest and demand the most attention.

Step 3 - Remediate the risk

The sooner the SOC procedures allow the team to respond to a cyber threat or security issue, the more efficient the damage control will be. For any cyber incident or attack organizations face, the goal should be to reduce the Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and minimize the Mean Time to Respond (MTTR) to the threat. Remember, with each second gone idle, the risks keep getting graver.

Every security incident is unique, and the teams should have various remediation strategies to solve such diverse incidents. Remediation includes several security operations tasks, such as updating or patching systems, running regular vulnerability scans, restricting or updating network access, and more.

Step 4 - Run regular system review

Whether the firm experiences a false alarm or an actual threat, running regular vulnerability scans is mandatory. This allows the security teams to identify technical vulnerabilities that might exist and issues that the organization needs to prioritize and address real-time.

Security operations centre should have all the advanced tools at their disposal to offer pre-configured compliance modules which automatically address all common regulations and frameworks to help achieve cybersecurity regulations.

Designing a SOC is way more complex than hiring a team and buying some tools. It has a lot to do with investing in the right things at the right time, look forward to identifying threats that might be in the near future, and align security strategy with the business needs.