Basics Of SOC (1)

A Security Operations Center (SOC) is a centralized function within an organization employing people, processes, and technology to manage its cybersecurity on an ongoing basis. This includes real-time cyber threat detection, rapid incident response, and proactive vulnerability mitigation before an attack. it secures the digital assets of an organization and maintains policy accordance as well as secure information systems that operate correctly.

Why there is a need for SOC?

The advantages of a permanent, always-ON SOC are multiple:

• 24/7 Monitoring — Networks and endpoints are checked constantly for any possible threats that might bypass existing defenses between the clients.
• Fast Response: When security is centralized, inconsistent incident response can be handled consistently to provide faster and more focused resolution.
• Thwarting potential threats: A SOC monitors new hazards and helps to shore up defenses before they are used as weapons against an organization.
• Compliance: Full compliance with regulations and laws is bound by strict auditing. Using a comprehensive audit trail of activities helps to achieve application adherence.

First, the base role of threat intelligence: the implantation of a SOC to know about adversary TTPs and changing controls in place for their evolving ones.
Reporting: Formal briefings provide leadership with an accurate summary of the effectiveness of security, enabling decision-making for ongoing investments and enhancements to countermeasures.

Security Monitoring Overview

Security monitoring is the practice of continually watching an organization’s IT environment for possible security incidents. Key components include SIEM setup, log management, and use case development.

Setting up and configuring SIEM selection for example, your choice of a SIEM solution will be influenced by your organization’s size, industry, and unique security requirements. Deployment decides whether your SIEM should be on-premises, cloud-based, or a mix of both. Ensure that the SIEM is ingesting data from your sources.

Data Ingestion Configuration: Data sources from firewalls, IDS/IPS, and endpoints should be deployed to send logs to SIEM. SIEM should normalize logs from all sources into one format and must be capable of properly dissecting them to analyze. Initial configuration correlation rules to link events from different sources and produce possible security incidents. For specific signs of malicious activity, set thresholds and alert on them. Define user groups and roles for the SIEM to be used in accordance with.

Log Management and Analysis

Log Collection: Establish an ‘astronomy log’ to the SIEM for aggregation and correlation of all relevant logs from systems and devices. log retention is appropriately configured, which complies with regulatory and organizational requirements. Real-time Log Analysis Analyze logs to detect signs of anything malicious or suspicious happening in real time. Historical logs from over the years that can be asked to determine patterns or incident analysis. Leverage the automated tools part of SIEM to analyze vast amounts of logs.

Tuning and Case Building

Development of Use Case Develop the use cases based on these threats and risks that the organization might be getting. This can be due to phishing, insiders, etc. Build out mental models to show how your use case will happen and how the threat can play in place on top of that. Tuning Make corrections if there is too much false amelioration or if amelioration is overwhelming your team. Ongoing tuning of threshold rules based on the new threats and on the organization environment development. Develop and establish regular reviews for the use cases based on feedback from incident response and new threat intelligence.

Metrics-Driven Iteration

Review and Analysis

• Regular Reviews: Review SOC metrics at regular intervals to understand trends, problem areas, and outlier/success stories.
• Root Cause Analysis: Metrics indicating performance concerns must be further researched.

Process Optimization

Refining Detection Rules: Alerts and SIEM rules can be developed based on KPI performance that can flag certain types of detections as false positives.

Training and Development: Use reports such as the incident resolution rate to address gaps in the analyst game.

Basic Overview of Compliance and Regulatory Requirements

The term cybersecurity compliance is the practice of ensuring that an organization makes a good faith effort to comply with existing laws, regulations, and standards designed to protect sensitive data and ensure information system security. Key regulations differ by industry and region, but similar objectives are preserving data privacy and maintaining the integrity of information systems.

A Brief (Very High-Level) Analysis of Cybersecurity Regulations Applicable

• GDPR — General Data Protection Regulation
• Country: European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area
• Type: Protecting personal data and privacy of individuals, imposing strict data protection requirements, and promoting prompt notification to victims.
• Region: United States
• Focus: Privacy and Security of Personal Health Information (Protected Health Information, PHI).

Policy Implementation:

Security Policies: SOC applies data protection, incident response, and access control policies aligned with regulations as the security posture.

Compliance Frameworks: SOC frameworks instill compliance mandates in the operational framework to assure that each and every process is matched with the regulatory standard.

Continuous Monitoring:

Verifiable: SOC should work with real-time monitoring to detect and respond to security incidents potentially leading to regulatory breaches.

Compliance Audits: Periodic audits over the security controls according to adherent regulatory needs within an organization for identifying any gaps and further recommendations on how best these can be improved.

Regular Audits:

Internal Audits: SOC basically runs the internal audits so that they can confirm how security controls are functioning and following regulatory requirements.

External Audits: Organizations seeking compliance, especially certifications (e.g., PCI-DSS and FedRAMP), may have third-party audits.

Gap Analysis: Audits typically include a gap analysis to determine areas of noncompliance with a regulation or set of standards.

Documentation:

• Control documentation: Ensure detailed control, policy, and procedure documentation meets compliance standards.
• Incident Documentation: Document all security incidents, detail the incident description and supporting response actions, as well as remediation steps.
• Compliance Reports: Produce compliance reports to internal stakeholders and regulatory bodies showing full compliance with legal and regulatory requirements.

SOC Tools and Technologies

An organization’s Security Operations Center (SOC) is the very core of its cybersecurity efforts, relying on a plethora of tools and technologies to detect, analyze, and respond to threats. This would include SIEM (security information and event management), EDR (endpoint detection and response), IDS/IPS (intrusion prevention systems), and several others that, in aggregate, form a strong defensive mechanism.

Reference framework for Core SOC tools

SIEM, or Security Information and Event Management:

Operational: SIEM platforms operationally collect, aggregate, and analyze log data throughout an organization’s IT infrastructure. And then they correlate it and put correlation together to [give them] a real-time threat detection model as we see the patterns going from one system into another.

Examples are Splunk, IBM QRadar and ArcSight.

EDR (endpoint detection & response):

Features: EDR solutions give full transparency into what is happening with the endpoints and also expose more advanced threats, such as malware or zero-day exploits. Features include capabilities for threat hunting, incident response, and remediation.

Samples: CloudStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, or SentinelOne.

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems (IDS/IPS)

Functionality: IDS records the activities and threats in network traffic and alerts SOC teams. IPS extends a step ahead by blocking malicious traffic right away. They are needed to diagnose such time-consuming network-level attacks like DDoS, port scanning, and bruteforce.

Examples: Snort (IDS), Suricata, IDS/IPS, and Cisco Firepower IPS.

Tool Setup and Usage Best Practices

Tailored Configurations: Defensive System Tuning: Configuration to allow interaction with particular environment, industry, and threat landscape of the organization. This means establishing correct thresholds, detecting correlation rules as well, and having all critical assets in scope.

Integration Across Tools:

Consolidated Monitoring: All tools must be feeding into a central SIEM or SOAR platform to provide overall visibility in monitoring and response. This unification will facilitate the association of better events and trace all the threads on a single screen shot from end-to-end.

Regular Performance Reviews: It is important to regularly audit the performance of your SOC tools and ensure they are performing as per the current security requirements. This means investigating your detection capabilities, response times, and the value of alerts.

Written By: karan kachadiya