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What Security Operations Center SOC is | Fundamentals of SOC cyber security | EC-Council
What is SOC Security Operations Center
March 6, 2024 | Security Operation Center
A Security Operations Center (SOC) is a team of cybersecurity
personnel dedicated to monitoring and analyzing an organization’s
security while responding to potential or current breaches. The
team is responsible for scanning all the security systems in real
time. This first line of defense works around the clock to protect an
organization’s security infrastructure from potential cyber threats.
There were 36 billion records exposed in 2020
– Source: Security Magazine
The average total cost of a data breach in 2020 was $3.86
million.
– Source: IBM
In the first three quarters of 2020, there were 2,935 publicly
reported breaches.
– Source: Security Magazine
The data clearly shows that the increase in the probability of a
breach is directly proportional to the cost of a data breach. It
indicates how desperately businesses need human involvement to
constantly keep an eye on possible security threats and create
strategies to eliminate them. Integrating a SOCs security team into
the overall security strategy can help limit the risk of being targeted
by malicious threats.
The World Needs SOC Security Staff
(Source: LinkedIn Jobs)
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The following graph represents how organizations from different
parts of the world are keen on deploying cybersecurity operations
centers. They are constantly hiring SOC specialists, such as SOCs
security engineers (Security Managers) and SOC analysts (Security
Analysts) to keep their infrastructure secure.
Industries That Must Have a (SOC)
Many industries are dependent on
Security Operations Management,
including:
Payment Card Industry
Healthcare
Manufacturing
Why Must Organizations Have Log
Management and a SOC Team?
Log management is an organized approach to deal with large
volumes of computer-generated log data. It allows multiple
operations on data like generation, collection, centralization,
parsing, transmission, storage, archival, and disposal.
Organizations have a Security Operations Center team and a log
management solution in order to:
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Comply with applicable regulatory standards such as PCI-DSS,
HIPAA, RMiT, ISO 27001, and others.
Protect servers storing sensitive data from internal and
external threats.
Secure proprietary information and intellectual property.
Besides log management, Security Operations Center analysts can
also integrate Security Information and Event Management (SIEM
tools) in their process. These software tools aggregate security
data from multiple sources, such as network devices, servers, and
other locations. SIEM tools then connect the dots to discover the
trends and detect cyber threats so that organizations can act on
the alerts.
SIEM SOC for Threat Intelligence
Exploiting and Augmenting Threat Intel in SOC O…
O…
Industry-Wise Analysis
Healthcare industry: Deals with health data on consumers –
enough said.
Manufacturing industry: Owns a lot of intellectual properties
and Technologies
Financial services: Deals with data on monetary transactions,
real-time monitoring of activities is vital.
Government Agencies: They may store personal information
along with criminal records, religious and political inclinations.
Education Industries: Change in personal records in schools,
universities, and training institutes can misrepresent individuals
and their skills.
How Does a SOC Help?
According to the federal trade commission, credit card fraud
jumped 104-percent from the first quarter to 2019 to the first
quarter of 2020. Putting that into perspective, a recent study
from Credit Card Insider showed the number of fraud reports
during the same timeframe in 2017, 2018 and 2019 only grew by
27 percent
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For the Payment Card Industry (PCI), it is mandatory to maintain a
Security Operations Center. According to the PCI Compliance
Security Standard Council, any merchant processing and storing
credit card data should be PCI compliant. PCI compliance helps to
ensure secure online transactions and protection against identity
theft.
In such a scenario, a SOC security helps to:
Monitor firewalls, their logs, and any configuration change to
identify an irregularity.
Increase the speed of incident remediation.
Check firewall and router configuration standards by comparing
them with documented services, ports, and protocols.
Cyberattacks against healthcare entities rose 45 percent since
November, while the sector continues to be the most impacted
overall and accounted for 79 percent of all reported data
breaches during the first 10 months of 2020, according to
reports from Check Point and Fortified Health Security.
As the healthcare industry contains crucial health data, such as
holistic reports of patients including personalized diagnoses and
treatments, it is an alluring target to cybercriminals. Threat actors
monetize patient data by selling it to the highest bidder or
blackmailing the victim.
For keeping protected health information (PHI) secure, healthcare
organizations require a SOC 2 audit. SOC 2 compliance ensures:
Customer trust
Brand reputation
Business continuity
Competitive advantage
A recent report shows that ransomware attacks were up 25
percent across all industries in Q1 of this year. No industry was
safe but the manufacturing industry was shown to be the most
at risk, with an increase in ransomware attacks of 156 percent.
The manufacturing sector has always been a vulnerable industry
as it possesses intellectual property and advanced technologies.
Consider a Department of Defense (DoD) contractor for example: It
is a must to meet the NIST cybersecurity standards to maintain
DFARS (Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement)
compliance. The NIST SP 800-171 outlines guidelines for Audit and
Accountability, Configuration Management, Identification, and
Authentication, with several other criteria.
SOC analysts are needed in the manufacturing industry to:
Set up alerts to monitor potential threats.
Promptly remediate ongoing and possible security threats.
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According to the Official Cybercrime Report published by
Cybersecurity Ventures, Cyber-crime damages will cost the
world $6 trillion annually by 2021, up from $3 trillion just a year
ago.
Do you know that financial services are the #1 target? This is
because of the treasure trove of information that they require
from customers, according to Verizon’s Data Breach Report.
Cybercriminals are eyeing financial services for their bulk
transactions and real-time monitoring of activities. Apart from
external attacks, institutions are also vulnerable to lost employee
devices (like phones) and insider threats.
Banking and Financial services should perform SOC Type 1 and
SOC Type 2 audits along with annual SOC 1 SSAE 18 reports. Being
in clear nexus with the Internal Control Over Financial Reporting
(ICFR) concept, these audits effectively report on internal controls.
They reveal:
Weaknesses in security controls like improperly provisioned
information systems, weak authentication parameters, lack of
multiple layers of security, and others.
Shortcomings in operational controls.
Flaws in documentation.
In 2020, a major cyberattack by a group backed by a foreign
government penetrated thousands of organizations globally
including multiple parts of the United States federal government,
leading to a series of data breaches
As government agencies store personal information along with
criminal records and religious and political inclinations, they are a
prized target for cyber attackers.
Government institutions need SOC teams for:
Network monitoring in real time.
Analyzing activities on servers, endpoints, and databases.
Looking for an incident or signs of a breach.
Verizon’s Mobile Security Index 2020 Report found that 44% of
educational organizations suffered a security compromise
involving a mobile device.
Education establishments are easy targets for cybercriminals. They
not only carry personal data but also valuable research data and
allow access to larger networks.
A Security Operations Center can help an educational institution’s
IT staff respond to growing security threats by:
Identifying and monitoring institutional assets and data.
Neutralizing threats.
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Providing cybersecurity metrics to the IT staff.
How SOCs Work?
A SOC acts as the hub or central command post, taking telemetry
from across the IT infrastructure of an organization, including its
networks, equipment, appliances, and data stores, wherever those
assets reside. Essentially, for every event logged within the
organization that is being monitored, the SOC is the correlation
point. The SOC must decide how they will be managed and acted
upon for each of these events.
In addition to designing security plans and implementing defensive
measures, the SOC team is responsible for identifying, evaluating,
and responding to security incidents. Often, additional tasks, such
as forensic analysis, cryptoanalysis, and reverse engineering, are
addressed by the team.
What Are the Roles and Responsibilities of a
Security Operations Center?
A Security Operations Center team uses strategic methodologies
and processes for active surveillance and real-time analysis of an
organization’s security infrastructure. The team carries out the
following tasks:
Task
Description
A SOC team’s operations start with gaining a
holistic understanding of the tools and
technologies at their disposal. The team
about the hardware and software
Identify assets learns
running on the systems. Their in-depth
understanding helps in the early detection of
potential cyber threats and existing
vulnerabilities.
A Security Operations Center primarily
Proactive
focuses on detecting malicious activities on
monitoring
the network before they can lead to
substantial harm.
Manage logs, Thorough management of activity logs help a
configuration cyber forensic investigator trace back to the
change, and
point where something may have gone
response
wrong.
Whenever a SOCs security personnel detects
or irregularity, they are responsible
Rank alerts as aforthreat
the severity of the incident. This
per their severity dataranking
helps in prioritizing the response to the
event.
Adjust defenses A SOC team adjusts its defenses by
vulnerability management and increasing its
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awareness about threats. It helps the team
stay vigilant for breaches.
SOC teams can check if the organization
Check
complies with applicable regulations and
compliance
standards.
Organizations aim for minimal or no network
downtime when hit by unexpected security
Notify on
A SOC team alerts the
security breach incidents.
stakeholders as quickly as possible to ensure
business continuity.
Read more about roles and responsibilities of a SOC analyst
Know how to become a security analyst
How Is a SOC Different from CSIRT?
The below infographic shows how the primary responsibilities of a
SOC analyst or a SOC manager are different from that of an
incident leader or any other CSIRT member.
For those who want to make a career in a Security Operations
Center, EC-Council offers its Certified SOC Analyst (CSA)
certification. Our course will help you get the industry-demanded
CSA training required for the position and establish yourself as a
certified Security Operations Center analyst.
Why Consider a SOC Course?
EC-Council Certified SOC Analyst (CSA)
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