What Are The 09 Main Steps for Developing a SOC?

Today, organizations work hard to protect themselves from all kinds of cyber attacks. They use AI and machine learning for SOC automation. It helps to perform repetitive tasks automatically, incidents are dealt with quickly, and everything runs smoother. This helps security teams stay on top of new threats and keep important stuff safe.

Setting up a security operations center (SOC) and SOC workflow automation makes it easier and simpler to gather and analyze information about cyber threats. But what exactly is a SOC? And where can you find resources to help you build one? Let’s dive deeper to know more about it!

What Is A Security Operations Center?

Before starting the process to create the SOC, it’s necessary to know what a SOC is. In simple words, it’s like a central hub where security experts work to detect the threats, perform analysis, and respond accordingly to remove the threats instantly!

A SOC is responsible for monitoring, responding, and removing the threats. The main goal of a SOC is to provide security to the organization’s data and systems.

A SOC lets security teams to:

●      Create an adaptive SIEM architecture

●      Implement advanced security analytics

●      Explore integrated threat intelligence

●      SOC Automation (incident responses & more)

●      Investigate and visualize threats and mitigate threats

How To Build A SOC In 09 Steps?

A security operations center (SOC) is like an essential hub for all kinds of organizations, big or small. Meanwhile, it’s not just about dealing with incidents, it’s a place that helps out all parts of the organization with resources and information.

The creation of a SOC is no longer a daunting task, you just need to follow the below-mentioned steps:

1. Define Your Objectives and Goals:

Figure out what you want to achieve by setting clear goals for building your Security Operations Center (SOC). Think about the potential dangers you want to avoid.

How you will measure the success? What KPIs you will use? To build a SOC that meets the requirements of your organization, it is necessary to define your objectives and goals.

2. Develop Your Security Strategy:

Create a security strategy, outlining your incident detection, response, and reporting process. It means designing procedures for managing security incidents, threat intelligence, the implementation of security audits, and the integration of AI powered SOC automation solutions.

3. Determine Your Budget and Resources:

Creating a SOC requires a good investment of money and time. Note down your budget and resources upfront so that you can assign the necessary funds to create the right SOC for your organization.

4. Implement SOC Automation Tools:

Once you have the architecture of the SOC and the budget, it’s time to implement the SOC automation tools. They let you automate crucial tasks such as sorting the alerts, monitoring the incidents, and providing an accurate response timely. Organizations can easily identify the cyber threats and perform the necessary actions to mitigate them with the help of AI driven automation tools.

5. Identify Your Key Assets:

At this step, you need to list down the assets that you want the SOC to protect. It may include the servers, databases, and applications. This is essential to understand the risk for each asset. As it helps to precisely set the security measures.

6. Choose Your Tools and Technologies:

Choose the tools that you will use for the AI powered SOC automation. It includes systems for keeping track of security info and events (called SIEM), spotting intrusions, gathering threat info, and stopping threats. Make sure to choose the right tools that can work smoothly together.

7. Hire and Train Your Team:

Choose a team of skilled persons who are capable of dealing with alerts and security issues. Provide them with the necessary training from time to time, so that they can learn the new trends and the use of the latest technology. This will help them in using the technology accurately and will enable them to provide the expected results. Give them access to all the tools and technology, so that they can use them efficiently to keep the systems and the organizational data safe.

8. Monitoring and Optimization:

When the SOC is running, continuous monitoring and optimizations are necessary for its effectiveness. It means analyzing the SOC metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs), improvements that need to be done, and maintaining an accurate workflow. By using the AI driven SOC automation, you can automate the incident response and threat hunting process and maintain an automated workflow. This not only saves time but also saves the efforts of the security analysts.

9. Test and Refine Your SOC:

This is the last step in which you need to do the testing of the SOC. It means to ensure whether the created SOC is working accurately in detecting and responding to security incidents or not. Perform security audits and simulations to find the areas of improvement. When you figure out the areas of improvement, do the necessary work to make them better so that the created SOC can provide you with the expected results.

What Are The Different SOC Models?

The most common SOC models are:

Virtual SOC:

●      Part-time team members

●      No dedicated facility

●      Gets activated, when an important alert or incident occurs

Dedicated SOC:

●      Dedicated facility

●      Dedicated team

●      Fully in-house

Distributed/Co-managed SOC

●      Typically, 5×8 operations

●      Dedicated and semi-dedicated team members

●      It is co-managed when implemented with an MSSP

Command SOC:

●      Coordinates with other SOCs

●      It provides situational awareness, threat intelligence, and additional expertise

Multifunction SOC/Network Operations Center (NOC):

●      The dedicated facility in which the team works around the clock on important IT tasks, and they also handle security to save money

Fusion SOC:

●      It includes the old SOC functions and new ones, such as threat intelligence, computer incident response team (CIRT), and operational technology (OT) functions, which are integrated into one SOC facility

Final Words:

In simple terms, building a SOC is like putting together a puzzle. It needs careful planning, and smart actions to perform as we have discussed above. By following the above-mentioned steps and using the latest trends in SOC automation, you can create a strong security system that can handle today’s cyber threats efficiently.

By combining people’s skills with smart automation, SOC teams can make their defenses even stronger, deal with problems faster, and keep their digital data safe. As technology keeps changing, organizations need to stay smart in how they protect themselves from cyber threats, using the latest tools to keep ahead of the latest threats and keep their important stuff safe.