Managed SOC Vs Managed XDR — Part 1

You may have heard of a SOC, and you may have heard of an XDR, these security solutions and services are critical to an organization’s cybersecurity. But which one would you pick for your organization? The answer is not this or that, it’s both. This blog will compare a Managed SOC and a Managed XDR to show you how they both relate. This is part one of a three part series.

This first part will draw a clear vision related to SOC, its responsibilities, and the challenges encountered by managed SOC while keeping our feet placed firmly on the ground of reality.

Security threats have advanced exponentially. So have most security solutions.

What is Managed SOC?

The first line of defense with reliable protection against cybercrimes!

A managed SOC engages the security workforce to deliver continuous detection, prevention, and mitigation of threats to the organization’s systems. It allows organizations to outsource their 24×7 cybersecurity operations. SOC provides people, processes, and technology to combat cyber attacks. A managed SOC investigates threat alerts and vulnerabilities and responds to incidents that might be in progress in your infrastructure.

The managed SOC consists of outsourced cyber analysts (L1, L2, & L3) that are committed to deciphering warnings, searching down threats, and discriminating between false positives and genuine threats.

Acting as a virtual extension of in-house resources, a managed SOC relieves organizations of the responsibility of hiring and managing day-to-day staff for security operations.

A Managed SOC’s key responsibilities are as follows:

• Alerts and Events Monitoring 
• Alert Analysis and Investigation
• Incident Response
• Breach Detection
• Threat Intelligence and Hunting

• 24/7 Security Monitoring, A Critical Feature! 

The enhancement of security incident detection through continuous monitoring and data analysis is a fundamental benefit of establishing a Security Operations Center. SOC teams are vital in ensuring fast identification and response to security issues by examining the activity throughout an organization’s infrastructure.

Organizations benefit from SOC’s 24/7 monitoring to protect against events and incursions, regardless of source, time, or attack type.

• Big Teams – More Warm Bodies

Security Operations Centers are often the first line of defense between companies and cybercrime. But the fact remains that, despite their being vital, SOCs have some challenges they need to tackle to continue being the flood barrier between a company and possible attacks.  

With the evolving cyber threat landscape, it is important that organizations not only maintain their security controls but also continue to evolve their ability to detect and respond to threats faster and better. However, building a SOC with the right balance of people and security controls can prove to be challenging.

Current Challenges Of Managed SOC

Too much technology, too many warnings, and not enough personnel – Yes, SOC teams are overwhelmed by these problems. Since they can’t keep up, many people are compelled to overlook alerts that should be investigated further. This makes it difficult to simplify processes and reduce the time it takes to discover and mitigate security breaches.

That’s how SOC does have a few pitfalls as well:

1. Alerts

Today’s top difficulty for SOCs is massive alerts, which can lead to Alert Fatigue. This phrase explains the performance loss experienced by employees who must respond to a large number of notifications. The key problem in a modern SOC is prioritizing alerts by assessing the urgency and relevance of the event to choose which one to emphasize.

2. False Positive

The fact that most alerts are false positives adds to the stress and reduces the efficacy of analysts’ reactions. According to research, more than half of respondents reported a rate of false-positive alerts of 50% or greater, resulting in analysts spending the majority of their time monitoring a high volume of alerts. So instead of a wild goose chase, SOC analysts should acknowledge this tendency and quickly determine if an alert is true or false and if it is severe enough to handle immediately or at a later stage.

3. Threat Intelligence

Every outsourced SOC needs to provide effective threat intelligence services along with manual management. Once an alert has been deemed necessary enough to investigate further, analysts require Threat intelligence (TI) to enrich the accompanying data and analyze the complete breadth of the breach to encompass all affected systems. 

An outsourced Security Operations Center (SOC) is a critical part of an organization’s cybersecurity strategy as it provides access to up-to-date threat databases. Only a cybersecurity services provider can afford to staff a Threat Intelligence (TI) department that identifies and detects all types of new malicious codes. TI can assist in determining if the systems are compromised and what the source of the breach/attack could be.

4. Automation

A SOC is in charge of preventing any cyber attacks on an organization’s infrastructure. Many organizations find it challenging to maintain a track of security operations.  

As SOCs are useless without the professional analysts who operate them, a balanced approach is in demand for automation. By balancing automation with human intelligence and analysis, teams get equipped with the optimal tool for the job.

5. Dashboard

Many Security Operations Centers (SOCs) lack a central dashboard for monitoring total alerts, total incidents, and their breakdown with respect to severity, analysis, categories, and more. Dashboards compare key metrics against predetermined benchmarks, including MTTR (Mean Time To Recovery), MTTD (Mean Time To Detect/Discover), number of incidents by type, and much more. They can view overall efficiency metrics and measure the individual performance of the SOC team members in the organization, which helps in improving efficiency over time.

6. Remediation

A suitable remediation process is always necessary regarding the threats and events. The majority of SOC analysts neglect this step.

Remediation ensures that the organization effectively mitigates the threat and communicates with affected parties. It is not sufficient for SOC teams to send alarms and review logs. Assisting companies in efficiently recovering from an event should be a key component of SOC.

Read Part 2: Managed XDR – A quick rundown