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Millions of dollars are lost every year to hackers and other cybercriminals. Businesses and organizations don’t take security seriously, and there are more ransomware attacks, phishing attempts, and cybersecurity threats nowadays than ever. Do you own a small or medium-sized business? If so, you’ve probably thought about getting SOC-as-a-Service for your operation.

A SOC can be vital to your organization and for helping you stay productive, profitable, and most importantly, secure. But what is SOC-as-a-Service exactly, and should you opt for it?

Our article will go over all these questions, and by the end of it, we’ll hopefully have helped you come to a decision!

What Is SOC-as-a-Service

SOC-as-a-Service is an organization’s command center for its IT infrastructure, monitoring, and security.
Simply put, SOC-as-a-Service allows you to outsource your security responsibilities to a third-party provider, who will take the responsibility of monitoring the network and defense against cyber threats of all kinds.

What Are the Benefits of SOC-as-a-Service?

Whether you own a small or a medium-sized business, you will enjoy numerous benefits from SOC-as-a-Service, including:

  • Better security staffing – Partnering with a SOC-as-a-Service provider allows you to easily supplement and fill in the gaps in your security team.
  • Supreme threat detection and response times – One of the biggest reasons why people opt for SOC-as-a-Service, and probably its biggest benefit is the fact that with an adequate system set up in place, your threat detection and response times will be lightning fast. Just imagine having a dedicated team of IT experts at bay 24/7/365, without having to worry about any issues, tickets, or downtimes. A team of employees dedicated to SOC will improve your team’s productivity and most importantly, you will be able to handle issues proactively, instead of when they show up.
  • Increased security maturity – Obtaining up-to-date knowledge of cybersecurity is a long process. Partnering with a SOC-as-a-Service provider shortens it quite a bit and provides your organization with solutions to all security issues.
  • Lower total cost – Even though maintaining a partnership with a SOC-as-a-Service provider can be expensive, if you look at it in the long run, it pays off more than you think. Simply compare the money you’d have to spend on mitigating the damage done by a cyberattacker to the costs of a partnership with a SOC provider.
  • Up-to-date security – Keeping up with the latest security industry trends can be difficult, especially nowadays since there’s something new in tech every day. A SOC-as-a-Service provider can scale their toolset up to date according to your needs and provide you with cutting-edge security systems. Most importantly, having a dedicated team of experts for SOC at your organization gives you access to advanced data visualization, analysis, pivoting, and statistical correlations.
  • Access to specialized security expertise – Nowadays, there’s an ever-increasing demand for experts on malware analysis, cloud security, incident response, etc. By partnering with a SOC-as-a-Service provider, you will get access to a team of skilled specialists in these areas that otherwise would be hard to attain.
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Does SOC-as-a-Service Have Any Downsides?

Although there are many benefits to SOC-as-a-Service, there are still some downsides as not everything is as great as it seems. Some of the issues you might face regarding a SOC-as-a-Service include:

  • Cost of log delivery – SOC providers usually work at their clients’ organization premises, using their data feeds and taps from their networks. The log files and other key data are generated on the provider’s network, which means that gaining full access from a managed SOC provider can be quite expensive.
  • Enterprise data security – For a SOC-as-a-Service to work, they need deep insight into their clients’ organization network and data to identify and know how to respond to threats. To get this insight, a client needs to send a huge amount of data to the provider. During this process, you risk your sensitive information and data, potentially compromising your company’s security.
  • Onboarding process – The onboarding process with a managed SOC provider can be time-consuming and leave your business vulnerable to threats during your transition. This is because the providers have the security stack they use most of the time, which means it must be configured and set up within a client’s organization before the provider can offer their service.
  • Little knowledge of the business – Usually, SOC-as-a-Service is provided to multiple clients by an MSP. The clients cannot mutually share their resources, such as threat databases, so your SOC will have little knowledge of your business.
  • Tiered service – Most MSPs offer tiered services. This means that you might get a sweet deal for a SOC-as-a-Service, but your costs might increase later on as you expand your organization and your security needs grow.

Why Hire an MSP and Implement SOC-as-a-Service to Your Organization?

So, now that you know everything about SOC-as-a-Service, its cons and pros, you’re probably wondering why should you hire an MSP and get this service up and running, instead of handling security in your organization on your own. You should opt for SOC-as-a-Service because:

  • Internal security is expensive – The capital needed to establish internal security on your own can be sky-high. To top it all off, there are also monthly expenditures you have to keep in mind. The biggest fees you’ll have to account for are the paychecks for security analysts and other experts who are necessary for setting up SOC. But, if you decide to hire an MSP, the costs of setting up SOC-as-a-Service will be quite lower.
  • Internal security is limited – Ask yourself, do you have an experienced team of IT experts whose careers have been dedicated to setting up security systems? Even though your personnel might be as qualified as they get, they might still not have the years of experience on their hands. An MSP will provide you with a team of professionals who know what they’re doing and who’ll use every piece of the latest technology to set up a flawless system for you.
  • Setting up your own SOC can take a while – If you opt to set up SOC on your own, you should take into consideration how long it’ll take. The whole process requires you to build a SOC team, get the required infrastructure, licenses, and then implement the software. Hiring an MSP allows you to cut the whole process short because a team of experts will set it all up for you in no time.

Should You Opt for SOC-as-a-Service?

Whether or not you should opt for SOC-as-a-Service completely depends on the needs of you as an organization. Our article has provided you with a list of this service’s negatives and positives, so it’s up to you to decide. We think that having an MSP dedicated to SOC at your organization is not only beneficial but also crucial because you’ll have access to other services, such as:

  • Backup and recovery
  • Remote IT support
  • 24/7/365 IT infrastructure monitoring
  • Disaster recovery
  • Cloud computing

But, if you need any help with coming to an adequacy decision or answers to any questions related to this topic, feel free to contact us! Our team of IT experts is more than happy to help answer your questions, and hopefully, we’ll help you make a perfect choice.

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