Security Operation Center: what it is and what it is about
The SOC, considered one of the first lines of defense against attacks and breaches, functions through a team of cybersecurity professionals working 24/7 with the goal of keeping the entire company’s infrastructure monitored, by detecting cybersecurity incidents in real time and dealing with them quickly, annihilating any threats.
But not only that.
In addition to identifying threats, a SOC is also responsible for analyzing them, investigating their source, and reporting vulnerabilities discovered to prevent similar events in the future. In other words, it deals with security issues in real time and constantly tries to improve company’s position.
A preventive defense and protection service against all malicious acts by third parties, whether they are targeted attacks aimed at damaging business or demanding extortion, or digital bad habits that can cause internal users to fall into a trap.
The main objectives of a Security Operation Center can be summarized as:
- Constant monitoring of the perimeter
- User awareness campaigns
- Immediate reaction to attacks, incidents, and suspicious activities
- Constant risk analysis
- Defining guidelines of risk responses
Why should companies rely on an SOC?
There are certainly a variety of benefits that a SOC brings to companies, but the main one is to ensure that they can prevent, detect and respond quickly to possible threats through monitoring and response activities. The constant goal of reducing risk to zero, leads to a net reduction in attack detection time, minimizing the impact it would have on the company.
In addition:
- Facilitates increased ROI and a savings on any costs generated by reactive resolution from the incident
- Protects brand reputation by preventing it from being affected
- Manages risks in an organized and planned manner with targeted and optimized budget allocations
An SOC is definitely a strategic weapon that enables companies to keep up with cyber threats that evolve day by day and that otherwise, for those who do not make cybersecurity their core business, might be more complex than expected. Relying on an SOC also helps to greatly mitigate the impact that any attack would have on the business, thanks to a sophisticated alerting service that can identify high-priority threats in advance. Finally, it should not be understimated the level of stress under which most SOC operators operate, requiring a level of concerted effort and cool blood that may not be handled optimally by an IT team not used to dealing with these kinds of incidents.
