An Overview on the Modern, Cloud-Native SOC Platform

Originally published by Panther here.

Written by Mark Stone, Panther.

For the modern security team, the concepts of Security Operations Center (SOC) and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) are well known and have become increasingly crucial.

To defend against the wide range of cyber threats out there today, the SOC and modern SIEM solutions must work hand-in-hand more than ever before.

In this article, we’ll explore why these two individual concepts are so critical for your security and why a powerful, modern SIEM is an essential tool to support a team’s SOC.

But first, it’s important to briefly explore how security operations have changed (hint: they’ve changed dramatically) in the last few years.

How Security Operations Have Changed Since 2019

Remember the pre-pandemic world? It probably feels like another universe compared to the world we know today. Security operations were one area where significant changes took place, shaking up everything we were used to in just a few months.

Here are some of the major shifts to which security teams have had to adapt.

• A surge in remote work has led to a massively expanded attack surface for companies. Instead of a centralized office, businesses now must worry about entirely remote teams, accessing sensitive data from a wide range of locations and potentially via their own personal devices.
• There has been a global shift towards more cloud computing and hybrid environments, introducing a whole new range of security considerations.
• The old security approach of dealing with threats as they become apparent is no longer sufficient. Through constant monitoring and predictive analysis, today’s SecOps teams must take a more proactive approach, focusing on anticipating and preventing attacks before they materialize.

Defining the Role of the SOC

The SOC’s name is self-explanatory — it’s a central point for all security operations, bringing together various parts of the organization to ensure its assets are constantly protected from all external and internal cyber threats.

The SOC typically functions as its own stand-alone team and is made up of highly skilled and experienced security staff. Their job is to monitor and analyze a vast amount of data with the goal of:

• Improving the organization’s security posture
• Identifying any threats before they can pose a danger
• Establishing robust plans in preparation of a potential attack
• Responding effectively and decisively if attacks do occur

How has SIEM Traditionally Supported SecOps?

SIEM solutions are designed to support the SOC in multiple ways and help share the burden of security operations.

SIEMs work by gathering and aggregating large amounts of data and then analyzing the data to identify threats by type and risk level. A SIEM is extremely valuable for SOC teams; it allows them to focus primarily on the threats that are most likely to develop into actual attacks, helping them use their resources more efficiently and improve the organization’s security posture.

The Benefits of Modern Threat Detection Platforms

SIEM technology is constantly evolving and advancing. The next generation of SIEM solutions is powerful enough to help security teams keep their organization safe in a rapidly changing security landscape.

Here are some of the benefits that define modern threat detection platforms like Panther:

• Detect more threats than ever before by helping security analysts access vast volumes of data and quickly identify which threats are most probable and most dangerous
• Detect threats quicker than before with lightning-fast queries on any data set and real-time detection on streaming data
• Respond effectively to threats quicker than before, working with existing infrastructure and using tools like Python
• No operations overhead thanks to cloud-based, serverless architecture

For today’s modern SOC teams, a cloud-native threat detection platform is an essential tool, especially with an ever-changing workplace that has compromised their visibility into data sources.

Modern threat detection and incident response (TDIR) platforms achieve the ultimate SOC team goal, as they grapple with new workforce demands: clear visibility, rapid data correlation, improved threat context, and more accurate analytics.