Security Operation Center, also known as SOC, plays a critical role in integrated security intelligence technologies and improving the overall organizational cybersecurity. SOC primarily focuses on defending against potential cyber threats, continuously monitoring networks, and developing incident response reports. It functions like a team possessing relevant knowledge and skills and operating from well-defined processes supporting a network analysis system.
As cybersecurity threats are rising and becoming dangerous with each passing day, detecting, and controlling them is challenging. A 2021 study reveals that it takes 287 days on average to detect a data breach and more than a month to prevent damage. As a result, organizations are in dire need of a strategy and ways that can take responsibility to maintain organizational security.
However, lack of skill set, operational overhead, limited knowledge, and customization options are some of the biggest hurdles for the SOC team. As a result, it becomes tough for them to give the desired result. Thus, organizations must integrate AI technology within SOC operations.
How Does AI Help in Security Operations?
As the digital age continues to progress and networks become sophisticated, this results in more organizational data getting into the wrong hands and exposed to more threats than ever.
But by using advanced technologies like AI, things can significantly be under control. Specifically, within countries where security tools like VPNs are illegal to use. Here are some ways in which AI helps in security operations:
1. Valuable Metadata
A real in-person human team can sort all the business processes and data and look for anomalies, mainly when the company produces billions of data daily. Using AI-driven solutions can analyze the data based on established machine learning standards. Later it changes the unstructured data into valuable metadata to get the real results.
The AI systems, instead of examining the unstructured data, set guidelines of normalcy and highlight if there is any abnormality. Moreover, it also uses predictive analysis to analyze things deeper before they can cause any harm. This way, the SOC tram understands the actual nature of attacks and saves any extra time spent on making false predictions.
This way, the AI tools also improve the functionality of SOC teams by upgrading their capabilities and threat detection efforts.
2. Provides Optimal Response
To defend against cyber threats, enterprises must first identify the real threats and respond to them instantly. With self-learning AI, the SOC teams detect the abnormalities, become independent, and take signature remedy actions immediately.
3. Improved Threat Management
As mentioned earlier, investigating any security incident is time-consuming and causes inconsistent threat analysis. Security analysts spend a great time collecting information about the data, network, applications, and users. Later, when they co-relate the information to establish some local context, it leads to an incident.
AI significantly depends on automation that automatically completes time-consuming tasks like conducting threat research or applying gathered research within a fraction of time. However, when performed manually, these tasks can take days or even weeks to complete. The AI systems provide a structured workflow environment that reduces the time analysts spend researching the threats at an early stage.
Is AI The Ultimate Solution For SOC?
AI’s ability to quickly analyze and scale the data is a blessing for the SOC team. However, no matter how advanced AI becomes, it’s still prone to some limitations or vulnerabilities and cannot completely replace the SOC team.
Though humans are considered the weakest link that results in a data breach, AI technology is no less in this regard. It is another way that increases the attack surface. To combat this situation, SOC teams need to play their part and try to control things the AI system fails to do.
Organizations should invest in AI solutions when predicting and taking action against rising cyber threats. Though they might face privacy considerations with the SOC team playing their part, the organizations can create a healthy cybersecurity environment.
Final Thoughts
When the SOC team partners with AI technology, it offers endless benefits, including threat detection and response, increased productivity, reduced cost of data breaches, and improved job satisfaction for security analysts.
The AI systems help the security teams analyze the bulk of data and detect potential threats across the network environment. It is an evolving phenomenon with some loopholes, but with time, this gap shall be filled, and the SOC team can have peace of mind.
Shigraf Aijaz
Tags: AI, Cyber Threats, SOC
