Are you the right choice for a SOC team?

The technology landscape is improving very rapidly. However, it is also closely followed by the growing threat of cyber threats. Thus, resulting in the growing demand for talented cybersecurity professionals who can join the SOC team.

Read More: EC-Council Certified Encryption Specialist (ECES)

The SOC team continuously monitors and analysis the security measures implemented by the organization. Moreover, it also helps in defending against security breaches and mitigating security risks. In this article, we will discuss the skills required to join the SOC team and the basic responsibilities of a SOC team.

Skills Required to Join a SOC Team

The security operations center usually assigns security analysts to work at one of the three levels depending on the experience. Tier I analyst receives and looks into alerts daily. Tier II analyst addresses real security incidents, and Tier III analysts, who are more experienced deal with critical incidents. The following are some of the skills to join the security operations center team.

1. Networking

To maximize damages, cyber threats are largely dependent upon computer networks. It is very rare to have a cyber-attack on a system that is not networked. Therefore, it is crucial that you are skilled and experienced with the fundamentals of networking if you have to join the SOC team. More often than not, security analysts are given information from network device logs. Therefore, you have to know which information means what and how it will impact your analysis.

2. Security

After having an understanding of networking, it is crucial to understand the security fundamentals as well. Having a good understanding of cyber threats allows you to identify behaviors and patterns during your analysis. As you go through the log data, you must quickly identify dangerous or suspicious activities. This is only possible if you have mastered security fundamentals.

3. Incident Response

Working within a SOC team is crucial for the security analyst to have knowledge and know-how of the incident response and handling process. Of course, not all security analysts are involved in the incident response, but most are involved to some extent. Therefore, it is important to know the best practices of incident response and handling.

4. Documenting Incidents

Another important skill for the security analyst who is working with the SOC team is to document incidents. Moreover, incidents are often escalated and passed around within the team. Therefore, it is also good to have good communication skills. Any actions that are taken during the incident response have to be documented properly. It is because this information might be used in legal proceedings.

Responsibilities of a SOC Team

1. Implement Security Tools

SOC team is responsible for implementing and managing security tools to gain insight into the organization’s security environment. Some of the basic tools that the SOC team members work with include intrusion detection systems, intrusion prevention systems, firewalls, and data analytics platforms.

2. Detect, Contain, and Prevent Threats

Another basic responsibility of the SOC team members is to detect, contain, and prevent cyber threats from happening and causing damage to the organization. SOC team members look into various suspicious activities taking place on the network inside the system using the monitoring tools. The team members also perform triage on the alerts received and then respond accordingly.

3. Ensure Business Continuity

Organizations must ensure that their systems are running with no or minimal downtime. Therefore, during a data breach, it is the responsibility of the SOC team to ensure business continuity. It is their responsibility to contain the breach before it reaches key business infrastructure.

4. Audit and Compliance Support

The SOC team members are also responsible for auditing the systems to meet the compliance requirements set by corporate, industry, and government regulations. The SOC team uses security tools such as SIEM, which collects data from across the organization to generate compliance audits and reports.

Source: eccouncil.org