Building SOC from Basic to Advance+

Introduction

In today’s fast-evolving digital world and cyber criminals powered by AI, log monitoring is no longer a luxury it’s a necessity. This is where SOC (Security Operations Center) plays a critical role to pro-actively safeguard businesses from cyber threats.

SOC acts as the command center for proactively defending your IT Infrastructure by:

• Collecting logs from various sources. (i.e. Firewalls, WAFs, CloudWatch, AD, Sys Logs, etc.)
• Setting correlations between logs to track the attackers movements in your infrastructure.
• Investigating incidents through IOCs. (Enriching your logs with SOAR)

Helping businesses to continuous monitor, audit configurations of IT assets, detecting anomalies, and responding to potential security threats.

Our guide help you understand the different phases of maturity and how CISOs and CIOs shall invest in building or outsourcing the security operations center process. Also, answers questions that may have arise from our previous research on "Cost of Data Breach in 2025" a forecast from our analytics and observation that correlates with IBM's Report summarizing 2024.

The guide explains four maturity levels and cost associated to SOC ranging from Basic to Advanced+, allowing companies to select a security framework based on their budget, resources availability and time constraints. Each plan outlines the difference in cost, capabilities, manual & automated efforts between SOC Team and Automation, helping businesses determine their current stage and the future plans.

SOC Maturity Stages: Evolution of Security Capabilities

Building a strong SOC requires a strategic approach, progressing from basic security measures to advanced analytics driven threat intelligence. Each SOC maturity stage enhances an organization's ability to detect, respond, and mitigate cyber threats more efficiently, ensuring comprehensive protection at every level.

Basic: Security Perimeter

The security perimeter serves as the first and most crucial level of defense against cyber threats. Though these perimeters are capable to provide incident and event logs for unauthorized access and filter malicious traffic before it reaches internal systems, they follow different structures and mechanisms to audit them manually. Monitoring these logs manually and manual remediation adds a burden on your team, exhausting IT teams resources, time and energy to detect and resolve security gaps before they escalate.

In the initial stages when you have just started investing in cybersecurity it is perfectly normal to manually monitor logs and take appropriate actions to mitigate the risk. As an organization one should always choose the security perimeter with adequate notification to shorten the response gap. We recommend investing in the following when your are at level 1:

1. Firewalls
2. Endpoint Security
3. Threat & Vulnerability Management

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Standard: Implementing SIEM

Implementing open source or licensed SIEM (Security Information & Event Management) software that will play a crucial role in collecting logs from various platforms and bringing them at one centralized platform to help you audit logs in real-time & adhere to log 1 year log storage requirements for compliance. By centralizing security logs, businesses can gain greater visibility into potential vulnerabilities, ensuring quick action against suspicious activities. Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) feature in SIEM will further enhances security by identifying, categorizing and notifying (via email) before the threat can materialize. With a well-implemented SIEM service, organizations can streamline security monitoring, improve compliance, and reduce response time to a given cyber incidents.

As organizations SIEM capabilities must advance to include log optimization, search & correlation, and proactive threat hunting. Simply collecting logs isn’t enough optimizing logs ensures critical security events are prioritized, while search and correlation enable teams to identify patterns across vast data sources. Advanced threat hunting takes security a step further, actively searching for hidden threats before they cause any real damage. A robust SIEM service not only detects known threats but also empowers businesses to anticipate and neutralize cyber risks before they become serious security breaches.

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Advance: Introducing SOAR

Organizations aiming to strengthen their cybersecurity posture. By integrating SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation & Response) capabilities, businesses can streamline threat detection and automate incident response to stop threat actors early on— to reduce risk faster than ever. SOAR playbooks provide structured workflows for managing security incidents, reducing manual effort and ensuring consistent responses. Additionally, tool integration enhances the overall efficiency of security operations center by enabling seamless communication between different security solutions. These capabilities empower organizations to respond to threats in real time, minimizing potential damage and downtime.

As cyber threats grow more sophisticated, businesses must adopt real-time incident reporting, EDR (Endpoint Detection & Response), and IDS (Intrusion Detection System) installation to stay ahead of attackers. Dashboards & KPIs provide valuable insights into security metrics, helping organizations measure and improve their defenses continuously. Customizable playbooks allow businesses to tailor automated response strategies to their unique security needs. Real-time threat response ensures that threats are neutralized before they can escalate into full-scale breaches. By leveraging security automation, organizations can achieve faster threat detection, improved response times, and enhanced cybersecurity resilience, making it a must-have in modern security frameworks.

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Advance+: Advanced Analytics

As cyber threats become more sophisticated with use of AI by threat actors, advanced analytics plays a crucial role in strengthening an organization’s security posture. Threat intelligence provides real-time insights into emerging cyber risks, enabling proactive defenses against malicious activities. Investigations and incident response ensure rapid identification and mitigation of security breaches, minimizing potential damage. With artificial intelligence (AI) & machine learning (ML) analytics, businesses can analyze vast amounts of security data, detect anomalies, and automate threat detection for faster response times. By leveraging these capabilities, organizations can stay ahead of cybercriminals and enhance their cybersecurity resilience.

Advanced analytics also focuses on automated threat intelligence, rare event analysis, and data lake consolidation to improve security operations. Automated threat intelligence reduces manual workload by continuously scanning and identifying potential threats before they escalate. Rare event analysis helps detect low-frequency but high-impact threats, ensuring no anomaly goes unnoticed. Data lake consolidation enables organizations to centralize and analyze vast amounts of security data, leading to more accurate threat detection and incident response. By incorporating advanced analytics into their cybersecurity strategy, businesses can make data-driven decisions, improve threat detection accuracy, and strengthen overall security defenses.

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Workload Distribution Between SOC Team & Company

SOC services also affect workload distribution between SOC team and automations providers with different products and your level of SOC model. The chart below illustrates how the proportion of SOC team work increases with higher investment stages:?

Work Distribution:

• Basic SOC Plan ($$) – 30% Automation, 70% Manual Efforts: The SOC team handles 70% of security tasks, including firewall log collection, antivirus log collection, and identifying threats & vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, the automation provided by the security perimeters is responsible for 30% automation— towards log collection, notification (if available) and some level of blocking or detecting known threat via firewall, antivirus & scanners. The painful part still would be manual intervention on their individual platforms for blocking threats on identifying know vulnerabilities and manually raising tickets for executing patches or fixes programs to keep systems secure. This plan is best suited for small businesses that require basic monitoring and threat detection while managing remediation internally.

• Standard SOC Plan ($$$) – 50% Automation, 50% Manual Efforts: The SOC team redirects all logs towards SIEM solution which manages, organizes, prioritizes & audit logs with given rules & decoders with in-built capabilities and prevents threats through manual configurations. Meanwhile, SOC team's task is searching logs for anomalies, performs correlation analysis, and creates custom rules/decoders. Also SOC team is responsible to assists in manually configuring security tools, preventing threats, blocking threats as identified, raising tickets, and supporting SOC in rule implementation. This plan is best suited for mid-sized companies that need structured log management and proactive threat detection while still playing an active role in security management.
• Advanced SOC Plan ($$$$) – 70% Automation, 30% Manual Efforts: The SOC team automates SIEM services, configures SOAR, creates dashboards & KPIs, sends real-time incident reports via email, and develops standard & customized playbooks. Instead of creating rules & decoders the SOC team will be focused on combating actual and creditable threats. 70% of the rules/decoders are already created in this platforms to match a variety of security perimeters and the SOC team doesn't have to invest time and energy on improving visibility. The SOAR platform will help the SOC team in investigating if an attack is a false positive or not and assess internal threats. This plan is best for enterprises needing automated security monitoring while maintaining oversight on internal security incidents.
• Advanced+ SOC Plan ($$$$$) – 90% Automation, 10% Manual Efforts : The SIEM, SOAR and Data Lake is designed to fully automates all security processes using AI and AI agents, performs rare event analysis, consolidates data lakes, and generates AI-driven threat reports. The SOC team's only role is to verify threats, co-ordinate with IT team to mitigate risk and confirm incident reports. This plan is ideal for high-risk industries such as finance, healthcare, and critical infrastructure that require a near fully-automated SOC with minimal manual intervention.

This progression from basic to fully managed SOC services reflects how organizations can scale their cybersecurity efforts as their budgets and operational complexities grow. By outsourcing more responsibilities to SOC providers, businesses can reduce in-house workload, improve response times, and leverage the expertise of dedicated cybersecurity professionals.

Optimizing SOC Services for Time and Budget

Selecting the right SOC service involves aligning organizational needs, resources, and security objectives. Follow this steps to make an informed decision:?

1. Evaluate Company Needs: Begin by identifying your organization’s security gaps, compliance requirements, and budget constraints. This helps pinpoint the specific services required, whether it’s perimeter security, SIEM services, or advanced threat intelligence.?
2. Match SOC Services: Align your identified needs with a suitable SOC maturity level and service type. For instance, small businesses may benefit from basic monitoring, while larger enterprises might require fully managed SOC services with real-time threat resolution.?
3. Consider ROI: Focus on long-term benefits such as improved incident response times, enhanced threat prevention, and overall cost-effectiveness. Investing in the right SOC service ensures a strong return on investment by reducing risks and minimizing potential damages from cyber threats.?

By following these steps, companies can achieve a cost-effective and comprehensive security strategy that aligns with their size and risk profile.

Conclusion

Selecting the right SOC plan is a strategic decision that depends on a company’s security needs, budget, and available resources. From basic monitoring to fully managed SOC services, each level provides a structured approach to strengthening cybersecurity. As threats evolve, businesses can scale their security operations to ensure continuous protection while maintaining operational efficiency.

A well-planned SOC ensures that internal teams remain focused on core business functions without being overwhelmed by security tasks. By leveraging outsourced expertise, companies can enhance threat detection, response times, and overall security posture. Choosing the right SOC model allows businesses to stay ahead of cyber threats, ensuring long-term resilience and growth.

As a leading cybersecurity provider, we are here to help you secure your organization and stay ahead of emerging threats. To learn more about how we can protect your business, contact us today.