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In a technological landscape filled with cloud infrastructure, AI-enabled hackers, constant phishing attacks, and other cybersecurity threats, it is becoming harder to manage risks effectively with in-house resources. Even the number of alerts generated by a mid-sized organization’s cybersecurity solutions can be overwhelming, with thousands of potential breaches having to be reviewed each day.
Given the limited personnel and resources you have to fight the sophisticated cybersecurity threats in the ecosystem today, it is important to find efficient, powerful, and cost-effective cybersecurity solutions that can scale with your business. For these reasons, investing in a security operations center (SOC) can not only provide your business with scalable tools to protect your digital infrastructure, but even save your business from the catastrophic effects of a breach.
What is a Security Operations Center
If your business needs a team that protects your networks and data on a 24/7 basis, your only two options are to hire that entire team yourself, or work with a security operations center to monitor and manage your systems. These special teams use sophisticated technologies like intrusion detection and prevention systems to respond to potential cybersecurity breaches, keeping your digital infrastructure safe and secure.
Unlike in-house cybersecurity teams which only operate during certain hours of the day, a security operations center operates 24/7 to provide continuous surveillance that is pivotal in identifying warning signs of breaches or intrusions. Because cyberattacks can occur at any time, a security operations center can be the difference between a breach that is quickly identified and a cybersecurity catastrophe. The seamless coverage offered by these teams ensures that no potential intrusion goes unnoticed, regardless of when it occurs.
Who Needs a Security Operations Center
A good example of the kind of organization that needs a security operations center would be a mid-sized corporate law firm, which deals extensively in matters of trade secrets, intellectual property, and client strategy. For an organization like this, a cybersecurity breach could be catastrophic for not just the law firm’s reputation, but for the clients of that law firm whose company secrets are in the hands of malicious hackers from other countries.
Although this law firm has an in-house IT team, it only has a few people in it and most of their time is spent fixing bugs and internal issues to maintain operations. With their budget, hiring multiple cybersecurity professionals on a full-time basis is not feasible, making a security operations center the ideal choice for providing round-the-clock coverage.
In this hypothetical scenario, this law firm began looking for comprehensive cybersecurity solutions following a minor breach which cost them some case files and a lot of time that could have otherwise been billable hours. Given the statistics, which indicate that one-third of law firms suffer similar outcomes following a breach, this is a pretty realistic scenario.
Advantages of a Security Operations Center
One of the great things about working with a security operations center is that their teams, technologies, and processes are entirely focused on cybersecurity excellence. By automating repetitive tasks and using machine learning algorithms to detect patterns and anomalies, security operations center teams can streamline their processes and respond quickly to security incidents. This enables them to proactively identify and remediate potential threats before they can cause harm, saving businesses a great deal of time and money while protecting their data.
Returning to the example of the hypothetical law firm, without a security operations center, a phishing email opened at 1am by a very busy lawyer could give hackers potentially hours, even a day or two, before the breach can be identified and remediated. With a team in place monitoring systems 24/7, however, any actions that hackers take after that phishing email, and even the email itself, will be flagged immediately for remediation.
One of the biggest advantages of having a security operations center is that they help prevent your organization from suffering catastrophic losses from breaches that have gotten out of control. Many millions of dollars are lost every year just from system outages and downtime caused by hackers and cybersecurity threats. Some businesses end up paralyzed for weeks, or even months, because their data gets encrypted by hackers and held for ransom.
Even worse, once they are inside your systems, hackers can spend weeks simply observing your weaknesses and finding quiet ways to work their way deeper into your system. Having a security operations center maintain visibility over your network will help you spot warning signs of a breach, correlate between seemingly-unrelated signals to identify threats, act faster to contain them, and potentially save yourself millions of dollars and weeks of lost sleep.
Additionally, security operations centers can provide their clients with a great deal of useful data, including analyses of network traffic, logs of suspicious events, and event correlation to identify trends in cybersecurity threats. Also, by leveraging advanced tools like machine learning tools to improve their threat intelligence over time, SOC teams are able to develop an understanding of your organization’s unique risk profile and support better cybersecurity strategies. In the case of our hypothetical law firm, their trend data would support cybersecurity training for partners and lawyers in the firm, as well as a general awareness of where their most likely entry points are and how to protect them.
Investing In Your Reputation
In addition to playing a vital role in helping you meet regulatory and compliance requirements for your industry, a security operations center gives you the ability to say that you are taking a strong and proactive stance on your data security. In addition to the 24/7 coverage your business will enjoy, SOC teams can assist your business with completing the necessary documentation required in your industry, keeping your records tidy in the event of an audit.
For their many advantages and benefits, security operations centers are extremely cost-effective ways to improve your organization’s security posture. Their unique capabilities help you identify and remediate breaches immediately, preventing your firm from losing valuable data, time, and infrastructure. A security operations center is also more scalable than having an in-house team, allowing you to reallocate some of your salary budgets to other functions and projects.
Finally, if your organization is looking to get cybersecurity insurance or already has it, having a security operations center can actually reduce your premiums, or even help you get insurance in the first place. Investing in this kind of resource demonstrates that your organization is committed to cybersecurity excellence, which is a necessary prerequisite for getting cybersecurity insurance today. Learn more about the benefits to having a 24/7 security operations center.
Working with Kalmer Solutions
Kalmer Solutions provides managed IT services for the modern workforce. Based in Jonesboro, Arkansas, we support our clients with virtual CIO services, technology upgrades, cloud-based computing, IT support, cybersecurity, the fulfillment of compliance requirements, and more. Our goal is to become your trusted IT partner and add long-term strategic value. Contact us today to learn more about how working with us can transform your business.
