Security Operations Center (SOC): Traditional vs. vSOC vs. mSOC

Modern cyber attacks require modern solutions to combat them. And the security operations center (SOC) is one of the best examples of keeping defenses in line with technology advancements and emerging cyber threats. From the traditional SOC to the virtual SOC (vSOC) to the modern SOC (mSOC), each offers a great way to protect your business. Here’s how:

Traditional Security Operations Center (SOC)

The traditional security operations center (SOC) is an in-house team responsible for 24/7 threat monitoring, prevention, detection, and investigation. They’re also first on the scene for incident response once an attack gets discovered. Their job is simple: Safeguard their organization’s most valuable assets or crown jewels as we like to call them.

These include:

• Intellectual property (patents, trade secrets, designs, etc.)
• Employee information
• Business systems and applications
• Production lines and operational uptime
• Brand reputation
• Customer data
• Supply chain integrity

So how does the SOC protect these assets? The first step is designing and implementing the organization’s cybersecurity strategy or “game plan” to achieve security resilience. They’ll also need to coordinate with other departments, such as IT, legal, and financial teams. Why? To ensure they have the resources and system access to maintain security and compliance.

SOCs take the lead in adopting processes and technology to assess risk, track network activity, and respond to threats. A Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system is one such tool. It’s like having your own high-tech security guard who tirelessly sifts through data to spot cyber threats.

Ultimately, traditional SOC teams offer a centralized organizational function that employs people, processes, and technology to achieve cybersecurity goals.

Prevention and Detection

What do you think is more expensive?

1. Paying for new security measures that protect against cyber threats?
2. Paying for incident response, digital forensics, legal penalties, regulatory fines, and professional services teams (legal, PR, etc.) after an attack is delivered?

Most would guess the latter. And you’d be correct!

That’s why it’s always better to prevent a cyber incident than react to one. And a SOC team offers 24/7 prevention capabilities. They constantly monitor the network for potential threats — preventing a cyber attack altogether or at least “softening the blow.”

Investigation

SOC teams constantly put themselves in the attacker’s shoes. This helps with threat analysis, which predicts where and how an attack might come from based on common trends and specific vulnerabilities.

Using those insights, they can look for suspicious activity to track key indicators of compromise (IoCs) — letting the SOC understand the nature of a threat and assess how far it has penetrated the IT infrastructure.

They’ll also apply global threat intelligence to perform triage. For example, reports indicate that ransomware attacks increased 29% in 2024 Q1 compared to the previous year, with 1,283 successful attacks recorded. Knowing this, a SOC team can beef up its controls in highly targeted areas, patch vulnerabilities, and improve its malware detection systems accordingly.

Response

SOC teams are essentially first responders in cyberspace. Immediately upon discovering a threat, they work to isolate and remove it, then notify appropriate team members for further remediation action.

Post-incident, they also help restore lost or compromised systems and recover lost data by wiping and restarting endpoint devices, reconfiguring systems, or deploying backup environments.

Virtual Security Operations Center (vSOC)

Offering remote security operations management, many companies have turned to the virtual security operations center (vSOC). It provides nearly identical capabilities to the traditional SOC, such as comprehensive activity and threat data monitoring and continuous network surveillance, but as an outsourced service. As such, there are unique benefits to vSOC:

• You get access to broad cybersecurity expertise and tools to protect your assets
• It’s much more cost-friendly since you don’t have to invest in a full-time, in-house SOC team or resources
• vSOC services are scalable and flexible; they can adapt as the business grows, security needs change, or you have to meet new compliance requirements

Building an in-house SOC team demands high upfront costs and security expertise — making vSOCs so appealing. You get experienced, certified analysts who undergo continuous training and are adept at spotting potential threats and responding quickly to them, but for a fraction of the cost.

One downside of vSOCs, however, is that your data gets accessed externally. By leaving it in the hands of an outside company, a 3rd-party breach could ultimately put your business at risk. vSOCs also might not offer service customization for your specific IT infrastructure, compliance, and overall security needs.

Modern Security Operations Center (mSOC)

Now, the new kid on the block: The modern security operations center (mSOC). mSOC is a status (like a badge of honor) given based on your technology and data handling capabilities. Gartner defines it as a SOC that can:

• Collect vast amounts of network data
• Enrich data with security intelligence for effective big data analysis
• Use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to automate threat analysis, predictive analytics, and incident response

It’s not only about the capabilities, however. Key mSOC responsibilities simply offer more than the usual detection and response functions of a traditional SOC:

• Risk Management: Identifies, manages, and prioritizes cyber risks to help decide which risks to take and how to mitigate them. mSOCs also provide tools to implement automated risk assessment frameworks.
• Vulnerability Management: Automates regular vulnerability assessments and quickly patches system flaws based on risks identified.
• Compliance: Continuously assesses compliance needs by the organization to help it adhere to industry standards and regulations like GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, and many more.
• Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR): Curates and tracks data used during post-incident analysis and legal preparation. It also has forensic tools to run detailed investigations and determine what happened during an attack.
• Situational and Security Awareness: Brings awareness to threats that provide insights you can share during employee security awareness training.
• Research and Development: Provides tools and techniques to stay ahead of emerging threats while collecting data to contribute to developing cutting-edge technologies and cybersecurity research.

A Security Operations Center (SOC) Supports a Modern Cybersecurity Strategy

If you’re contemplating investing in a traditional SOC, implementing remote management through a vSOC, or making the leap to an mSOC through cutting-edge tools, congratulations! You’ve proven your commitment to robust security and are on the path to cyber resilience.

The only wrong SOC solution is having no SOC. It’s a must-have to protect your organizational assets and stay ahead of emerging cyber threats in the long run.