What is a SOC? A Complete Beginner’s Guide to SOC Course
A Security Operations Center is a place for security teams within an organization employing people to continuously monitor and improve an organization’s security posture. A SOC is established in preventing, detecting, analyzing, and responding to cybersecurity incidents. The SOC team must constantly monitor, detect, and respond accordingly to these incoming cyber threats that could potentially cause irreparable damage to an organization, its network, and its reputation.
It is usually not managed by the company itself, but rather outsourced to other offices. An office whose sole job is to monitor the company network for threats, and impending attacks, as they constantly analyze traffic flow, through the company network. It must work around the clock using the right tools and the right people to constantly monitor, assess, and manage cyber threats to an organization.
What does a SOC do?
The SOC leads real-time incident response and drives ongoing security improvements to protect the organization from cyber threats. By using a complex combination of the right tools and the right people to monitor and manage the entire network, a high-functioning SOC will provide:
Proactive, around-the-clock surveillance of networks, hardware and software for threat and breach detection, and incident response.
Expertise on all the tools your organization uses, including third-party vendors, to ensure they can easily resolve security issues.
Installation, updating and troubleshooting of application software.
Monitoring and managing of firewall and intrusion prevention systems.
Scanning and remediation of antivirus, malware and ransomware solutions.
Email, voice and video traffic management.
Patch management and whitelisting.
Deep analysis of security log data from various sources.
Analysis, investigation and documentation of security trends.
Investigation of security breaches to understand the root cause of attacks and prevent future breaches.
Enforcement of security policies and procedures.
Backup, storage and recovery.
The SOC uses a range of tools that collect data from across the network and various devices, monitors for anomalies and alerts staff of potential threats. However, the SOC does more than just handle problems as they pop up.
What are the tools included in a Security Operations Center?
The SOC includes a set of tools in a diverse technology stack to help cybersecurity analysts continuously monitor security activities in the organization’s IT infrastructure. The members of the security team stationed in the Security Operations Center use these tools to identify, categorize, analyze incidents and events, and ultimately decide how to respond to these events.
Essential tools in the SOC technology stack are:
Security Information and Event Management Solution
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools provide the SOC’s foundation, given its ability to correlate rules against massive amounts of disparate data to find threats. Integrating threat intelligence adds value to the SIEM activity by providing context to the alerts and prioritizing them.
Behavioral monitoring
User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA), typically added on top of the SIEM platform, helps security teams create baselines by applying behavior modeling and machine learning to surface security risks.
Asset discovery
Asset discovery or an asset directory helps you better understand what systems and tools are running in your environment. It enables you to determine what the organization’s critical systems are, and how to prioritize security controls.
Vulnerability assessment
Detecting the gaps an attacker can use to infiltrate your systems is critical to protect your environment. Security teams must search the systems for vulnerabilities to spot these cracks and act accordingly. Some certifications and regulations also require periodic vulnerability assessments to prove compliance.
Intrusion detection
Intrusion detection systems (IDS) are fundamental tools for SOCs to detect attacks at the initial stages. They typically work by identifying known patterns of attack using intrusion signatures.
Here is the list of topics to be known to become a master in SOC industry
Module 01 : Basics of Networking and its concepts
Module 02 : Introduction to Kali Linux and its commands
Module 03 : Security Devices
Module 04 : Types Cyber Attack and Mitigation
Module 05 : TCP/IP packets understanding
Module 06 : Firewalls, IPS/IDS, and Honeypots
Module 07 : What is SIEM and Why it is Required
Module 08 : Understanding the detail of various Arcsight Components.
Module 09 : Understanding the detail of various Arcsight Components.
Module 10 : Introduction Of SIEM And ARCSIGHT Tool.
Module 11 : ArcsightSmart Connector .
Module 12 : ESM Console
Module 13 : Active Channels
Module 14 : Dashboards & datamonitors
Module 15 : Arcsight ESM Resources
Module 16 : Arcsight Command Center.
Module 17 : Event On logger
How Do I Get Started With SOC Training?
Simpliksills training modules have been designed to meet the ever changing requirements, as in the world of Cybersecurity new technologies continue to arise as old ones continue to fade away. We have developed a method which enables students to learn in a pace that allows them to swiftly identify and neutralize threats with minimal disruption. Simpliskills has aimed its SOC certification training course to aid cyber security professionals build these skills.
Conclusion: