One of the questions I often get from clients is: "Jetro, why do we need a SOC, a Security Operations Center?" My answer is you don't need a SOC if you have a great team in-house that is available 24/7, always up-to-date, knows the latest tactics, and keeps a good eye on everything that's going on in your security real estate.
In reality
Of course, in reality, that doesn't happen that often. Typically, an organization has 5 or 10 IT people, and they do everything. They onboard new colleagues, they keep the printers and the WiFi working, they have to test new applications and roll them out. And then you're going to ask them to, on top of that, do a 24/7 monitoring of their entire security events and respond on time? That is tricky.
So what I typically say is a SOC costs between 1 and 1.5 FTE.
But this FTE never goes to sleep because it's the whole team behind it. So it's available 24/7.
This FTE never falls ill because there's a whole team behind it.
And this FTE is always up-to-date on the latest cyber threats, trends, technologies, and practices because we get trained all the time.
Basically, you can offload or delegate that responsibility to a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP), which means that your people are now free to work on real valuable things for your organization. Things that only they can do because it's something really internal.
Now, the beauty of this is that if you have a good external SOC, they also have a lot of automation, and so a lot of things will get handled automatically. In this way, you can unburden your team and keep them focused on the things that really matter and bring business value.
Conclusion
So why do you need a SOC? You don't always need one, but typically, especially in the SMB market where you only have 5 or 10 IT folks doing everything, it is wise to have an external SOC.
And with that said, have a wonderful day and see you next time.
Jetro
I help European Organizations Strengthen Their Digital Security & Compliance
Outcome: Reduced Risk 🔸 Improved Cyber Resilience 🔸 More Peace of Mind
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