What Is a Security Operations Center (SOC)?

• Asset list: In an enterprise, the SOC can use the asset discovery tool to check the systems, applications, databases, and servers to be protected, and identify security protection tools for vulnerability detection.
• Vulnerability assessment: The SOC team performs assessments on the vulnerability of software and hardware resources and the associate costs. It also conducts penetration tests and, based on the test results, updates security policies or threat event response plans.
• Preventive maintenance: To fully utilize existing security tools and measures, the SOC installs and upgrades patches, and updates firewalls, whitelists/blacklists, and security policies and procedures. The SOC also creates system backups to ensure business continuity in the event of a data breach, ransomware attack, or other cyber security event.

• Log collection and analysis: The SOC uses devices such as firewalls or detection systems to collect and analyze log data, and identify abnormal activities.
• Threat detection: The SOC generates alarms based on identified suspicious activities from log data and indicators of compromise (IOCs). IOCs can indicate information such as malware types, suspicious DNS requests, and metadata, and in doing so help to identify attackers and attack motives.
• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM): The SIEM tool is often built in the SOC to automatically handle threats. SIEM can summarize log data, monitor alarms, and analyze security events.

• Threat response and remediation: The SOC helps develop the enterprise's event response plan, responding to threats by isolating infected devices, deleting malicious files, and running antivirus software. It then investigates and analyzes root causes, and improves existing security policies based on the investigation results.
• Compliance report: The SOC reports the amount and type of damaged data to relevant authorities to ensure that the attacked enterprise complies with data privacy laws and regulations.

Triage is the first tier of the SOC. Tier 1 personnel, consisting of junior analysts, are least experienced. They are responsible for triaging security events and determining the event severity. This includes identifying the source of the event, determining the event scope, and assessing related impacts. They are also responsible for providing initial response and handling measures, and finally escalating events to higher tiers if necessary.

Investigation is the second tier of the SOC. Tier 2 personnel, consisting of professional analysts, have greater expertise. They are responsible for investigating security events and determining the root cause. This includes analyzing logs, network traffic, and other data sources to identify the source of the event. They are also responsible for providing detailed event reports and recommendations for remediation.

Threat hunting is the third tier of the SOC. Tier 3 personnel, consisting of senior security analysis experts, are responsible for proactively hunting for threats in an enterprise's environment, using advanced detection tools to identify vulnerabilities, and providing suggestions on improving the overall security of the enterprise. They are also responsible for ensuring that enterprises' threat handling methods comply with industry and government laws and regulations.