How does the Next-generation Security Operations Center (SOC) look like?

Due to this change, traditional Security Operations Centres (SOC) that merely monitor an organisation’s network no longer provide acceptable protection. The alternative is the Next-generation SOCs: it offers an integrated incident response and more sophisticated threat identification and mitigation.

Let us take a closer look at how the future of SOC looks like.

The traditional SOC needs modernization to keep pace with the evolving business and threat landscapes. Below are some bullet points of the changing environment of traditional SOC:

• Traditionally, SOC detects threats based on data; the increase in telemetry data requires new threat detection mechanisms and updated thread detection feeds​
• Enterprises are expanding at a dizzying pace, causing most threat detection platforms to age fairly quickly​
• SOC activities that were based on generating "alerts" are becoming a thing of the past; this task has been taken over by modern security systems such as EDR, NDFW, UEBA etc​
• Technology’s role in the modern SOC is to e.g. minimize response times; reduce human error; and facilitate proactive cybersecurity management ​
• The proactive role of SOC in detecting threats is becoming a fact today, not one of the "features"​

Therefore, the need for a next generation SOC arises to assure monitoring data that extends beyond the organization into cloud services, mobile devices, and more monitoring security across the enterprise has become harder because of a constantly growing attack surface due to Digital transformation, cloud migration, and enterprise mobility​.

Organizations are collecting analytics data at multiple tiers, trying to glue together an understanding of their security posture, lacking an integrated way to collect, process, analyze, and act upon the data.

Building a full stack in-house cybersecurity is an extreme challenge due to high need for financing, and expertise gaps. The SOC as a service is recommended for organizations that:​

• Want an intelligent solution to gain a total overview of security events, flows and user behavior in their network ​
• The SOC can consolidate log sources and event data from thousands of devices, endpoints and applications on the network​
• The SOC provides a comprehensive set of rules tuned and adapted to the needs and resource capacity of the organization

Want to learn more? Watch our recorded webinar on Next-generation SOC – Security for the 21st century here.