A security operations center is becoming an essential part of business security. What exactly happens in such a SOC, and should you start one yourself?
Technological solutions are just one component of good cybersecurity. The right tools such as an XDR solution and a handy SIEM system keep an eye on your endpoints and network traffic and generate logs and alerts. They often even perform triage, bringing important events to the surface.
Not all data points are immediately indicative of a successful cyberattack, but patterns hidden in that data can unmask even the most cunning hackers. Handy, if someone is at least keeping an eye on those logs and alerts.
Central Management
A security operations center or SOC is a central location where security experts actively monitor an IT environment. In a SOC, specialists monitor everything that happens and know when action is needed. This way, potential dangers are addressed at the first signs of a problem.
This is not easy. Alerts based on events in the IT environment come in relatively frequently, but not all are equally serious. Sometimes they are false positives, but sometimes an alert is an indication of a larger problem. Experts in a SOC know the distinction and know when to act quickly and when not to. “That’s why it’s important that the experts know and understand the environment they’re monitoring well”, says Robin Bruynseels, Cybersecurity Engineer at Easi.
Constant Analysis of Events
“In a SOC, we look at whether traffic is legitimate or not”, Bruynseels clarifies. “This way we see if bad things are happening or if there are vulnerabilities.” According to him, a SOC is increasingly becoming an essential part of business security: “Cybersecurity incidents are going up in a straight line. To stay ahead of hackers or to respond quickly, you need a SOC.”
Moreover, it’s not over after implementing a SOC. “It’s crucial to continuously implement potential improvements. After all, security affects all departments within a company, from legal, HR to production. “Dangers can come from all sides, hence why a 360-degree overview is important,” says Bruynseels.
To stay ahead of hackers or to respond quickly, you need a SOC.
Robin Bruynseels, Cybersecurity Engineer Easi
The alternative is an IT team that dives into log files looking for irregularities, whether on a regular basis or not. That’s not ideal, and not just because of the large volume of notifications that can pile up. Bruynseels: “When you spontaneously check events and logs occasionally, you might miss something that happened weeks ago. A SOC is active 24/7 and monitors continuously. SOC analysts can react a second after something comes in.”
No SOC Without the Right Tools
A SOC requires a compatible environment. Analysts can only monitor data, alerts, and events when they come in reliably and understandably. This is where a technical component comes in: you need the right tools to connect your environment to a SOC.
“It’s crucial to have a good foundation”, says Bruynseels. It’s always a modest challenge to install everything, but there are usually no major hurdles. “The most modern tools for monitoring via a SOC work in virtually any environment.” There can be some puzzle work involved, especially when a company uses tools from different manufacturers. All tools must work together neatly and be integrated. It’s not the intention that SOC employees have to scour ten different dashboards to see the most current situation.
What you exactly need depends on the scale. “A small SOC doesn’t need the same tools as a large team”, Bruynseels knows. “We want to avoid overkill.” However, any type of company, regardless of size, can benefit from a SOC. What’s indispensable in any scenario is personnel. The whole setup of a SOC is continuous monitoring, which means that someone must be able to respond to a critical alert at three o’clock in the morning.
SOCaaS
Realistically, not every company has the resources to set up a permanently staffed SOC. “You can certainly do everything internally, but then you need to allocate people to it”, emphasizes Bruynseels. “Otherwise, it’s best to outsource.” The latter is becoming an increasingly popular option today.
This is called SOC-as-a-Service. For “such a service, a company connects its environment to a SOC that is staffed by an external party such as a security specialist or partner. In that SOC, specialists not only monitor your environment but also those of other clients. This brings economies of scale. Such a” SOC can more easily attract the right specialists, who can also take action for all clients based on one problem at one company.
Whether you do it yourself or not is not so important. It is gradually becoming crucial to have a SOC. This means that your security tools not only monitor your environment, but that one or more experts are also ready to respond correctly to any warnings.
This article originally appeared on August 4, 2022. It was updated on March 11, 2025, with the most recent information.