Why Having a Security Operations Centre (SOC) Is Essential & How FutureRange Can Help

Security, Insights

Cyber security is one of the most important business considerations in this day and age. Automation through botnets has been increasing attack volume, and it’s estimated that they are responsible for 31% of all cyberattacks on enterprise networks.

Attacks come in all shapes and sizes (ransomware, supply chain attacks, credential theft, etc.), and a majority of them are delivered via phishing. But even phishing itself is morphing.

While email-based phishing is still by far the most prevalent category, phishing via SMS is fast becoming a dangerous threat. Text message-based phishing attacks skyrocketed over 700% in the first half of 2021.

Then there is ransomware, one of the most devastating and costly types of attacks. Just one infection can take a business down for a week or more, costing it millions of dollars in remediation and lost business costs.

What makes IT security and threat detection even more challenging is that these many types of threats are often intertwined. Phishing can be used to release ransomware or send unsuspecting recipients to a fake login page designed to steal credentials. A credential breach can result in business email compromise attacks.

We’re highlighting all these different threats and how they’re connected to emphasise the need for a centralised method of identifying and stopping them from invading your network and devices. This holistic cyber security solution is a Security Operations Centre (SOC).

 

What Is a SOC?

A security operations centre is a single operation/solution/service that handles all cyber security for your organisation in one place. This includes vital activities, such as:

  • Prevention
  • Monitoring
  • Detection
  • Response
  • Investigation

One of the most important aspects of the SOC is that real humans are interacting with cyber security technology to provide oversight and a coordinated effort. Without that, you’re just relying on software that is simply doing what’s programmed and that can have glitches or limitations.

The infosec experts that run a SOC work to create a cohesive security strategy across your entire technology infrastructure, including data, endpoints, network, remote teams, IoT devices, software, and cloud environments.

Now, when you read all that, you’re likely to think that a SOC sounds great for protecting your company from dangerous cyber threats, but it also sounds expensive.

Well, it doesn’t have to be. We’ll tell you why next.

 

What FutureRange Offers for an Affordable SOC Solution

If you were to build your physical and virtual security operations centre yourself and man it 24/7 with capable support staff, then that would be a large investment. However, you can enjoy the same level of professional, coordinated protection for much less by using managed SOC services.

Working with FutureRange you skip the part where you must build the SOC yourself. Instead, we can provide you with 24/7 SOC service and a team of experts well-versed in all aspects of IT security.

Here are some of the ways that managed SOC services can help your business.

 

Save Time, Money, & Manpower

You gain the benefit of infosec experts without having to put them on your payroll. Full-time monitoring is also part of the deal and costs much less than trying to staff your own SOC around the clock.

 

Coordinated Visibility Into All Threats

When you don’t have a centralised security operations centre, it’s hard to connect the dots to find a breach and eliminate the damage. For example, you may not see that during a ransomware attack a spyware script was also injected into your network to carry out a completely different type of attack.

Our fully managed SOC service includes AI-powered analysis that seeks out command and control connections between different types of threats. This allows us to better mitigate the damage if an attack occurs and ensure malicious code is completely removed.

 

Consistent Security Policies

The average organisation uses 254 different applications, but less than half are actively used by employees. Without any holistic and connected security control, each of those apps can have completely different security protocols. This leads to data leakage and account breaches.

For example, you may have multi-factor authentication enabled in some accounts, while others are left unprotected. Security policies for data protection may exist in some cloud storage platforms, but not in others.

Our SOC services include creating and enforcing consistent security policies across your cloud and on-premises platforms. This mitigates vulnerabilities and hidden threats.

 

Continuous Monitoring & Threat Response

Hackers don’t take weekends or holidays off. They often attack when you least expect it, and many times the actual breach can come months before the malicious code is activated and you realise what has happened.

Our managed SOC solution provides you with peace of mind that no matter what time of day or night, someone is keeping a watchful eye on your network. We use state-of-the-art tools to ensure any anomalies are dealt with immediately.

 

Learn More About FutureRange’s Managed SOC Services

While putting a security operations centre in place may sound complicated, it’s actually just the opposite. We work to streamline and simplify your IT security to make it better.

Contact us today to schedule a consultation. Call +353 1 2960 560 (Dublin) +353 6140 0230 (Limerick) or reach us online.

 

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