In this article we gonna discover what is a Security Operations Center, what is the typical SOC infrastructure, and what are the benefits of using a SOC in companies?
In the face of ever-increasing needs, static IS security is no longer sufficient. Companies must move towards dynamic security, embodied today by the Security Operation Center, the SOC,
The Security Operations Center (SOC) is now an essential part of IT Services, it is a SI security management and administration device that can prevent, detect, assess and respond to cybersecurity threats and incidents. In other words, the SOC will collect events from different security components, analyze them, identify any anomalies, and define procedures for alerts.
Cyber security and SOC in Africa
According to the study conducted by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and ABI Research provided a ranking of the countries of the world according to their cybersecurity index. The African leaders in this ranking were Mauritius and Egypt, which ranked ninth in the world with France, with an index on a scale of 0 to 1, amounting to 0.588. Morocco and Uganda also ranked well (10th in the world) with Rwanda and Tunisia (11th). Equatorial Guinea, Lesotho, and Namibia, the worst-ranked African countries, were in the bottom row of the rankings (29th), with an index of 0.000.
Why SoC ?
Without the services of a SOC, cyber-criminal attacks can remain hidden for a long time because companies do not have the skills to detect and respond to threats in a timely manner. We can always cite the example of LinkedIn who has seen his accounts hacked for many years without knowing it. Thus, a SOC will allow companies to have better visibility on their environment, have skills, processes, and continuous improvement. With more and more regular attacks, many organizations are refocusing their security efforts on prevention and detection.
How does a SOC work
The first step in establishing a SOC is to clearly define a strategy that integrates the business-specific objectives of various services. Once the strategy is developed, the infrastructure needed to support it is put in place.
The typical SOC infrastructure includes firewalls, IPS / IDS, threat detection solutions and a Security Information Management System (SIEM). Technology should be in place to collect data through data flows, metrics, packet capture, Syslog and other methods so that data activity can be correlated and analyzed by SOC teams. The Security Operations Center also monitors networks and endpoints for vulnerabilities to protect sensitive data and to comply with industry or government regulations.
SoC Benefits
The key benefit of having a Security Operations Center is improving security incident detection through continuous monitoring and data activity analysis. However, setting up a SOC and exploiting it is complicated and expensive. Companies establish for several reasons, such as:
- Improved threat management
- Maintaining regulatory compliance
- Centralization and consolidation of security functions
- Integration and supervision of traffic flows
- Management of vulnerabilities reported by an automated analysis tool
Co-Founder of SOC Defense.
- What is a Security Operations Center (SOC)? - May 5, 2019
