IR-4(14) — Security Operations Center

Supplemental Guidance

A security operations center (SOC) is the focal point for security operations and computer network defense for an organization. The purpose of the SOC is to defend and monitor an organization’s systems and networks (i.e., cyber infrastructure) on an ongoing basis. The SOC is also responsible for detecting, analyzing, and responding to cybersecurity incidents in a timely manner. The organization staffs the SOC with skilled technical and operational personnel (e.g., security analysts, incident response personnel, systems security engineers) and implements a combination of technical, management, and operational controls (including monitoring, scanning, and forensics tools) to monitor, fuse, correlate, analyze, and respond to threat and security-relevant event data from multiple sources. These sources include perimeter defenses, network devices (e.g., routers, switches), and endpoint agent data feeds. The SOC provides a holistic situational awareness capability to help organizations determine the security posture of the system and organization. A SOC capability can be obtained in a variety of ways. Larger organizations may implement a dedicated SOC while smaller organizations may employ third-party organizations to provide such a capability.