Network operations center, threat center, security operations center, whatever you call it, we all know that it’s an integral part of our security operations. But, how exactly do they work and why do many organizations rely on SOC-as-a-Service as a valuable resource for modern security threat detection and response capabilities? Find out below!

Security Operations Center (SOC) Defined

Put simply, a Security Operations Center or SOC is an in-house or outsourced team of cybersecurity experts who work together to ensure the ability of organizations to operate securely.  

This expert team protects the organization 24/7/365 by proactively monitoring, detecting, analyzing, and incident response and recovery. SOC teams generally work to establish rules, analyze feeds, identify exceptions, remediate vulnerabilities and keep a lookout for new vulnerabilities. 

Many large organizations have internal SOC teams, but others opt for security intelligence and operations consulting services, such as SOC as a Service, that include an arsenal of security solutions to maintain a strong security posture. 

What is SOC-as-a-Service?

SOC-as-a-Service is a subscription-based model for Managed Detection and Response services. It is a program operations service run by an external SOC team that brings expert security operations centers to every business.  

SOC-as-a-Service allows for businesses to create a process for consistent and measurable actions on behalf of a customer by leveraging technologies and business context to respond and mitigate risk. This external team of experts will monitor your logs, devices, cloud environments, and network for known and evolving advanced threats. Unlike an internal SOC team or IT team, SOC as a service allows you to have experts methodically think through and complete tasks in a sustainable manner.  

Many organizations opt for SOC-as-a-Service because it can offer 24/7/365 monitoring without a significant investment in personnel, security software, and other infrastructure. So, not only does this service allow for greater security protection, but it is also more cost-effective.  

At Difenda we go one step further. It’s not just SOC as a service or security programs as a service. Difenda offers SecOps-as-a-Service where we bring together our SOC functions with many of our managed services to enable end-to-end coverage of cyber threats in your network.  

Discover what a more comprehensive and collaborative approach to security can provide for your business. Read the case study!  

The Top 5 Benefits of Augmenting Your SOC

Deploying SOC-as-a-Service improves organizations’ threat detection, response and prevention capabilities by unifying and coordinating the people, processes and technologies in your security environment. Below we have outlined 5 additional benefits of SOC-as-a-Service.  

1. Expertise: We all know that recruiting and training skilled personnel for most cybersecurity positions is a difficult task due to the lack of security professionals available. Deploying a SOC-as-a-Service gives your business immediate access to security expertise and knowledge. Plus, your team has the additional bandwidth to focus on remediations and patching.  

2. Consistent and proactive management and analysis of your security environment: One of the major benefits of augmenting your SOC team is 24/7/365 coverage of your attack surface. Managed services can decrease the timeline between when a compromise occurs and when it is detected, plus it reduces downtime. An added bonus is that your team is no longer bombarded with hundreds of alerts that can result in alert fatigue.  

3. Managed SOC allows for a modular approach to cybersecurity: Most SOC-as-a-Service offers, like Difenda’s, operate under a subscription-based and modular service model. Meaning you don’t have to go all in at once. Managed SOC supports secure growth since businesses can alter and scale consumption as needed based on business priorities. 

4. Increased visibility into your network: With more consistent management processes and better reporting cadence managed SOC services allow for greater visibility into your network. With improved and methodological reporting, you can see all the relevant business information all at once. With Difenda we can even customize your reports and prioritize action items, so you gain even more visibility.  

5. Automation capabilities: SOC-as-a-Service organizations provide opportunities for coordination and automation that may not be available to your in-house team. For example, automated investigation and response operations.  

Even with all these benefits, SOC-as-a-Service is a collaborative method and still requires support from your internal team. For the best outcome, a strong partnership is necessary so that you have open transparent communications that can make remediations more efficient. A true co-managed SOC-as-a-Service or SecOps-as-a-Service pushes both your vendor and your internal team to do better. That is why it is so important that you select the best Managed SOC Provider for your business.  

How to Choose a Managed SOC-as-a-Service Provider

Selecting an appropriate vendor is crucial. You want to ensure that you can reach business goals and mitigate risk effectively together. Here are some considerations when choosing a Managed SOC: 

• Certifications: Industry certifications have become mandatory for security service providers but be sure to do your due diligence. Make sure the provider has earned key certifications, such as PCI DSS, SOC 2 Type II, and ISO 27001. As the US-based CMMC framework emerges, this is another certification that service providers should have within their roadmap. 
• Focus: Strong Security partners will focus their time and energy on the applications, infrastructure, cloud services, and other digital assets that you have already invested in, like Microsoft Security and provide protections designed to fully leverage licensing, from endpoints to the cloud, to IoT and beyond. On the other hand, vendors who support multi-technology services are less likely to support a well-integrated cost-effective delivery model. Look for a partner that is focused on one technology suite, so that you can take advantage of everything they offer to maximize your investment.  

• Scalability: Does the potential partner have the ability to support more services and scale security measures as your business grows? Even if you are only looking for SOC services right now it is likely that as your company grows you will need more support to maintain your security posture. Take a look at the vendor’s entire product offering to get a good idea of their scalability. 
• Co-management: You need to ensure that the potential vendor can provide exactly what you are looking for in a service partner. For example, will they be using their own products and licenses or will they take advantage of your customer products and licenses to ensure you maximize ROI? Get to know their processes and how they elevate reports and data back to you. Getting a better understanding of their partner relationships will help you better mitigate risk and make better business decisions.  

Learn more about selecting the right security partner and how to maximize your Microsoft Security License in Difenda’s Ultimate Guide to Maximize Microsoft Security.  

Difenda’s SecOps-as-a-Service 

Traditional SOC-as-a-Service organizations are very technology focused. Difenda’s SecOps-as-a-Service is a consumable service from an operational perspective. Difenda approaches security from an operational perspective, which means including all the people, processes and technology involved in your security environment. Most Managed SOCs don’t have components like Governance, Risk and Compliance but we do. We take all the components of a security environment and add services to augment operations as a whole to alleviate the stress placed on your internal team.  

Take a value-driven approach to cybersecurity that helps you achieve mission-critical outcomes faster. Learn how in the MDR for IT eBook!