Business benefits of a SOC
As the potential risks and ramifications of cyber security breaches multiply, organisations may find themselves struggling to play catch-up if they attempt to address all problems that arise in-house. Partnering with a service provider that has a security operations centre (SOC) is a tried and tested way to mitigate such potential negative consequences as reputation damage and financial penalties.
Hindrances to cyber success
Two of the most frequent obstacles that hinder a company’s cyber success are: a lack of skilled staff, and the lack of threat monitoring, detection and response. Organisations that choose to augment their security program with a SOC, however, can quickly tap into a talented pool of security analysts with the flexibility of a subscription service model and gain immediate visibility across the organisation.
Having a SOC with effective orchestration and automation can benefit an organisation’s cyber security posture and help them achieve:
- detailed and effective incident response
- faster detection and remediation of threats, breaches and vulnerabilities
- improved security visibility and reporting through detailed monitoring, and
- strong compliance, governance and risk management strategies.
Partnering with a Service Provider that has a SOC
Companies of all sizes now confront the type of advanced cyber threats that previously targeted only the largest and most sophisticated enterprises. Unfortunately, companies typically lack cyber security experts within their IT staff and lack the budget necessary to fully secure their company with an in-house SOC. Without a SOC, companies are unable to rapidly detect and respond to advanced threats before they do damage, leaving them especially vulnerable to cyber attacks – resulting in issues such as financial penalties, reputation damage, customer churn and even litigation.
Business benefits of a SOC
Out of the many advantages provided by partnering with a SOC provider, the top five business benefits are:
Lower personnel cost
Deploying a SOC involves hiring security staff who are in tune with the security industry and are suitably experienced. Unfortunately, finding talented people to address all SOC related issues can be difficult, costly and time-consuming. An outsourced SOC enables immediate access to talented, certified and current cyber professionals. Even if companies are successful in hiring internal security experts, it may be difficult to justify keeping them in-house due to limited company budgets and the high salaries that expert security staff attract.
Scalability and flexibility
No two business needs are ever the same. For example, a small start-up company may require only a single security expert working for a few hours a day to remain secure, while a federal government agency may require several security experts all working around the clock to remain secure.
When the service is outsourced, it allows companies of any size to be effective through collaboration and developing solutions together to react quickly. It will also provide access to skilled or additional resources when they are needed and at scale. Access can range from immediate in the event of a severe incident or breach, to a more gradual growth for a business with any critical data that may need protection. A quick and effective response time to cyber threats, facilitated by the support of a SOC, can save a company millions of dollars in legal costs, reputational damage, customer churn and business disruption.
Long-term ROI
Outsourced managed security service providers are typically effective, productive and mobile. Their experience in implementing, managing, monitoring and maintaining SOC tools, combined with their specialised security talent, reduces the time to become operational as well as the cost of implementation and ongoing management. This provides a good long-term return on investment by getting everything at a fraction of the cost that the company would incur by completing this internally.
Ongoing business focus
Security managers are often stretched far and wide across all parts of the company when it comes to operational matters. Responding to audit requests, enforcing company security protocols and fielding security questions from executives are often day-to-day processes and all take time. Adding in security breaches, investigations and security incident reporting, and security managers quickly become overwhelmed and lack time to focus on what is important.
Having a dedicated SOC team that monitors, detects and responds to threats and vulnerabilities allows security managers to focus on core business functions while the SOC manages information security.
Situational awareness and security context
With the myriad attack vectors utilised by hackers to compromise a company network, there is the possibility that some vectors continue unnoticed. With a SOC, companies are better equipped to have a complete overview of the entire company. The SOC can share and highlight areas of concern and monitor those closely, while giving better context to threats and how they are being weaponised against the company – enabling it to better position itself against them.
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