Overview of different Security Architectures of SOC

Organizations had to take measures to protect their IT systems. A Security operations center (SOC) is a centralized unit for Organization where its employees’ people, process, and technology. The purpose of a Security Operations Center is to prevent, analyze, and ensure cybersecurity within the organization. To prevent and respond to attack these teams have the necessary tools and software. They also investigate possible anomalies related to the company which could eventually turn into future attacks and performs thorough analyses to look for any security breach to correct it before it causes any severe consequence.

SOC services not only try to defend business when it is the victim of a cyber-attack, but they also focus on preventing and analyzing any possible security breach. It’s not only a question of customer protection anymore, but that of employees and the company itself: there are private and confidential data to which non-authorized people from outside the company should not have access. Therefore, whether it’s a large or small, public, or private company, one should consider the implantation of a Security Operations Center.

The business values possessed by successful SOC are

• Business critical information protection.
• IT policy governance
• Improved confidence and capability to manage security incidents and breaches
• Proactive risk reduction against highlighted threats and vulnerabilities
• A single, consolidated view of all security information from every device
• Timely and meaningful security analysis based on correlated, contextual data

Implementing security architecture is often a confusing process in enterprises. Traditionally, security architecture consists of some preventive, detective and corrective controls that are implemented to protect the enterprise infrastructure and applications. These organizations are often faced with the difficult decision whether they should insource or outsource their security capability and this decision depend on several key factors like the current capability of internal support teams, the organization’s culture, the available funds for developing such a capability, and cost-benefit analysis of each possible operating models. There are several models available and they are

• Internal (Enterprise) Security Architecture model
• Cloud based Security Architecture model
• Partnered SOC model
• Externally managed Security Architecture model

Internal (Enterprise) Security Architecture model

Enterprise architecture (EA) is the practice of analyzing, designing, planning, and implementing enterprise analysis to successfully execute on business strategies focusing on information security throughout the enterprise. It’s commits to build an internal security team capable of handling the aspects of security, which includes risk managements, strategy, architecture, and operations. It requires a heavy investment in the aspects of cost, it’s very expensive to hire the technology expert, and then to implement technology which need maintenance 24*7.  

Cloud based Security Architecture model

Cloud based Security Architecture is a shared cloud responsibility model, where the provider and consumer both holds the responsibility. The most important thing to build the cloud computing security architecture is planning the visibility of the performance management strategy, of the cloud network. All cloud architecture models require performance management tools and strategy, the security architecture varies based on the type of service delivery model — software-as-a-service (SaaS), infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), or platform-as-a-service model (PaaS) and operational models- public, private and hybrid. Platforms like Amazon AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud provides basic security features including support for authentication, DoS attack mitigation, firewall policy management, logging, basic user, and profile management. It is the cheapest model compared to others.

Partnered SOC model

Increasingly, organizations are choosing to outsource elements of SOC operation – creating a partnered model.  The partnered SOC approach uses a mix of in house and outsourced technologies, where in most of the case, outsourced security staff will work hand in hand with your core business functions and critical IT functions to increase the risk visibility and greater security maturity. The hybrid model suits organizations that will never fully outsource their entire security capability, but for the price of one or two full time staff, they can access the expertise and monitoring capabilities of the MSSP.

Externally managed Security Architecture model

Some organizations may wish to fully outsource their SOC service from the outset. This model is particularly popular with organizations that have limited IT resources that are focused on running the business and are not security specialists. It is typically a more cost-effective service. However, governance over the contract and ensuring the Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) is operating to your service levels is critical to success.