Cyber Security Operation Center (SOC)

The Cyber Security Operations Centre (SOC), often known as the SOC, is an essential element inside the framework of any organisation.

Its tasks are determined by the size of the company, whether or not the enterprise operates on a global scale, whether or not the enterprise prefers centralised or decentralised cybersecurity management and operations, and whether or not the SOC with adequate cybersecurity roles and responsibilities is in-house or contracted out. In addition, the mission and charter of the SOC are highly associated with the level of comprehension that the senior team of the organisation possesses regarding the complexities of cybersecurity.

Because it combines and maximises skilled resources, best practices, and technology solutions for the purpose of timely detection, real-time monitoring and correcting, and responding to cyber threats to protect the organization’s assets, the SOC is valuable. This is because it protects the organisation from cyber threats. In addition, the SOC is equipped with a platform that can collect data on the status of a variety of incidents, the status of the infrastructure, and the efficiency of the enterprise’s defence preparedness through the reporting of predesigned key performance indicator (KPI) metrics that are aimed at a variety of stakeholders. Establishing and investing in a SOC is dependent on a number of different criteria.

The Cyber Security Operation Center (SOC) is not a support desk for information technology.

The primary responsibility of an IT help desk is to provide assistance and support to the company’s staff. For the security operations centre (SOC) to be effective, the company needs to develop a distinct mission and charter for it, as well as define its functional characteristics (figure 3). The purpose of the SOC is to defend the entire enterprise, and it should have some kind of strategic connection to the business goals that the enterprise has set for itself. The SOC needs to have complete access to the company’s underlying infrastructure, an awareness of how essential data should be classified, and access to tested and reliable technological solutions.

The following are included within the scope of SOC reporting and monitoring, albeit this list is not exhaustive:

Firewalls for both networks and servers
Access Management
Incident management
Protection against viruses on servers and endpoints
Firewalls for web application traffic
Authentication using two separate factors (MFA)
Identity management
surveillance of both security information and events (SIEM)
Database monitoring
Whitelisting
Blacklisting
Anomaly detection across networks
Protection against spam in email accounts
Protection against viruses sent via email
Protection against spoofing of emails
Verification of security flaws and weaknesses
Patch management
Protection against the loss of data
Encryption
Monitoring the integrity of files
System backups