by Microsoft Security
We’ve all seen the headlines about the latest ransomware attacks and emerging cyberthreat trends, but what about the daily challenges security operations centers (SOCs) face?
The SOC team has a wide range of responsibilities including monitoring identities, endpoints, servers, databases, network applications, websites and other systems to uncover potential cyber-attacks in real time. This helps prevent, detect, and respond to threats in a timely manner. It also uses the latest threat intelligence to stay up-to-date with threat groups and infrastructure, while providing proactive security by identifying and addressing system and process vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them. will be carried out.
While this work is critical to keeping the organization productive, it also represents a great demand on the part of the SOC team. This is especially true given the increasing number of attack vectors, increased cyberthreat activity, and a growing cybersecurity skills gap. SOC teams need a better way to keep up with the accelerating pace of demand while maintaining a strong security posture.
Learn how your company can leverage a combination of extended detection and response (XDR) and security information and event management (SIEM) solutions to improve your SOC operations going forward.
What challenges do SOCs face?
SOCs must operate 24/7 to respond to the sheer number of security incidents that occur daily. Ransomware attacks alone will increase by 130% in 2022, according to data from Microsoft. For SOC teams, this equates to over 10,000 alerts daily, leading to alert fatigue and increased dwell time.
SOCs need help responding to the growing volume of security alerts they receive, but often find it difficult to determine which alerts to prioritize against potential organizational risks . A study found that more than half of IT professionals spend more than 20% of their time prioritizing security alerts. Not only does this increase turnover, but it can also leave important security alerts unaddressed. Of those same survey respondents, 55% reported that critical alerts were lost every week or day due to inefficient alert prioritization.
This coincides with a widespread trend toward diversifying security tools and a shortage of skilled cybersecurity workers. A Microsoft study found that medium-sized organizations have an average of 50 security tools deployed, increasing complexity and downtime for SOC teams. And with an estimated 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs worldwide, SOC teams also suffer from a lack of resources and skills to handle the workload.
How can the combination of XDR and SIEM help?
These statistics may seem overwhelming, but you have some solutions at your disposal. An integrated XDR and SIEM solution can dramatically modernize your security operations and provide end-to-end threat visibility across your resources. Importantly, security alerts can also be correlated and prioritized to provide timely and actionable insight across all corporate assets.
This is achieved through a combination of AI and ML. Integrating XDR and SIEM empowers SOC teams to better prevent, detect and respond to threats across identities, endpoints, applications, email, IoT, infrastructure and cloud platforms. This broad range of data provides comprehensive signals across modern operations and cloud infrastructure, giving SOC teams faster insights and more accurate information.
These inputs, combined with extensive threat intelligence from leading researchers and cybersecurity companies, can inform future ML models. Similarly, automation can be used to surface the most pressing security alerts and provide much-needed context as to what is going on, which systems are affected, and ultimately helps reduce SOC workload.
Ultimately, using XDR and SIEM solutions side-by-side helps SOC teams reduce alert fatigue, reduce mean time to recognize and respond to threat alerts, prioritize attention, and streamline reporting and Reduce the time required for post-incident activities. Improve your overall cybersecurity experience.
For more information on the latest cybersecurity products and threat intelligence insights, visit Microsoft Security Insider.
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