SOCs Around the Clock – Keeping Up with 24/7 Security

Even though a huge percentage of online traffic doesn’t end in financial transactions, they all transmit valuable data sets that are a literal gold mine to hackers. This is personal or classified information that is worth billions in the wrong hands.

Hackers know this. The number of attacks, illegal data exfiltration, and ransomware demands on many organizations is rising. A good firewall and some malware detection software are no longer enough. High-stakes enterprises and businesses need a 24/7 SOC to stay ahead of the threat – even if they are false positives.

What is a SOC (Security Operations Center)?

A security operations center (SOC) is a dedicated security professionals team that takes charge of detecting, security monitoring, and responding to any security threats to your network infrastructure. Instead of just using passive software and a firewall to protect your customer’s data, you will have professionals who can actively counter a hacking attempt and any data breach.

Your SOCs can be on-site or you could opt for an outsourced team from a managed security services provider.

Why a 24/7 SOC?

Reports from multiple security analysts in the threat intelligence field show that cyber threats can happen anytime. Hackers have now organized themselves into big ad-hoc organizations, meaning they are constantly probing and testing their target’s defenses. They are doing this either manually or using automated scripts.

You should always have a team that can detect and investigate any suspicious activity, even if it happens outside business hours.

Deciphering log data within minutes of initial intrusion gives you better odds regarding event management.

This is why a team of 24/7 security analysts gives you better security operations. You will catch your cyber threats just as they roll out – or in the worst case; before they take root in your internal network and start wreaking havoc.

SOCs Get You Beyond the Business Hours Mentality

The biggest breaches in history happened on Fridays just before a long weekend because the hackers correctly presumed that the security posture would be at its worst. All they have to deal with is a software firewall, as security teams will be closed for the weekend.

This gives intruders hours to move horizontally on the network, mining as much data as possible and covering their tracks as they go. If they can suppress notifications and ‘alarms,’ no one will know they were there until the security experts come in and start going through the log data.

With 24/7 security services, you are already a step ahead. A SOC services team will thwart basic probs with the correct incident response once they see abnormal occurrences on your security tools. They will actively prevent further infiltration if they catch a heist in operation. This is quite helpful – even if it means literally pulling the power plug on your entire network infrastructure.

Consider an MSSP (Managed Security Service Provider) for Better Autonomy

Suppose you are a small to medium enterprise that can’t justify the costs of maintaining a skilled in-house SOC. In that case, you can always stay protected with a managed security service provider. This outsourcing model gives you access to a pool of highly trained security teams who will actively monitor and protect your infrastructure at all moments.

Since they are a huge SOC team dealing with more than just your network, chances are they have way more experience than you could get from an in-house team. They can pool their experience from other security incidents unrelated to your current breach and respond faster than an in-house SOC that sees the breach as a novel attack.

Moreover, MSSP SOC analysts can monitor threat traffic across their pool of clients and create an actor profile for better threat detection. This will tell them of tell-tale suspicious activity and highlight high-risk potential threats hours, putting the security team on higher alert.

You should still have a small in-house team that isn’t necessarily highly skilled as the MSSP to help with physical operations. They should be available on-call 24/7 and adept enough to efficiently carry out instructions from the MSSP.

With AI becoming more efficient, more and more stages of a network infrastructure breach will get automated. The SOC service team should go beyond relying on a host of security tools to manage threat intelligence automatically. You will need cyber security people who can adapt defensive techniques to stay a step ahead.