4 Key Processes to Maximize Security Operations Center Procedure Effectiveness

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Building a security operations center (SOC) is a major undertaking, but it’s worth the effort to keep your organization secure. To create an efficient SOC, you need to develop security operations center procedures that connect people, processes, and technologies within your organization.

In this post, we explore four key SOC procedures your team should perform when executing network security operations. We also provide examples of how the LogRhythm platform helps organizations detect emerging cybersecurity threats and protect their data.

Information Security Operations Center Best Practices

If you are making changes to your enterprise SOC or building one from scratch, you need to arm your team with the right security operations center tools and procedures effectively detect and respond to threats. Below we’ve outlined a list of processes to get your organization started.

Process 1: Classify and Triage Events

The first step is to take advantage of the best security technologies available for the SOC. This includes using security information and event management (SIEM) capabilities.

LogRhythm can help interpret your data using our NextGen SIEM, which normalizes log and machine data and can sort through data to mitigate threats and protect your network. If your team builds a SOC centered around a SIEM to normalize and enrich data, then analysts can classify events quickly and identify critical events early before damage occurs to your network and systems.

Process 2: Prioritize and Analyze

If your enterprise Security Operations Center determines a threat exists, your team needs a process to immediately prioritize and remediate the issue. When an alarm fires, you need to qualify and triage alarms before deciding what action to take to resolve the issue. Prioritizing alarms helps analysts focus on threats that require the most attention.

LogRhythm SmartResponse™ automation, a LogRhythm RespondX feature, can help analysts prioritize alarms. SmartResponse automates tasks, such as notifying analysts when an anomalous event occurs. This makes analysts aware of potential issues as soon as possible, minimizing your response time. SmartResponse automation seamlessly executes actions at the source of SIEM data and alarms to help your team maximize its productivity.

Process 3: Remediate the Threat

The sooner your security operations center procedures allow for a team to respond to a threat or security issue, the more effectively you’ll be at minimizing damage to your organization. For any attack or incident that your organization faces, your goal is to reduce your mean time to detect (MTTD) and your mean time to respond (MTTR) to a threat.

Since every security incident differs, your team will likely have various remediation strategies to resolve different incidents. Remediation can include a number of security operations tasks including patching or updating systems, running vulnerability scans, and updating or restricting network access, among other solutions.

In addition to alerting your team to a security event, LogRhythm SmartResponse can also help automate threat hunting actions to remediate threats. Analysts can use SmartResponse and LogRhythm integrations to contain and remediate a threat by taking a specific action to prevent a security incident from incurring damage. For example, an analyst can implement a SmartResponse action to disable a user account via an Okta integration. 

Process 4: Run Assessments and Review

Whether your organization experienced a true threat or a false alarm, your organization should implement a process to run regular vulnerability scans. This can help your team identify technical vulnerabilities that may exist and issues your organization should address.

As part of your review, be sure to check that your organization checks with the relevant group to ensure it is continuing to meet regulatory compliance requirements. LogRhythm security operations center tools offer preconfigured compliance automation modules that address common regulations and frameworks to help you achieve cybersecurity regulations.

SOC Procedures Lead to Better Network Security Operations 

To build an effective and reliable SOC, you need to research, plan, and have the right people, processes, and technologies. If your organization follows the security operations center procedures outlined above, you will set your company up for success over the long term.

For more on how to improve your SOC, download our “How to Build a SOC with Limited Resources” white paper today.