In the modern digital world, security means that businesses continually monitor their IT infrastructure, resolve all alerts as they arise, and keep them ready beforehand. This continual monitoring and mitigation of threats demand constant care and upgrades. However, for some organizations, the most effective way to do this is using ‘SOC as a Service’ or SOCaaS.
Table of Contents
What is SOCaaS?
SOCaaS is a category of Managed Security Service (MSS) based on the cloud. The service is built on a multi-tenant Software as a Service (SaaS) platform and goes further than the Managed Security Services (MSS) of Managed Security Service Providers (MSSP).
Analogous to MSS, SOCaaS consists of all the monitoring, management, incursion detection system, antiviruses, firewalls, antispam systems, Endpoint Protection (EPP), a Virtual Private Network (VPN), and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR). SOCaaS, however, comes with certain added services that include:
- A team of analysts that resolve any alerts that arise recognize and analyze Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) and inspect and respond to any attacks to minimize the effect of security incidents.
- Support with optimizing and upgrading the organization’s detection, protection, and response-ability through continuous assessments of risks, incidents, and reporting the same, including counseling with regard to security policies and action plans.
Thu, SOCaaS not only includes services of a Managed Security Service (MSS) but also includes services that makeup Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solutions. SOCaaS can be considered an extension and evolution of both MDR and MSS.
Considering the continually rising demand for an extensive detection and response-ability, which is cloud-based and comprises both monitoring and analysis, SOCaaS is the term popularizing in Europe and is more likely to come out as the dominant term to discern these services from the general MDR and other mainstream managed security services.
What is the need for SOCaaS for your business?
With the world turning towards a digital makeover and cloud services for better efficiency, cutting costs, and increasing flexibility, digital attacks, and threats have increased towards most organizations. Cyber attackers have taken note of this trend as most of the workforce has become increasingly remote and mobile, accessing data, systems, and services both on-ground and in the cloud from outside the company network. This rapid increase in the number of people working from home due to the covid pandemic has fastened the pace of this risk and increased the risk further.
In an attempt to secure and mitigate these risks, protect important data, comply with the data protection regulations and protect other commercially important information, companies are starting to invest heavily in security and IT infrastructure support services and monitoring services on-premises and on the cloud.
However, for many companies, this has been the reason for a flood of security alerts that get generated daily. This avalanche of alerts, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), makes it impossible to keep track of, investigate, and analyze every alert they get. The adoption and emergence of SOCaaS have therefore been guided by the combination of the following factors:
- Most organizations are unable to deal with the overflow of security alerts daily.
- The business needs to get the most value out of its investment in the existing IT infra management.
- The requirement to expand security monitoring to comprise Internet of Things (IoT) devices and Operational Technology (OT).
- The wish is to have continuous improvements by keeping track of the effectiveness of current security investments.
Additionally, a key driver has been the deficiency of cyber security skills, affecting organizations of all sizes. SOCaaS provides organizations with a way to access the benefits of a Security Operations Center (SOC) or some additional SOC resources without the need to find and retain people with the relevant skills continually. Also, a SOCaaS can provide a way of quickly scaling up the organization’s capacity at a much lower cost than maintaining a similar capacity in-house.
What benefits does a SOCaaS serve to your business?
Given the rapidly changing business environment, IT security management is becoming increasingly challenging. There is a continual growth in the demand for SOCaaS since most of the organizations skips over the benefits on offer by these services, which include:
- Better incident response times and mitigation solutions.
- Sustained and comprehensive monitoring in a centralized format and analysis of corporate systems for dubious activity at a fixed and predictable cost.
- Rapid detection of security incidents like compromises and threat containment.
- Reduced expenses and business impact of compromising security events.
MSSPs provide a broad range of services, but they tend to generate too many alerts that require investigation. They also at times lack advanced threat detection and mitigation skills, demand fixed and long-term contracts, and generally require a particular inventory of technologies.
On the other hand, MDR providers are able to provide monitoring services round the clock, but pertaining to their narrow reliance on endpoint quantification, they end up providing a high rate of false positives. MDR providers also generally require a particular tech stack, provide restricted visibility, and do not include any remediation whatsoever.
This translates into SOCaaS being the only way for organizations, SMEs in particular to:
- Unify all security tools, threats, and systems into a centralized point of control to address and mitigate alerts.
- Keep an eye on and monitor signs of potential compromise by analyzing all the data.
- Evaluate the efficacy of existing control systems to consider how they can be improved.
- Attain additional value from present security investments.
The final takeaway
All businesses sense the need for a centralized, well-coordinated, and well-managed view of their security stand and the ability to respond to and mitigate threats rapidly.
Therefore, it is important for organizations to recognize the need, benefits, and perks of these services and how they are suited to a particular organization with regard to their size, capabilities, requirements, and expectations. SOCaaS meets the important challenges most businesses face in the modern digital and post-Covid era. They prove beneficial to all organizations regardless of their size and therefore consideration as an element of any cyber security plan.
