Security threats are now a part of Technology-driven business life that cannot be ignored. Hackers are relentlessly trying to gain access to the company data and network infrastructure. Whether the companies operate in the cloud, on-premises, or somewhere in between, they all need a comprehensive, agile security strategy written into their blueprint.
Cyber security is a shared responsibility that needs to be embedded in the company culture and sit in front and center in all plans for the organizations. To address cyberattack situations better, companies can constitute an in-house dedicated Security Operation Center (SOC)—a special department comprising people and processes to continuously monitor and improve an organization’s security stance while preventing, detecting, analyzing, and responding to cybersecurity incidents.
Security Operation Center (SOC):
The Security Operation Center (SOC) can be a dedicated facility, or it can simply be a collective team of people responsible for information security and managing an organization’s security stance on an ongoing basis.
The functions are to monitor, detect, investigate, and respond to cyber threats around the clock. The team is in charge of protecting assets, such as intellectual property, personnel data, business systems, and brand integrity. Upon detecting and analyzing, the SOC team responds to the threats by applying a combination of technology solutions and a strong set of processes. A SOC team typically consists of security analysts and engineers as well as managers, who oversee security operations. They work closely with organizational incident response teams to ensure that security issues are addressed quickly upon discovery.
Benefits of a SOC:
With a SOC in place, there is an assurance that threats will be detected and prevented in real-time.
SOCs usually help organizations in the following ways:
1. Quicker Response: From a security standpoint, SOCs provide a centralized, complete, real-time view of how the entire security infrastructure is performing, even if the business is spread across locations with thousands of endpoints. SOCs provide businesses predictive analysis of cyber crises and help them prevent such outages much ahead of time.
2. Safeguard Consumer Trust: As companies are getting riddled with cyberattacks every day, privacy and data security are growing concerns for end-users and customers. Having a SOC not only helps in preventing cyber anomalies but also helps in protecting the customer’s data and helps in building trust for the organization.
3. Minimize costs: While many organizations think establishing a SOC is cost-prohibitive, the cost associated with a breach — including the complete loss or corruption of data and the colossal size of penalties imposed by regulatory bodies like GDPR on data protection failure — are much higher. Additionally, the SOC team’s job is to ensure that businesses only spend money on the right and cost-effective tools.
4. Adhering to regulatory authorities: Businesses that store sensitive data of customers must prevent data breach situations at all costs. The SOC helps the organization in the heavy lifting job of managing data breach incidents so that companies can avoid getting into rigorous penalties imposed by regulatory authorities like GDPR if they fail to thwart data breach incidents.
Hiring a SOC Partner:
Managing cybersecurity in any business is easier said than done. Threat verticals are only expanding as technologies are getting more complex. It could be a challenge for companies to keep ahead of the constantly shadowing threats and manage an entire SOC by themselves.
Some businesses may not have the bandwidth of resources to hire a separate dedicated team with expertise, experience, and knowledge for constituting a SOC. This is where a partner can help in getting the job done.
An external SOC service partner can help the business to monitor better, detect data breaches, heighten the overall infrastructure protection, and enable faster response. The budget spent on building an in-house team, procuring data centers, firewalls, and third-party products, can now be either saved or put to better use. Going for an external partner who is well-versed with the complexities of cloud technologies can be a more cost-effective and hassle-free choice for companies than to build their own in-house SOC teams.
In case of any breach attempt or cyber crisis, a dedicated SOC partner will have an immediate response protocol in place, which means they can be virtually on-site with the ability to deliver clear recommendations to face the threats the company is facing.
Conclusion:
Cyberattacks are now becoming an undesirable inevitability for most organizations, big or small. According to research agency Cybersecurity Ventures, a business will fall victim to a ransomware attack every 11 seconds by 2021, up from 14 seconds in 2019. This makes ransomware the fastest-growing type of cyber crime. Hence, to have a SOC, be it in-house or as an outsourced partner, is the best possible way that companies can prepare to face the eventualities at any given time.
Join us on the 10th of December for the IBM Presents Partner Cybersecurity Summit, where we touch base on the different aspects of the security framework and get connected to some of the leading security experts from the industry.
By Vijay Kanal, National Product Manager – Crayon Software Experts India
