What is SOC-as-a-Service? Exploring Managed SOC Offerings

What is SOC-as-a-Service? Exploring Managed SOC Offerings

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.  
  1. 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.  
  1. 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. 
  1. 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.  
  1. 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!

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Ken Perkins

Biography coming soon.

Megan Miller

Megan Miller’s energy and passion for learning flow into all aspects of her work. As the Growth Manager, North America, she brings a background in sciences which she has transitioned to the tech sector in her role at Difenda.

With a Bachelors of Science in Geology, Megan is a lifelong learner who is voracious about learning anything she can get her hands on about cybersecurity. Her positive energy has built a sales strategy with a focus on expanding in the United States while nurturing the Canadian presence. She is responsible for recruiting and training the sales team. Together with the company’s leadership, she creates the sales process and the company’s product strategy in order to better serve the customer base. This ensures that our customers have a highly trained and highly motivated team to help them every step of the way, Megan has completed Microsoft SC-900 training and working towards mastering Microsoft.

Whether at work or play, Megan is fully committed. She took her love of hockey all the way to the semi-professional level as a competitive hockey player. Megan loves all things sports including water skiing, scuba diving, cycling, and snowboarding. She also enjoys time with family and reading about alternative energy, innovation, and cybersecurity.

Natasha Phanor

As the Microsoft Partner Manager at Difenda, Natasha Phanor is responsible for driving growth within our Microsoft Partnership. With six years in the industry, she offers a fresh, energetic approach, and the ability to focus on our customer’s needs throughout the entire process. Natasha has the innate ability to foresee customer needs and solve problems before they arise, which creates a smooth road for each customer she encounters.

As the recipient of the Outstanding Services Partner of the Year Award in 2018, it is clear that Natasha responds quickly to customer needs, creates a platform for understanding a customer’s business requirements, and walks them through the process to ensure their complete satisfaction.

In her spare time, Natasha is as energetic and passionate as she is on the job. A self-proclaimed foodie-extraordinaire, she enjoys dinner parties, traveling, downhill skiing, hiking, biking, and reading. Natasha has a Bachelor of Fine Arts, specializing in Dance, from Ryerson University.

Lisa Templeton

Lisa Templeton is the perfect combination of human empathy and technological prowess. In her role as People Services Manager, she takes care of our team members to support them in their daily work, as well as on their personal life paths. Happy employees make for happy customers, and Lisa excels in giving our employees the tools they need for success in order to become the best possible versions of themselves. Along with employee formation, she shines in the service delivery support domain to continuously improve the process. Her 24 years of experience in IT Operations and Service Management help her create quality and efficiency at Difenda.

Having attended the Information Systems Management certificate program at Ryerson University, and with various other certifications to her credit, Lisa is perceptive and innovative when it comes to information technology, but also sensitive to the needs of her human constituents. Responsible for achieving the first privately owned company HDI Support Center certification in Canada, she has also designed and implemented Service Management excellence programs and 24×7 IT Operations departments for multiple IT organizations, and has created corporate rewards and recognition programs to keep her employees engaged and motivated.

On the personal side, Lisa passionately supports the cause of breast cancer research, having lost her mother to the disease. She reads voraciously in her spare time, and enjoys the art of home renovation. The summer months also bring time on her boat and exploring new hiking trails.

Miranda McCurdy

Miranda McCurdy uses her myriad super powers in all aspects of her job and personal life. As the Marketing Director at Difenda, Miranda McCurdy brings over a decade of experience to the table, which includes expertise in all facets of operations, brand management, and content marketing, as well as a multitude of successful strategies for the ever-expanding digital world. She is an expert at simplifying the message the company is trying to send, filling in gaps in the information, and strengthening the content in order to create compelling narratives that strengthen the brand and developing programs that bring teams together.

With several Addy Awards issued by the American Advertising Federation Cleveland to her credit, and her never say die attitude, Miranda understands both the broader picture and the minute details that are needed to successfully market a product. With her abilities to harness both the talent needed to spread the message, as well as to create the message itself, she is an integral cog in the company’s ability to communicate with customers and other stakeholders.

When she is not building a brand, she shares her ability to fill the gaps in her community by volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, the Special Olympics, and the Charleston Food Bank. In her spare time, Miranda spends time with her family, enjoys fitness and health, paddle boarding, reading, and arts and crafts.

Juliana Zaremba

Connections are the name of the game for Juliana Zaremba. As Strategic Partnerships Director, she is responsible for Difenda’s channel partnerships and the development and ownership of the channel partner program. She is also responsible for the global Microsoft Partnership, including the creation of strategic plans with MSFT contacts that will facilitate the continued growth of the business and establish certification and training protocols in all security technologies. Her role is multifaceted, as she acquires partners, manages relationships with them, and develops strategies that will provide cutting edge security solutions to our customer base. Another integral aspect of her job is to facilitate growth.

With a Bachelor’s in Math from the University of Waterloo and 14 years of experience from her previous roles at Herjavec Group and CDW, her cutting edge focus and ability to develop long-lasting relationships and strategies provides world class security solutions to our customer base.

Juliana thrives on connections outside of work as well. She is a philanthropist and contributor with Women4Change based in Hamilton. This group of local women is passionate about supporting local causes, and she focuses her efforts around Women in STEM. She is also a member of Club Italia in Niagara Falls and supports their youth events throughout the year.

When not managing the Microsoft Global partnership, Juliana enjoys reading, often reading several books at once. Juliana enjoys exploring the Niagara Escarpment with her family, as well as sharing meals and experiences with her extended family. Juliana’s competitive nature has her always trying new things, like Whoop band challenges and Peloton.

Jeffry Jacob

Biography Coming Soon