Three Business Critical Reasons You Need a Security Operations Center (SOC)

Information security tools generate a lot of data. Even a small business might generate up to 1,500 events per second. This massive influx of events can be handled by a security operations center—a dedicated security team that constantly screens logs to detect verifiable security threats. But most businesses can’t afford to run a security operations center (SOC) or IT operations center (ITOC) in-house, and choose to outsource security monitoring operations to a third-party provider. Let’s take a look at a few of the most compelling reasons to outsource.

Maintaining Continuous Coverage

One reason you need a security operations center is because hackers never stop working. In fact, hackers may specifically wait until after business hours to attack your business, giving them more time in your systems before anyone notices. In addition, cyberattacks are launched from around the world, so it’s very easy for attackers in other countries to operate at the most inopportune time for US businesses.

If there’s an overnight attack, and your IT department doesn’t see it until 8 am in the morning, then your attacker has had many uninterrupted hours to attempt a breach and then cover their tracks. To mitigate this risk, you need a team of specialists who can monitor your environment around the clock. In addition, these individuals need to be trained in information security, which is distinct from information technology. 

Finding and Retaining Cybersecurity Experts

Because information security experts are hard to find, it is often an economical option to find a Managed Service Provider (MSP) with Security Monitoring as a service, as opposed to building and funding an in-house team. It is currently so hard to find information security talent that industry experts suggest there will be 3.5 million unfilled jobs in the field this year. 

Even if you do manage to hire a security operations team, be prepared for constant turnover. Security analysts are in high demand and are often presented with better compensation packages than small businesses can afford. 

Let hiring and retention be the service provider’s problem. Security monitoring experts at an MSP are constantly challenged with multiple client environments and have tremendous experience discovering and responding to events. They also engage in training and certification classes to maintain their edge.

Creating a Defined Triage Alert Process

It is not enough to rely on tools and software to keep your environment protected. If your small business is generating 1,500 events per second, you need an alerting process that can filter the noise and security experts who can triage real threats and ignore the false positives. 

False positives are a real problem. False positives occur when monitoring tools detect events that could represent a breach, and send off an alert. Most security teams tend to treat these false positives as genuine cyberattacks until it becomes clear that they aren’t. With dozens or hundreds of false positives a day, security operations staff can spend up to 25% of their time dealing with false positives. Oftentimes, as security teams try to address each alert, day in and day out, it leads to alert fatigue.

For in-house security teams, dealing with false positives can be exhausting. Alert fatigue leads to mistakes when a real threat is bypassed, and the effectiveness of your security monitoring is diminished. What’s worse, some attackers know how to deliberately trigger false positives—i.e., by staging very mild DDoS attacks—and use these as distractions while they break the network in another area.

How TBConsulting Can Help Keep Your Business Secure 

When you outsource your security monitoring operations to a Managed Security Service Provider, you get a team of professionals who are prepared for challenges and have the structure and processes in place to react properly to incidents and protect their clients. A team of trained and motivated security experts will contextualize each incident and respond with the care that it deserves.

Here at TBConsulting, we have the tools, technology, and certified security experts to manage risk for your organization. Our IT Operations Center runs 24/7/365 for complete security monitoring operations. With our effective Security Monitoring service, we can offer continuous cybersecurity protection for your company’s most critical assets, so you can focus on your core competencies and business outcomes.