Security Operation Center (SOC) – Customized cybersecurity solutions for small and medium-sized businesses

Against the backdrop of ever-increasing threats from cyber attacks, companies and organizations are faced with the following questions:

• Is my company sufficiently secured against cyber attacks?
• Which unknown gaps and vulnerabilities lie dormant in the company’s IT and endanger my business processes or pose a significant risk to my company?
• How can I increase information security in my company, if possible without additional costs, and bring it up to the state of the art?

Medium-sized and smaller companies in particular often find it difficult to address the issue holistically and bring information security to an appropriate level of protection across the board due to low staffing levels, a lack of expertise in IT security and limited budgets.
Outsourcing parts or all of the essential tasks for information security to an external specialist – a so-called Security Operation Center (SOC) or Cyber Defense Center (CDC) – offers a solution approach here that can be flexibly adapted to the requirements of each company.
A SOC/CDC is a service provider specializing in information security that is linked to the company’s IT and acts as a kind of security control center, taking over large parts or just selectively certain security services that would normally have to be covered by the company’s IT department:

• Security-related monitoring of corporate IT
• Proactive addressing of threat situations through threat intelligence
• Detection and elimination of vulnerabilities in IT systems and processes
• Detection and alerting in the event of cyber attacks
• Defensive measures and damage limitation
• Customer-related support and reporting on security issues

Highly specialized cybersecurity experts, including security architects, analysts and forensic specialists, work 24×7 on the premises of the SOC/CDC service provider. As in a command post, all security-related information is displayed on screens in real time and they can react immediately in the event of anomalies. The working method is characterized by optimal and integrated tool support, a high degree of automation of the analyses as well as the optimal team structure and communication of the SOC team.
Depending on the specific requirements of a customer, different service models of cooperation can be defined, which allow outsourcing only certain parts, or almost all security services to the SOC/CDC service provider. The advantages of using a SOC/CDC are obvious:

• Fast and effective response through automation and use of specialists.
• Protection against the current threat situation
• Continuous documentation and traceability
• No need to build up internal staff
• Holistic protection concept and customized solutions possible depending on customer requirements
• Demonstrable adherence to legal requirements and compliance

Especially for smaller companies and medium-sized businesses, outsourcing essential IT security services to an external specialist opens up the possibility of achieving a high level of protection and state-of-the-art IT security. Due to the different service models and great flexibility, the services of a SOC service provider can be ideally tailored to customer requirements. It is usually not necessary to build up additional internal resources or experts for information security.