We all know that data breaches are expensive—an average of $3.6 million per company.
Everyone is a target for cyber attackers, and absolute prevention is impossible. We must expect that every organization’s IT infrastructure will be hacked at some point. To avoid costly breaches and the possible damage on reputation, revenue, and customer confidence, we must continuously monitor, investigate, and respond to cyber threats 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
A security operations center (SOC) is a great technique to provide continuous monitoring and analysis. A SOC employs expert knowledge to detect and investigate potential threats throughout the whole organization’s networks, servers, endpoints, apps, and databases, using people, processes, and technology. One of the most important advantages of a SOC is that it reduces the dwell time (the time between when an attacker penetrates a network—minutes—and when the business finds the threat—typically months!) and hence the catastrophic impact of a breach.
It’s challenging enough to find a team of highly qualified security analysts with the bandwidth and expertise to do continuous monitoring, especially given the global scarcity. It’s much more difficult to keep them in the face of fierce competition for limited talent.
Choosing the best path
It’s more of a buy/rent/co-manage dilemma when it comes to achieving continuous coverage: should you create your own SOC, outsource your SIEM (or SOC) platform, or use a co-managed SOC solution.
1. Buying a car to move from point A to point B is similar to building your own SOC.
You are responsible for all platform, process, and personnel costs, but you have complete control over your destination and how to get there (i.e. what your organization sees as risks, threats, and responses). The expense and complexity, of course, may be prohibitive.
2. It’s like renting a car when you outsource your SIEM or SOC platform.
You don’t have to spend money on hardware, but you do have to follow all of the procedures—and you have to hire, train, and keep your own SOC team. It’s less expensive than creating your own SOC, but it’s still a significant investment.
3. Using a co-managed SOC solution is like to taking an Uber to your destination.
You supplement your internal security team with seasoned security specialists who use a strong SIEM platform, but you maintain control over the final destination. A co-managed SOC ensures that the entire team is working together to achieve your organization’s objectives.
Perhaps it’s time to take the smarter approach to a SOC, as the ride-sharing industry has done. For a completely integrated co-managed security solution, CYB3R-X is the only managed security service provider that combines our own ISO-certified 24/7 SOC with our own award-winning SIEM platform.
