In the early days of my career, I worked on teams where the Security Operations Center (SOC) was viewed as the logical end place for every alert, receiving all manner of security events from the exhaust pipe of the security engine with little input on fuel consumption and engine performance.
Nowadays, the SOC’s mission has evolved. Team members often have a strong influence over the upstream elements of the security program in areas like detection engineering and approaches like zero trust. Business requirements play a big role as well, with SOC’s often handling ancillary functions like user awareness training, compliance monitoring, and control validation.
With expanded remits, traditional SOC models--with centralised war-rooms filled with analysts wielding troves of system and network data--struggle to keep pace with business transformation and a growing attack surface. They often fail to get ahead of evolving data sources, leading to increased costs and complexity.
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The Challenge of Alert Fatigue
One of the most pressing issues facing modern SOCs is alert fatigue. The sheer volume of alerts generated by various security tools can overwhelm even the most well-staffed teams. This flood of information often leads to missed threats and inefficient resource allocation, ultimately increasing both cost and risk.
One key approach that has consistently proven its value in scaling traditional SOC models is adopting a goal-oriented defense. This strategy focuses not just on preventing every possible threat, but on protecting what truly matters to the organization.
Define a Mission That Protects What's Truly Important
While prevention may be an easier cost to justify than detection, on its own, it’s a losing proposition. Often you’ll see it expressed as along the lines of: prevent compromise and exploitation of enterprise resources while instilling trust in our product.
It’s an honourable goal but unlikely to succeed in the long run. Instead of attempting to prevent every network mishap, the best SOC teams are unshackled and pursue a much more serviceable goal focused on reducing the likelihood of threat actors having an impact.
Goal-Orientated Defence
- Prevent substantial impact
- Prevent adversary success
Goal-oriented defense shifts the focus from attempting to address every possible threat to protecting what truly matters most to the organization. It’s about changing the rules of the game, recognizing that SOCs, like any part of a business, are constrained by time and resources. Instead of trying to tackle the universe of threats, the emphasis should be on defending critical assets and reducing the likelihood of substantial damage.
Adversaries have specific goals — they want your data. The key question is: what data? If one endpoint is hit with ransomware, it's a setback, but not catastrophic. However, if that compromised machine is used to pivot internally, leading to a broader attack on your network, the consequences escalate rapidly. How well can you detect that internal pivot, and how quickly can you respond?
Prevention is Ideal; Detection is a Must
Almost everything in traditional security is geared towards prevention:
- Prevent compromise
- Prevent zero-day malware
- Secure user access to prevent the insider threat
When we think security products, there’s a clear bias toward prevention:
- Firewalls, intrusion prevention system, anti-virus, data loss prevention
In the detective space, we have two primary tools:
- Intrusion detection systems and system information and event management (SIEM) systems
To implement a goal-oriented defense, it's essential to detect adversaries as they move toward their objectives, such as lateral movement or staging data for exfiltration. This presents a significant challenge for many organizations, as internal data is often underutilized, and too much focus remains on perimeter-based prevention.
Additionally, SOCs are frequently overwhelmed by the sheer volume of alerts, leading to inefficiencies and missed threats. A solution that intelligently prioritizes and reduces alert fatigue is crucial to enhancing operational efficiency and staying ahead of sophisticated threats.
Conclusion
The modern security landscape demands a shift in focus. Rather than relying solely on perimeter defenses and large SOCs, the priority must be on protecting what truly matters—your most valuable assets.
Preventive controls are important, but they alone won't secure your organization. True resilience lies in a balanced approach, combining preventative measures with quality detection capabilities that are regularly tested for effectiveness. The ability to intelligently manage and prioritize alerts is crucial, ensuring that teams focus on the threats that truly matter.
By adopting a goal-oriented defense strategy and leveraging AI-driven solutions to combat alert fatigue, organizations can significantly reduce costs, streamline operations, and maintain a strong security posture in the face of evolving risks.