Envisioning the Next Gen SOC

In the world of enterprise security, a Security Operations Center (SOC) is that arm of the organization which is responsible for monitoring the entire enterprise network, managing any security incidents, and playing a central role in responding to security incidents. The concept of SOC is aimed at streamlining the triage and resolution of security incidents by enhancing the collaboration between security personnel in various roles. However, the traditional model of a SOC which relies on different manual processes at various stage of an incident response process is no longer effective at dealing with the sophisticated cyber attacks of the modern era. This often causes unnecessary delays and subsequent losses in an effort to restore the flow of everyday business operations.

Once secure, now barely so

The traditional SOC model faces several issues ranging from difficulty in collaboration, silo-ization of information, lack of visibility across a broad network of devices, difficulties in scaling up, lack of automation in incident response, and also the lack of prowess in dealing with advanced threats such as state-sponsored adversaries or insider threats. Moreover, the reactionary approach of a traditional SOC leads to an ineffective response against evolving threats.

The concept of a next-gen SOC must address these issues to be able to provide an effective answer to the rising cyber risk facing enterprises today.

What capabilities should the next-gen SOC possess?

Some of the key capabilities of the next-gen SOC would be as follows:

• Instead of the archaic paradigm of waiting to detect an incident and then responding to it, the next-gen SOC should anticipate threats in advance and secure the organization with an automated response.

• Rather than relying solely on endpoint protection solutions that cannot communicate with each other, the next-gen SOC should focus on all assets of an organization including servers, applications, endpoints, software, and end users.

• For the next-gen SOC, the primary approach for tackling cyber threats should be intelligence-driven instead of solely relying on disparate data sources. The predictive intelligence must be derived by orchestrating all security tools deployed in the organization followed by Intel enrichment from trusted external sources and correlation and analysis of internal threat data.

• The derived predictive intelligence should be used to carry out Threat Hunting operations for the purpose of neutralizing threats in the early phases of Cyber Kill Chain.

• The next-gen SOC must not operate in a silo but enable collaboration with peer organizations, regulatory bodies, or other entities within the organization’s trusted sharing network. While Threat Actors continue to learn from each other, security teams of different organizations must also collaborate to give a befitting response.

• The next-gen SOC should also provide insights into the adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures, that are used to target organizations. This will further open the scope for adversary behavior analysis to build specific cyber defense capabilities that can block an ongoing cyber attack at various stages.

Cyber Fusion Center as the Solution

Achieving the objectives of the next-gen SOC is not possible with any single traditional security solution. It requires a fundamental rethinking of the approach towards enterprise security and requires security solutions that leverage the power of Cyber Fusion, Threat Intelligence, Orchestration, and Automation to address the limitations of the traditional SOC. The way forward for enterprise security thus involves the introduction of a set of security solutions that provide a strong cybersecurity posture for an organization by covering all the bases as well as streamlining the workflow of a traditional SOC.

Cyware’s three key offerings form the trifecta of security solutions that achieve these desired objectives for the next-gen SOC. Cyware’s Cyware Situational Awareness Platform (CSAP) helps organizations share Strategic Threat Intelligence and achieve machine-to-human-to-machine orchestration by connecting different security tools. It leverages the power of mobile to provide capabilities such as role-based alerting, strategic intel sharing, crisis communication, dynamic situational awareness, and more.

The introduction of Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) operations has proven to be a game changer for the security industry in the last few years and has since become a key component of a SOC. Cyware’s Cyware Threat Intelligence eXchange (CTIX) is a powerful bi-directional client-server threat intelligence exchange that can collect, analyze, and share Threat Intel from a variety of external and internal sources in different formats and generate actionable insights. Furthermore, it allows organizations to build their trusted sharing network using its Hub and Spoke model.

In realizing the overall vision of the next-gen SOC, Cyware’s Cyware Fusion and Threat Response (CFTR) platform completes the picture with its Security Orchestration and Automation capabilities along with Cyber Fusion and analysis of Threat Intelligence, to connect the dots and provide an automated threat response.

This combined set of security solutions allows organizations to reshape their security outlook and navigate through the risks emerging from the growing reaches of the cyberspace by creating a unified Cyber Fusion Center. When deployed together, the products work in tandem to serve as an integrated Cyber Fusion Center that is capable of All Source Threat Intel Sharing and Analysis, Comprehensive Threat Response, Role-based Situational and Crisis Alerting and Remote Intel Actioning.