Challenges towards Building an effective Cyber Security Operations Centre

TL;DR

This paper discusses the critical challenges faced in establishing effective Cyber Security Operations Centres (SOCs), analyzing factors causing inefficiencies and proposing prioritized recommendations for improvement.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of challenges in building effective SOCs and offers prioritized solutions to address these issues.

Findings

Identification of key challenges in SOC effectiveness

Analysis of factors contributing to SOC inefficiencies

Prioritized recommendations for improving SOC performance

Abstract

The increasing dependency of modern society on IT systems and infrastructures for essential services (e.g. internet banking, vehicular network, health-IT, etc.) coupled with the growing number of cyber incidents and security vulnerabilities have made Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC) undoubtedly vital. As such security operations monitoring is now an integral part of most business operations. SOCs (used interchangeably as CSOCs) are responsible for continuously and protectively monitoring business services, IT systems and infrastructures to identify vulnerabilities, detect cyber-attacks, security breaches, policy violations, and to respond to cyber incidents swiftly. They must also ensure that security events and alerts are triaged and analysed, while coordinating and managing cyber incidents to resolution. Because SOCs are vital, it is also necessary that SOCs are effective. But unfortunately, the effectiveness of SOCs are a widespread concern and a focus of boundless debate. In this paper, we identify and discuss some of the pertinent challenges to building an effective SOC. We investigate some of the factors contributing to the inefficiencies in SOCs and explain some of the challenges they face. Further, we provide and prioritise recommendations to addressing the identified issues.