What is SecOps? Everything You Need To Know in 6 Easy Points

Introduction

Many companies are increasingly relying on Information Technology for information and transaction processing. The growth of E-commerce requires the support of Internet growth. It has been completely transformed and has simultaneously generated the need for re-engineered business processes. 

Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that IT security is on high priority. Companies are in multiple ways depending on the technology for their business operations. It is of utmost importance of the involvement of IT operations in the preparation, formulation and implementation of IT security policies and procedures in the company. 

SecOps is an answer to the query of increasing the coordination between IT security and operational teams that will eventually facilitate the stakeholders’ achievement of objectives. 

In this article let us look at:

1. SecOps Definition
2. Social Roles and Responsibilities of SOC (Security Operation Centre)
3. What does a Security Operations Center do?
4. SecOps Tools
5. Benefits and Risks of SOC Automation
6. Future Of SecOps

1. SecOps Definition

SecOps establishes coordination between IT security and IT operations to safeguards the assets from various physical and technicals hazards for the effective and efficient functioning of the valuable assets. It provides the integration of tools, procedures, and technology that enables to safeguard the enterprise’s assets that reduce the risk.

2. Social Roles and Responsibilities of SOC (Security Operation Centre)

As the utilization of Information technology is on the rise, especially amid this pandemic, it is necessary for assessing, monitoring, and protecting corporate assets. It is essential to cooperate with the SOC team for improving security operations through all levels of the organization.

There are various SecOps roles and responsibilities defined for SOC Team. To get acquainted with the responsibilities, you need to take note of the roles of personnel to meet the objectives of its formation. 

The are various crucial roles that are formulated for the SOC team, which are:

• Incident responder
• Security Investigator
• Advanced security analyst
• SOC manager
• Security Engineer/ Architect

SOC Team should ensure that valuable assets are specially identified, analyzed, monitored and controlled. 

The responsibilities of a SOC in cybersecurity:

• Implementation and Management of Security Tools: 

The SOC Team should have expertise in the technological environment to select the enterprise’s most appropriate security tools. There are various security tools such as firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention technology, threat, vulnerability, detection, and management tools. 

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Tools assist in security events and provide alerts for experts to analyze the threats. SIEM tools include new dimensions like User and Entity Behaviour Analytics (UEBA) and Security Orchestration and Automation (SOAR), which are efficient and effective for the threat’s identification. 

• Investigation and Prevention of Suspicious Activities: 

SOC Team Identifies and analyses the abnormal activities within IT systems and Networks with the help of security monitoring tools. An organization may not be able to eliminate the threats but can limit its reach. 

• Ensuring of Business Continuity: 

An enterprise should ensure that the minimum level of operations is conducted within a minimum period to avoid the disruption of critical business operations. SOC Teams should have alternative plans to allow the continuity of the minimum level of operations. Efforts should be made to mitigate the risks at the entry-level to not affect critical business infrastructure and resources. 

• Shared Service Centers: 

SOCs have functioned as shared service centres that help to achieve the business objectives of the business stakeholders. It is necessary to provide a framework for SOC’s operating model and its governance. Identification of critical business operation that will assist in emergency activities. 

• Auditing Systems: 

A SOC has the responsibility of compliance requirements of rules, regulations, and guidelines by the auditing systems. The compliance requires efficient access to threat information, patch levels, identity and access control data.  

3. What does a Security Operations Center do?  

The initial function must be to monitor events, identification of data breaches, response to such incidents, and provide a remedy for the consequences of the detected event. 

It must be of paramount importance that all the actions must be in cooperation with business operations.  

To achieve the business goals effectively, the organization can implement any one of four SOC models: 

• Virtual SOC: It functions online and manages the internal staff or external service level agreements that are entered with SecOps professionals. 

• Multifunction SOC: It is not integrated within the business operations and has space dedicated to its functionality. 

• Hybrid SOC: It is formed with staff, third-party contractors or a combination of both parties in a dedicated virtual space. 

• Dedicated SOC: It is dedicated to the activities 24×7 without any interruption. 

4. SecOps Tools

You can ensure to include the following best SecOps tools in your routine security operations: 

• To automate test systems, Security Operation Centre security can opt for tools such as Chef, Puppet, Ansible, and SaltStack.  

• Incident response automation tools such as Infocyte HUNT will enable the organization to give a quick response.   

• Enterprises can opt for automated security tools such as OS Query, PagerDuty, AWS CloudTrail, and OSSEC. 

5. Benefits and Risks of SOC Automation

• Benefits Of SOC Automation: 

1) It has the initial benefit of enhanced coordination between IT Security and operational teams. 

2) It enables early detection of cyberattacks that ensures the number of breaches reduction and providing data protection. 

3) It allows compliance with privacy and security requirements. 

4) The professional provides the input at the entry of vulnerability, thus ensuring in lowering of the destruction. 

5) SecOps Teams ensure threat detection and give alerts by not getting distracted by fake possibilities. 

• Risks Of SOC Automation: 

There is a fear of manual job getting displaced for automated ones. Also, attackers are often prone to exploit Artificial Intelligence capabilities. The implementation cost of this system in the whole enterprise can be an expensive event that will substantially affect the budget. 

6. Future Of SecOps

SecOps have a varied scope of development in the virtual world that is continuously emerging. SOC’s will be highly-automated and virtualized. It will be as per the specifications that will meet the needs of the innovative organizations. 

It will analyze, evaluate and provide the decisions for the organizations. The team would be required to be highly professional to stay ahead of the attackers and hackers. 

Conclusion 

SecOps is a perfect example of an application of holistic information security in the enterprise. It collaborates the business strategies with the processes to ensure the cybersecurity of the IT systems. It enables the resumption of the business processes within a minimum length of time. The SecOps best practice includes providing training for its effective implementation and, as mentioned before, providing the team with effective SecOps tools. 

SOC Teams require leadership, training, careful deployment and motivation for their successful implementation within the enterprise. Its implementation involves complexity. However, the collective efforts will ensure the same. 

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