Building The Case For SOC/NOC Integration

SOC / NOC integration improves efficiency and effectiveness

What is a SOC? (Security Operations Center) and What is a NOC? (Network Operations Center) both perform essential functions in the network. And while each performs a different function, there are significant overlaps that can be leveraged to create more efficiency and effectiveness in one's organization.

SOC staff must assess and respond quickly to security events to resolve cybersecurity problems before they can adversely impact the business, while NOC staff are responsible for ensuring that the network maximizes availability and ensuring that bandwidth and demand can be handled correctly.

Your SOC and your NOC have a demanding job that they have to manage constantly, but their goals are different. When your network has both types of operations centers, can they operate together? Are there layoffs that can be eliminated?

Maximize concentration: identify and eliminate SOC / NOC layoffs

Redundancy is excellent when it comes to the number of network devices, servers and data storage devices available. Additional infrastructure is required to continue responding to network requests in the event of a component failure or to adequately manage periods of high network demand.

But when it comes to SOC and NOC repetitive tasks and functions, redundancy can be ineffective and expensive for your organization. What if you integrate your SOC and your NOC? Are there any benefits?

Suppose a network anomaly is detected. A device stops working, for example. Someone who thinks like a SOC analyst will wonder if the device has been hacked. A person who thinks like an NOC analyst will wonder if the device has failed for a reason unrelated to cyber security. If SOC finds no evidence of a cyber attack, continue. If the device is not working properly due to a cyber attack, the NOC may not be equipped to recognize it.

In this case - and a multitude of others that occur daily in SOCs and NOCs around the world - it would be much more effective for SOC and NOC to join forces rather than duplicate their efforts. Separately, security operations and network operations can be plagued by problems with one hand not knowing what the other hand is doing. Together, a company can significantly save on labor costs by combining centers and improving their overall efficiency.

Bring your NOC and SOC together

The NOCs and SOCs have intervention and intervention teams, call centers and surveillance. Both centers work hard to ensure the integrity and availability of IT resources and can work well together, but few companies really integrate these functions.

Of course, the way you bring the two teams together determines your level of success.

A properly integrated SOC / NOC, otherwise known as the Integrated Operations Center (IOC), converges at three different levels:

• Organizational level: includes cross correlation, identification of models from shared NOC / SOC monitoring tools, ordering and collaboration.
• System level: includes standard operating procedures, process integration and service level agreements (SLA).
• Activity level: implies the shared use of a common information aggregator that collects all relevant network monitoring data and logs and distributes them through integrated tools and dashboards.

The potential to improve incident response and overall network efficiency should already be evident. Let's see what this means for the different levels of NOC and SOC.

Maximum integration can be done on the first level. This level has similar functions in SOCs and NOCs: alert monitoring, ordering of alerts and monitoring of the integrity of the network and safety sensors.