5 Best Practices For a Security Operations Centre

Cyber-attacks and data breaches against organisations, and companies, are an inevitable part of our digital world.

Businesses and organisations of all sizes need to emphasise their ability to quickly detect and respond to cybersecurity incidents to maintain an effective security posture.

So how can a business or organisation prevent or manage a worst-case cybersecurity scenario?

The answer? A SOC.

What is a Security Operations Centre (SOC)?

A Security Operations Centre (SOC) is a service used to monitor, detect, and respond to security incidents and events across an organisation’s infrastructure.

From cloud security & intrusion detection to security threats and risk management, a SOC (or in-house soc) has many functions.

Check Point suggests that:   

‘The security operations centre (SOC) function is to monitor, prevent, detect, investigate, and respond to cyber threats around the clock.

SOC teams are charged with monitoring and protecting the organisation’s assets, including intellectual property, personnel data, business systems, and brand integrity.

The SOC team implements the organisation’s overall cybersecurity strategy and acts as the central point of collaboration in coordinated efforts to monitor, assess, and defend against cyberattacks.’   

An effective Security Operations Centre requires an understanding of an organisation’s limitations, and needs and has the necessary capabilities to secure an organisation should a breach occur.

This blog will look at security operations centre best practices and how you can implement a successful SOC.

Below are five areas that are crucial elements of any managed security service.

The five crucial elements of a managed security service.

1. People

One of the most important aspects of a Security Operations Centre is sourcing the right people.

Experienced security enthusiasts certified and highly skilled can respond quickly to security-based scenarios and alerts with efficiency and certainty.

The SOC team consists of the people who will respond to all incidents and manage the continuous improvement of the service.

2. Technology

A Security Operations Centre should utilise tools and resources built upon both mature and emerging technologies, enabling analysts to manage their tasks with efficiency and effectiveness.

A reliable technical infrastructure means you have sound documentation, ticketing, and an inventory system.

3. Processes

Mature SOCs have clear and well-defined processes, which are necessary to ensure that security experts respond to alerts consistently.

Part of this involves ensuring that process documents have gone through the same standardisation procedure providing continuity between documentation and aiding implementation.

Based on workflow standardisation, the resources can then be allocated effectively.

The security of all organisations relies on a set of requirements widely accepted by the security industry.

To have a thriving security operations centre (SOC), you should align your organisation with different security requirements, such as PCI and ISO 27001.

A security operations centre will need to have processes and workflows related to monitoring centred around best practices, incident response handling requirements, and remediation.

SOC analysts should request content and provide effective feedback to management and the security engineering team to guarantee iterative improvement.

4. Threat Intelligence

To create an effective SOC, you must have an incident response team that can quickly adapt and respond to an ever-evolving cyber threat landscape.

These teams are part of an incidence response system responsible for incident management, detection and formulation of an effective plan of action in response.

The SOC team is also responsible for communicating with the different departments and the other elements of the security apparatus deployed by an organisation.

This high-quality and high-confidence actionable threat intelligence is critical to ensure that the SOC incidents are contextualised against the threat landscape.

A SOC threat intelligence system will decide how to delegate and handle any identified events and execute a specific action plan.

5. Visibility

Visibility plays a significant role in safeguarding the network, and there should be comprehensive visibility across assets.

A SOC must track its network while conducting 24/7 vulnerability scans to achieve maximum security success for your organisation.

The assets are to be monitored to ensure that the SOC protecting an organisation can detect, prevent, and defend the enterprise against any attacks.

To secure the infrastructure and data, SOC teams and SOC staff should know where they are and understand priorities and who should have access.

Accuracy in assigning priority to assets determines how well the security operations centre will manage its time and resources.

Raising your visibility is critical because it makes it easy for your SOC to stop any attackers and threats to your organisation and minimise the locations where attackers can hide.

To continue following security operations centre best practices keep visiting our insights page for all the latest updates.