What is SOC-as-a-Service? - A Complete Guide to SOC!

The pace of technology evolvement is so high that it is becoming hard to stay up to date with the new complex terminology. 

One such confusing term is SOC-as-a-Service, which is associated with SOC (Security Operation Center).

A Security Operation Center (SOC) is a hub or a center where the SOC analysts' team leverages tools to continuously monitors and mitigates an organization's security risks while preventing, detecting, analyzing, and responding to cybersecurity incidents and cyber-attacks throughout the organization.

 

SOC-as-a-service (SocaaS)

Outsourcing the continuous monitoring and response to an incident of an organization's security posture to a 3rd party vendors' dedicated SOC team is known as SOC-as-a-service or Managed SOC.

 

The goal of SOC is to detect, analyze, and respond to cybersecurity incidents in a short period using a combination of technology solutions and a robust set of processes.

SOC-as-a-service allows organizations to stay ahead of attackers by continuously strengthening the security analysis of the log data (from data, transport, and network layer) and identifying and eliminating the detected breaches. 

SOC-as-a-service vendors typically provide two SOC Service models, a Hybrid/Co-Managed and a Fully Managed SOC-as-a-Service service model.  

• Fully Managed SOC-as-a-Service Model: Monthly subscription-based service where providers own, manage, and monitor 24/7/365 Turnkey SOC and SIEM products for your organization.

• Hybrid/Co-Managed SOC-as-a-Service Model: Customer owns the SIEM/Security Solution, and the service provider co-manages and monitors it 24x7 with our SOC.

Benefits of SOCaaS

1.Around-the-clock Protection: 

Security operations center run 24/7 year-round. The uninterrupted monitoring and analysis for suspicious activity give an edge over the attackers.

2.Cost of Ownership: 

With SOCaaS, companies do not have to worry about the cost of equipment, licenses, and payroll of the security staff. It further helps to lower the operational expenditure. Typically, there are no hidden costs in the contracts. Organizations pay a set amount each month for continuous protection. Moreover, SOC analysts work actively to minimize the effect of cyber-attack, thus preventing businesses from the burden of bearing the cost and lawsuits resulting from breaches. 

3.Centralized Threat Analysis: 

There is no delayed response to the reported threat with a centralized cyber-security strategy. 

4.Skilled Resources: 

A standard SOC team comprises cyber-security experts with diverse skill sets and broad knowledge of tried-and-true technologies for threat detection and prevention, such as SIEM, AI, Machine Learning, and Cloud Access Security, as well as the most advanced Threat Detection Techniques.

5.Compliance Management: 

Key SOC monitoring must act as per regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS. It not only helps safeguard the sensitive data, allows meeting compliance audit checks, but it can also shield the organization from reputational damage and legal challenges resulting from a breach.

6.Latest Technology: 

A managed SOC provider takes all the necessary measures to keep its toolset up-to-date and provides the benefits of state-of-the-art security to its customers.

Essential Considerations for selecting the right SOC-as-a-Service Provider

1.Toolset: 

what SIEM tools does the SOC know and integrates? Likely the SOC is imposing a set of tools. A SOC as a service provider should be able to provide you complete solution as per your need. The provider should not be biased towards the technology stack. 

2.Onboarding: 

The onboarding process is longer than necessary. A well-oiled and mature onboarding process should be able to onboard a typical customer with an average of 1000 assets in less than two weeks.

3.SOC Log Ingestion Topologies: 

How much flexibility SOC provider allows in configuring the devices/endpoints/etc. to collect log data

4.Coverage: 

What doesn't fit into the SOCs coverage? What can't be effectively secured?

5.Documentation and Process Maturity: 

Slow functioning of SOC due to lack of documented processes and procedures.

6.Use Cases: 

SOC providers should give more importance to use cases than just the technology platform. There should not be a limit on the number of Use-Cases in scope for a project.

7.Incident Handling: 

Time-To-Respond is yet another critical measurement of the quality of any SOC. Look for the SLA's defining the average time a SOC team takes to detect and responds to an attack, neutralizes it, and help customers recover from it. 

8.Noise Reduction: 

How is the SOC provider reducing the sheer volume of noise to actionable intel and alerting.

9.People/staff: 

Staff needs external training and knowledge. A fully functioning SOC requires people with a range of specialist skills, from the network and forensic analysts to threat intelligence researchers.

10.Communication: 

Accessibility to providers' managed SOC team also plays an important role. 

11.Reporting: 

IT is plagued with the problem that when it works well, it's invisible. What level of reporting does the SOCaaS provider provides for the end clients to SHOW that they are working hard? What PROOF is there that someone is on the other end of the data collection is actively monitoring and protecting the clients 24/7. Is SOC providing custom reports?

12.Compliance: 

Is the provider compliant with SOW terms and data security?

Why SafeAeon 24x7 SOC-as-a-Service Provider?

• 24x7/365 days SOC coverage via in-house SOC experts.
• Service built primarily to cater to the needs of the MSP market. Customized packages to cater to the need of an MSP partner.
• Monthly contracts (No lock-in contracts). 
• No service cancellation penalty. 
• Industry-leading quality at industry-beating prices to allow MSP partners to up-mark our service and still stay competitive and win business.
• Dedicated 1-800 number and SOC Delivery Manager.
• GOLD 30-Minute SLA for Critical security alerts 
• Unlimited Use Cases, Reports, Log Source & Rule Adds 
• Provide Sales/Marketing enablement and Sales cycle engineering support.

 

 

Stay Safe from Cyber Threats with SafeAeon SOC Services

 Ever since organizations have adopted the Work From Home culture due to COVID 19, the number of data breaches has multiplied. Are you worried about the security of your remote workforce? It's high time to contact SafeAeon Inc. to help protect your IT Infrastructure. Call us now at 1-855-684-1313 to schedule a demo with our team and learn how SafeAeon SOC-as-a-service can benefit your organization.

Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Vs. SOC

These days we know it all too well, Anti-virus and Firewalls are not enough. Attackers continue to advance, using increasingly sophisticated techniques to infiltrate organizations. They invest significant resources in conducting reconnaissance to learn about organizations and to develop techniques specifically designed to bypass the security defenses being used. IT staff know about the problem, but they lack the time, expertise, and budget to properly watch all their ever-changing on-prem and cloud infrastructure for threats. They are also bombarded by a flood of security products and services that all promise different outcomes and do not know what to do. What they need is a solution that works with the security products and infrastructure that is already in place. A service that proactively watches their on-prem, cloud, and hybrid infrastructure for both threats and vulnerabilities and gives them actionable information backed by skilled security analysts.

Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

MDR (Outsourced Threat Detection and Response Expertise)- Managed detection and response (MDR) providers deliver services for buyers looking to improve their threat detection, incident response, and continuous monitoring capabilities. In addition to security event monitoring focused on internet and network perimeter, ingress-egress traffic only, MDRs examine lateral (east-west) movement, once an attacker is inside the organization. MDR providers leverage advanced threat defense, along with security analytics, which can be expensive, difficult to obtain, and hard to sustain for many organizations, especially small or midsize businesses (SMBs) and small enterprises.

An MDR provides advanced persistent threat (APT) detection, insider threat, and threat intelligence capabilities for clients requiring more in-depth (tier 3 and above) security services.

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) is a subset of MDR focused on monitoring and securing endpoints within an organization’s network.  EDR services primarily consist of matching security events against patterns of known malware and quarantining devices as needed.  Often, the in-house security staff is responsible for remediation of the endpoints and bringing them back online.

SOC-as-a-Service

SOC (The Solution Small-to-Midsize Enterprises Need) - SOC As A Service, also commonly referred to as Managed SOC, Cyber Threat Monitoring or Managed Detection and Response delivers powerful threat detection, incident response, and compliance management in one fully managed service. It combines all the security capabilities needed for effective security monitoring across cloud and on-premises environments: asset discovery, vulnerability assessment, intrusion detection, endpoint detection and response, behavioral monitoring, SIEM log management, compliance reports, and more.

A SOC-as-a-Service provider acts as a full-function Security Operations Center (SOC), providing services like an MDR provider. However, this is not always the case.  Before taking advantage of a SOC-as-a-Service offering, it is important to ensure that the services provided match your organization’s requirements.

The Difference: MDR vs SOC

1. MDR is a subset of SOC. MDR focuses on endpoint detection and response with the added capabilities of SIEM solutions whereas SOC is a security solution focusing primarily on real-time log collection and correlation with the added capabilities of endpoint detection and response.

2. Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is an IT cybersecurity service that detects intrusions, malware, and malicious activity in your network and assists in rapid response to eliminate and mitigate those threats. Quality MDR services have a very light footprint on your network and use a combination of human analysts and technology to eliminate false positives, identify real security threats, and develop incident responses in real-time. Whereas MSSP is the predecessor to MDR. Managed security service providers (MSSPs) monitor network security events and send alerts when anomalies are identified. MSSPs do not investigate the anomalies to eliminate false positives, nor do they actively respond to security threats.

3. By comparison, an MDR uses its own SOC, solutions, and infrastructure whereas an MSSP will take incident and event data from a client’s SIEM and monitor it 24/7.

4. In a traditional SOC, the MSSP generally monitors and notifies users or makes changes to managed equipment - which rarely includes the endpoint. A critical capability of true MDR is to do something when a security incident occurs. Specifically, contain or eliminate the threat. If your MDR doesn't come with a networking component or EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response Agent) which can kill processes, shut down ports, or change VLANs, then the best they can do is tell you what happened.

5. MDR is not about outsourcing firewalls, servers, or rack space. It is about finding 10% of security problems that bypass traditional firewall and anti-virus security and responding to them. That means collecting data from your tools and your endpoints to find out if you can or have been breached, not managing them, and alerting you (SOCaaS).

Conclusion

Most medium-sized enterprises (MSEs) look to MDR to find the threats that Firewalls and AV do not capture. Combining threat intelligence, endpoint/network data, security hygiene and anomaly information is what MDR is all about. Making a case for MSS (SOCaaS) requires buying technology, hiring qualified people, and training and retaining them. Leveraging such services on point products is typically not scalable, nor can an MSE use them to ensure their minimal cybersecurity budget keeps them secure.