Packt+ | Advance your knowledge in tech

You're reading from Information Security Handbook

Product typeBook

Published inDec 2017

Publisher

ISBN-139781788478830

Edition1st Edition

Concepts

Information Security

Author (1)

Darren Death

Chapter 9. Developing a Security Operations Center

The security operations center (SOC) serves as your centralized view into your overall enterprise organization infrastructure and individual information systems. The security operations center's goal is to ensure that this view is as real time as possible so that your organization can identify and respond to internal and external threats as quickly as possible, helping to ensure the continued confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your organization's information systems.

Think of the SOC as the technological equivariant of the physical security controls implemented by your organization.

In this chapter, we will be discussing:

The responsibilities of the security operations center
Security operations center tool management
Security operations center tool design
Security operations center roles
Security operations center processes and procedures
Internal versus outsourced security operations center

From the physical security world, you have...

Responsibilities of the SOC

The SOC is responsible for the continuous identification and remediation of threats that occur on your enterprise network. If this seems familiar, it should be, as this comes from the previous chapter on incident response. Typically, it is your SOC team that will be charged with executing substantial portions of the incident response plan. Therefore, most well planned SOCs mirror much of the process that is defined in an organization's incident response plan.

Regardless of the size of your organization, the necessity to develop an effective security operations center is essential. A security operations center is an incredibly important part of your overall information security program investment and is a key component in ensuring that your organization is being properly protected from internal and external threats.

The SOC capabilities that you can implement are directly tied to your organization's personnel resources, funding, and so on. This means that a startup...

Management of security operations center tools

The SOC team must ensure that the tools used to monitor the enterprise information systems are properly secured and maintained. It will be very difficult, if not impossible to properly secure modern, complex, interconnected information systems without the aid of well-maintained and properly functioning information security tools. The SOC team must have a toolset capability at their disposal that allows them to have visibility throughout the information systems that they are responsible for monitoring.

Note

Visibility into your organizational information systems is one of the most important aspects of a well-developed information security program. The reality is that even with a suite of well-developed security controls and a strong risk management program, intrusions will occur. How your organization responds to a future intrusion will determine whether you have a costly data exposure that could ultimately lead your organization to an untimely...

Security operation center toolset design

Care must be taken when developing the overall design of your organization's SOC toolset, drawing upon the maturity developed during the implementation of your overall information security program. The development of your SOC toolset should center on what is important to your organization's missions, and ultimately being able to ensure that your organization continues to be able to exercise that mission.

You must ensure that you work with your stakeholders to determine key information such as:

Sensitive organizational data
Sensitive information technology assets
Your organization's risk appetite
Allowable business process disruption
How information systems are interconnected and communicate with each other

Work with your organizational leaders and users to develop an understanding of important technical information such as:

How your business applications and databases interact with each other
How different business applications share information
How the servers...

Security operations center roles

To have an effective security operation center, it is critical that you implement the necessary personnel roles to properly operate and maintain the environment. In the following list, you will find the personnel roles needed to fully implement a security operations center. Do not get hung up on the names of the roles if they do not match those in your organization. Each organization will have its own naming convention derived from the organization's culture:

Security operations center analysts:
- Tier one: More junior information security analyst with a couple of years' experience in the information security field. Possesses a basic knowledge of networking, systems, and applications:
  1. Conducts information security tool monitoring
  2. Conducts basic investigations and mitigations
  3. Opens tickets
- Tier two: Poses a stronger knowledge of the information security tools used by the SOC as well as a deeper understanding of networking, systems, and applications:
  1. Deeper investigative...

Processes and procedures

The key component to an effectively-run SOC is well-thought-out processes and procedures. An SOC must be able to implement effective identification and remediation activities the same way all the time. Effective processes and procedures ensure that this is carried out in a repeatable and reliable fashion.

Key process and procedure categories are needed to ensure an effectively managed and operating SOC mirror the incident response life cycle and include:

Identification:
- Detection
- Analysis
Remediation:
- Containment
- Eradication
- Recovery

The following is a sample process that identifies the parties and their duties if confronted with cross-site scripting vulnerability being identified on an organizational web application:

Security operations center tools

The security operations center utilizes the tools defined in the incident response chapter of this book, and those tools should be used as a reference to build out the technical capability of a SOC.

Key tools to highlight for SOC use include:

Security information and event management (SIEM): Provides deep visibility into your network, systems, and applications. The SIEM is really where the magic happens for the SOC. The SIEM is the tool that ties your other security tools such as malware analysis and intrusion prevention tools into a unified system that can produce very intricate events and alerts. In turn, this capability can serve to provide the necessary ingredients to conduct identification and remediation activities.
Host and network-based intrusion prevention and intrusion detection systems (IPS/IDS): Perform real-time monitoring of your network and server/workstation activity.
Vulnerability scanners: Identify vulnerable systems on your enterprise network...

Summary

In this chapter, we learned that the security operations center (SOC) serves as your centralized view into your overall enterprise organizational infrastructure.

In this chapter, we discussed:

What the responsibilities of the security operations center include
Management of security operations center tools
Design considerations for security operations center tools
Personnel roles in the security operations center
Processes and procedures required to run a security operations center
Internal versus outsourced security operations center

In the next chapter, we will discuss information security architecture concepts and implementation steps towards implementing an effective, well-integrated information security architecture program.

The rest of the chapter is locked

You have been reading a chapter from

Information Security Handbook

Published in: Dec 2017Publisher: ISBN-13: 9781788478830

A free Packt account unlocks extra newsletters, articles, discounted offers, and much more. Start advancing your knowledge today.

undefined

Unlock this book and the full library FREE for 7 days

Get unlimited access to 7000+ expert-authored eBooks and videos courses covering every tech area you can think of

Start free trial

Renews at $15.99/month. Cancel anytime

Author (1)

Darren Death

Darren Death is ASRC Federal's Chief Information Security Officer. He is responsible for managing the enterprise cybersecurity program across a 3 billion-dollar portfolio of business sectors, including financial services, government contracting, and construction. A proven technology leader with over 20 years of experience deploying enterprise systems for large private and public organizations, Darren Death has led, designed, and implemented large-scale, organizational-wide enterprise IT systems with far-reaching impact. Before joining ASRC Federal, while at the Department of Justice, he was responsible for creating a nationwide enterprise processing capability across the US Attorney, Marshalls Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms divisions. At the Library of Congress, Darren was responsible for all emerging technologies related to information security. He holds a doctoral degree in information technology, specializing in information assurance and cybersecurity.
Read more about Darren Death

Other recommended products

Related to this chapter

Infosec Strategies and Best Practices

Information security strategies and best practices help in filling the gap that exists between theory and reality. The book starts by showing you how to implement risk management and governance structures into your organization and goes on to cover the best methods for operationalizing your information security strategy.

BookMay 2021272 pages

Hands-On Security in DevOps

Hands-On Security in DevOps explores how the techniques of DevOps and Security should be applied together to make cloud services safer. By the end of this book, readers will be ready to build security controls at all layers, monitor and respond to attacks on cloud services, and add security organization-wide through risk management and training.

BookJul 2018356 pages

CISA – Certified Information Systems Auditor Study Guide

CISA - Certified Information Systems Auditor Study Guide offers complete, up-to-date coverage of the CISA exam so you can take them with confidence, fully equipped to pass first time. Written in a clear, succinct way with self-assessment questions, exam tips and mock exams with detailed answer explanations, this book covers all 5 domains of CISA certification.

BookAug 2020590 pages

Practical Cyber Intelligence

Cyber intelligence is the missing link between your cyber defense operation teams, threat intelligence, and IT operations to provide your organization with a full spectrum of defensive capabilities. This book kicks off with the need for cyber intelligence and why it is required in terms of a defensive framework.

BookMar 2018322 pages

Network Vulnerability Assessment

Being able to identify security loopholes has become critical to many businesses. That's where learning network security assessment becomes very important. This book will not only show you how to find out the system vulnerabilities but also help you build a network security threat model.

BookAug 2018254 pages

CISSP (ISC)² Certification Practice Exams and Tests

With over 1000 practice questions, explanations of all 8 domains, and 2 full exams, this book is a fantastic exam prep solution. Take the CISSP exam (version May 2021) confidently with the help of mock questions and detailed solutions and validate your skills with the CISSP (ISC)2 certification.

BookSep 2021396 pages

Network Security Strategies

After prominent market leaders have been impacted by advanced cyber threats, network security has become a top priority in terms of successfully keeping attackers from breaching networks. This book will help you design a robust network security ecosystem that helps prevent traditional and new and evolving attacks.

BookNov 2020390 pages

Security+® Practice Tests

Get ready to pass your CompTIA Security+ certification exam with the elaborate and complete practice that Security+? Practice Tests will provide you. From detailed explanations of the six domains to full-length practice tests, you’ll gain complete knowledge of what this test contains and how to ace it.

BookOct 2019390 pages

Digital Forensics and Incident Response

The staggeringly high number of security breaches reported in the last several years stresses the importance of an organization's ability to respond to attacks promptly. With this book, you'll learn forensic techniques and incident response fundamentals to investigate such incidents in your organization.

BookJul 2017324 pages

CCNA Security 210-260 Certification Guide

With a CCNA Security certification, you can demonstrate the skills required to develop a security infrastructure, recognize threats to networks, and mitigate security threats. Geared towards Cisco Security, the practical aspects of this book will help you clear the CCNA Security Exam (210-260) by increasing your knowledge of Network Security.

BookJun 2018518 pages

Digital Forensics and Incident Response

An understanding of how digital forensics integrates with the overall response to cybersecurity incidents is a must for all organizations. This book offers concrete and detailed guidance on how to conduct the full spectrum of incident response and digital forensic activities.

BookJan 2020448 pages

Architecting Cloud Computing Solutions

Cloud adoption is a core component of digital transformation. Scaling the IT environment, making it resilient, and reducing costs are what organizations want. Architecting Cloud Computing Solutions presents and explains the critical Cloud solution design considerations and technology decisions required to choose and deploy the right Cloud service and deployment models based on your business and technology service requirements.

BookMay 2018378 pages

Personalised recommendations for you

Based on your interests and search pattern

Attacking and Exploiting Modern Web Applications

Attacking and Exploiting Modern Web Attacks will help you understand how to identify attack surfaces and detect vulnerabilities. This book takes a hands-on approach to implementation and associated methodologies and equips you with the knowledge and skills needed to effectively combat web attacks.

BookAug 2023338 pages

Automotive Cybersecurity Engineering Handbook

This Automotive Cybersecurity Engineering Handbook untangles the complexities of building secure automotive products and helps you to comply with cybersecurity standards. It provides practical tools, tips, and techniques coupled with real-world examples to enable you to create cyber-resilient automotive products with ease.

BookOct 2023392 pages

Official Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Security Engineer Exam Guide

This book will help you to design, develop, and operate security controls on Google Cloud as well as discover best practices for relevant security domains, including identity and access management, network, and data.

BookAug 2023496 pages

Cloud Penetration Testing for Red Teamers

The advent of cloud networks and the AWS, Azure, and GCP platforms has revolutionized how companies of all sizes in all industries do business online. This book will help you meet the emerging demand for pentesting as it guides you through the tools, techniques, and security measures used by pentesters and red teamers in the 2020s and beyond.

BookNov 2023298 pages

ISACA Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC®) Exam Guide

ISACA Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC®) Certification Guide is an enterprise IT risk management professional’s dream. With its in-depth approach and various self-assessment exercises, this book arms you with knowledge of every single aspect of the certification, and is a fantastic career companion after you’re certified.

BookSep 2023316 pages5

Burp Suite Cookbook

Burp Suite is an immensely powerful and popular tool for web application security testing. This book provides a collection of recipes that address vulnerabilities in web applications and APIs. It offers guidance on how to configure Burp Suite, make the most of its tools, and explore into its extensions.

BookOct 2023450 pages

Building and Automating Penetration Testing Labs in the Cloud

This hands-on guide will help you design and build a variety of penetration testing labs that mimic modern cloud environments running on AWS, Azure, and GCP. In addition to these, you will explore a number of practical strategies on how to manage the complexity, cost, and security risks involved when setting up vulnerable cloud lab environments.

BookOct 2023562 pages

Ethical Hacking Workshop

As cyber-attacks grow and APT groups advance their skillset, you need to be able to protect your enterprise against cyber-attacks. In order to limit your attack surface, you need to ensure that you leverage the same skills and tools that an adversary may use to hack your environment and discover the security gaps. This book will teach you how to think like a hacker, use state-of-the-art hacking tools, and protect yourself and your organizaiton.

BookOct 2023220 pages

Windows Forensics Analyst Field Guide

This book contains step-by-step processes to guide you in any investigation related to Windows OS. You’ll find out how to acquire evidence using multiple tools as well as examine and analyze the collected artifacts, while discovering multiple techniques used in real-world forensic incidents.

BookOct 2023318 pages

Implementing DevSecOps Practices

This book is a comprehensive, hands-on guide for individuals new to DevSecOps who want to implement DevSecOps practices successfully and efficiently. With its help, you’ll be able to shift security toward the left, enabling you to merge security into coding in no time.

BookDec 2023258 pages

Process steps	Role
Identifies or receives a report of an XSS vulnerability	SOC analyst
Documents the identification/report as an incident: XSS vulnerability identified and includes the following information in the tracking form: Vulnerable site/script (URL) Source...