Security Operations Center: Why you need it?
Off late, the news of the latest ransomware has been making rounds among organizations and individuals alike. This news has led many organizations to run for cover and identify preventive measures to be adopted in order to avoid a probable attack.
However, it would be interesting to note that most of the organizations have attempted to protect their IT systems and servers only after the news of this attack spread. It would be flippant to call these organizations careless with their data. However, it is quite evident they were under prepared to handle an IT systems attack using only the existing IT systems protection set up.
Let us take a minute to identify what caused this last minute attempt to set up enhanced data security. In simple words, it is the absence of an entity that would have been able to look at the bigger picture and make recommendations to ensure confidential data security.
If you are wondering where I am going with this, let me mention that this is where a Security Operations Center comes in. Security Operations Center or SOC is a sort of cyber data collection center that collects, reviews and approves data transmission through IT systems in an attempt to avoid data privacy breach. In other words, SOC acts as an IT systems vigilante that constantly monitor the data flow within an organization in an attempt to prevent or stop confidential data leakage.
There have been constant debate about the necessity of setting up an SOC separate from an organizations existing IT Security setup. There have been equal supports who supports and disagrees with setting up a separate SOC. However, the importance of an SOC lies in the fact that any IT security risk is unpredictable and unprecedented.
The IT and Security departments within most of the organizations are closely involved in running the day to day IT operations within an organization. This would mean that there might be a lack of balance between managing daily operations and monitoring external chances of information risks. Additionally, internal IT departments sometimes lose the high level data privacy perspective while handling the day to day data security activities within the company.
The benefit of SOC comes from the unique mix of automated system and human intervention which allows for cranking the security levels high or low depending upon the specific financial and operational decisions an organization makes. The automated SIEM tracks and reports any and every potential risk it identifies to the Security officer.
The human intervention comes in the form of setting the SIEM to identify the actual threats and ignore the false alarms. Additionally, any change within an organization with a subsequent impact on data security will be reviewed to identify what are the additional security checks to be included.
The SOC also enables to review the existing data security checks in place and provide recommendations on the additional precautions to be included within the organizational system. In other words, SOC enables proactive identification and rectification of data protection vulnerabilities.
SOC might seem like an additional expense for a good to have security system. However, the long term benefits and protection offered by SOC makes it a highly must have security system, especially in the current scenario.
