A Security Operations Centre (SOC) – sometimes known as Security Operations Centre as a Service (SOCaaS) – is a centralised hub from where information specialist security analysts and engineers work 24/7 to detect, monitor, analyse and respond promptly to cybersecurity incidents. Their field of work will cover your servers, databases, networks, applications, endpoint devices, websites and other systems.

A SOC will work for your organisation, identifying threats, analysing them, investigating their origins, reporting on vulnerabilities and proposing strategies to prevent further occurrences.

The Benefits of SOC monitoring

Uninterrupted monitoring of your enterprise systems

A SOC provides your first line of defence against cyber threats. To be effective, it must be operational 24/7 all year round. Why is this so?

As a global network, the internet is vulnerable from all corners of the planet. Cyber-criminals, whether dedicated experts, wildcat hobbyists or automated systems, are not slaves to the working day. They can and will attack at any time of day or night. These criminals are also aware that a less adequate SOC is often fully staffed only during the conventional working hours of their resident time zone.

However, an efficient 24/7 SOC will support your organisation to address all types of attacks, regardless of the time of day or night. SOC engineers operate in shifts, providing continuous threat detection and response. They will respond promptly to possible attacks, decreasing their potential cost and impact on your organisation.

Keeps your business safe as you scale

The COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent shift to hybrid working means many organisations are facing new security challenges. The dramatic increase in hybrid working has massively compounded the difficulties now being faced. 

As well as dealing with the usual constantly evolving and pernicious security threats, they have to confront the challenges posed by the shift to hybrid working. Remote connectivity and collaboration tools, including VPNs, video conferencing platforms, cloud-based services and file-sharing platforms, have, almost overnight, become targets for cyber-criminals.

The challenge for IT security departments has been to identify ways of dealing with these new challenges. At the same time, they’ve been still dealing with issues around ongoing cloud adoption and digital transformation initiatives. All of these challenges, of course, intensify as businesses start to scale. 

In many cases, the consequence of the extra work has resulted in understaffed and overworked cyber-defence security teams – all the more reason for the growing demand for SOC monitoring services.

Many organisations have responded to the plethora of new and growing security challenges by investing heavily in in-house security monitoring tools – on-premise and in the cloud.

However, for many organisations, this has resulted in a daily flood of security alerts that can be difficult or impossible to investigate and analyse individually.

This is why the emergence and adoption of SOCaaS (Security Operations Centre as a Service) has been so vital. With SOCaaS, your organisation will be able to:

SOCaaS will also provide ways of demonstrating to auditors your efforts to confront all cybersecurity risks.

Utilises SIEM technology for real-time analysis for security monitoring

Another factor in a SOC’s efficiency is the technology it uses. SIEM stands for Security, Information, and Event Management. SIEM technology aggregates log data, security alerts, and events into a centralised platform to provide real-time analysis for security monitoring.

Security Operation Centres use SIEM software to streamline visibility across their organisation’s environments, and investigate log data for incident response to cyberattacks and data breaches.

How does SIEM work?

SIEM software works by collecting log and event data produced from your applications, devices, networks, infrastructure, and systems to draw analysis and provide a holistic view of your organisation’s IT systems.

SIEM solutions either reside on-premise or in your cloud environments. They examine all your data, sorting threat activity according to its risk level to help the SOC teams to identify malicious actors and mitigate cyberattacks promptly.

Here at AirIT, we’ll care for all your cybersecurity concerns. Using our own extensive security operations expertise and specialist security team, we’ll proactively monitor your network 24/7.