The Security Operations Center is Essential – But Is it Effective?

From COVID to the cloud and from ransomware to work-from-home, everything changed, fast. The foundation of it all – the Security Operations Center, or SOC, played a critical role in supporting how enterprises tackled the pivot in how we work, communicate and connect, while ensuring a strong security posture for the organization. The Ponemon Institute researched how these changes have impacted the effectiveness of the SOC in the “Second Annual Study on the Economics of Security Operations Centers: What is the True Cost for Effective Results?”

What stands out this year?

• COVID-19: The pandemic’s impact on how SOCs operate and tackle security challenges as remote employees create new access points and bad actors take advantage.
• Strong Hiring & Salaries: Jobs and salaries are up as CISOs drive to employ qualified security analysts and retain them in an environment where competition for their services is ruthless.
• ROI of the SOC is Dropping: Complexity, analyst turnover and the growing cost of MSSP support for security monitoring drives lower scores in SOC investment.
• Budgets include Automation & Extended Detection & Response: Extended Detection & Response (XDR) and security automation solutions have emerged as budgetary priorities as CISOs seek answers to improve security engineering effectiveness and cost.

Let’s dig into what it all means for the next year. Join the report author, Larry Ponemon, Founder of the Ponemon Institute and Dan Lamorena, VP of Marketing for XDR at FireEye, for a live discussion on the state of today’s SOC, staffing, budgets for SOC tools, cost considerations for outsourcing and ROI.