Hackers never sleep, so why should the enterprise be defended? Threat actors prefer to target businesses outside of business hours. That’s when they can expect fewer security personnel monitoring systems and delay responses and repairs.
When retail giant Marks & Spencer went through a security event over Easter weekend, they were forced to close their online business.
Most staff are away from business hours and on holidays, so it takes time to assemble an incident response team and begin countermeasures. This allows attackers to move sideways within the network, increasing the time it takes to wreak havoc before security teams react.
While not all organizations are ready to staff in their in-house teams around the clock, building a 24/7 SOC is one of the most robust and aggressive ways to protect against off-hours attacks. The rest of this post explores why 24/7 vigilance is so important, the challenges of achieving it, and six practical steps 24/7 SOC success.
The importance and challenges of SOCs 24/7
The SOC is the heart of an organization’s cyber defense. It plays a key role in detecting, investigating and responding to potential threats around the 24-hour period, providing real-time threat detection and resolution. Adding automation only improves, especially when everyone is celebrating or focusing on weekend chores.
However, running a 24/7 SOC is not easy. It requires a perfect balance of proven processes, advanced tools and skilled professionals.
Proper planning and automation is important
If security experts can’t keep up with the demands of change in the attack surface, AI can make a difference. Along with the right people and processes, AI enables efficiency by automating threat detection, faster response times and enhances overall security attitude. Let’s see where AI fits in with the right process construction.
A 6-step approach to building a 24/7 SOC
Running a successful SOC is the following six measures your organization needs to realize:
1. Build an organization-specific foundation
Establishing a robust 24/7 SOC starts with defining a clear mission and scope that aligns with your overall business goals. Having a clear strategy can help you determine your security coverage requirements.
A strong case of security surveillance, 24/7, is important as the budget determines who is hired and which security tools are integrated. This should not be difficult given recent examples of cyberattacks with devastating consequences.
The best SOC model for your business depends on its risk profile, compliance and industry requirements, and available resources. The scope and purpose of SOC is also business and industry specific. For example, healthcare providers prioritize protecting patient data to ensure HIPAA compliance, while retailers focus on PCI DSS.
And whether you choose an internal, hybrid or outsourcing model, security teams need to leverage AI. You can optimize your security operations and scale your model to protect you from rapidly evolving threats. For example, hybrid SOCs with AI-powered SOC analysis are extremely efficient.
2. Build the right teams and train them well
Organizations need to create teams that lead to the task of facing security challenges. As diversity helps to promote collaboration, hiring managers should focus on the combination of junior analysts and veteran responders.
SOC teams often follow a three-tier structure of Tier 1 analysts for alert triage. Tier 2 analyst in charge of investigations and responses. Tier 3 analyst for strategy, advanced threat hunting, aggressive detection, and optimization of AI tools. A two-tier model is also effective when resources are limited. Tier 1 handles triage and initial investigations, while Tier 2 assumes deeper analysis, response and strategic functions. This approach can implement the right tools and processes to provide strong coverage.
It is also better to hire them internally as much as possible. Develop an internal talent pipeline and budget for ongoing training and certification for those who want to go uphill. For example, team members can learn to use AI tools to overcome the challenges of expensive log management in SIEM and complex configurations in SOAR.
3. Be smart about shift rotations to avoid burnout
The SOC team is known to burn out quickly. It is important to develop sustainable shift rotations with 8 or 12 hour shifts. For example, SOC teams can work on a 4-4-off schedule and pay attention, while multinationals can spread shifts into time zones to reduce the risk of fatigue.
Hire more analysts than you think you need. Many people are paid per shift and having a bench can effectively turn around, cover unexpected absences and reduce pressure on the core team. This approach provides flexibility without over-expanding staff.
Also, security experts need diversity to keep things interesting and engaged. Therefore, we regularly spin responsibilities such as alert triage, playbook reviews, threat hunting, and more.
Note: Establish a clear handoff protocol to promote overlapping handover periods. This helps to develop an environment of context sharing between teams.
As fatigue often leads to staffing escape, automation can play a key role in maintaining top security talent. Use AI to reduce team workloads and automate recurring tasks such as log analysis and phishing triage.
Wellness programs can also provide a big boost. Encourage work/life balance and establish anonymous feedback channels to improve retention. It also schedules downtime and encourages actual breaks. Emphasise that there is no reason to go through a scheduled break unless there is a positive incident.
Finally, it is important to reward team members and recognize victory. These help to increase job satisfaction and maintain talent.
4. Choose the right tool
We thoroughly investigate and select AI-driven security tools that meet your specific business needs and security requirements. It is also essential to consider a variety of variables, such as cost and complexity, before you settle on the tool.
For example, Siems like Splunk are known to have scaling challenges and high log management costs. This is unsustainable in a multi-cloud environment. Elastic’s attack discovery is known to have many false positives and is forced to manually verify the output with analysts.
While many AI-powered tools minimize manual effort, they still require important setup, rule tuning, data onboarding, and dashboard customization. Some features may require an analyst to configure the data source and interpret the results. Many SOC tools are static and have pre-trained models for just a handful of use cases.
While existing surges require considerable configuration and maintenance, static playbooks cannot adaptively learn to deal with new threats.
Radiation is one option. When an alert is considered a true positive, its adaptive AI SOC platform will intake, triage, and escalate. Then quickly respond to real threats and a variety of security use cases.
In addition to being cost-effective and maintenance-free, Radiant integrates back into the customer’s environment for a single click or a fully automatic repair (if your SOC team is confident in Radiant’s recommendations). Plus, it doesn’t require auditing or retraining to stay on top of the latest malware.
5. Cultivate a culture of continuous learning
Security leadership should encourage posthumous things, but it should avoid assigning condemnation. Every security event needs to teach a lot, and organizations need to actively store this information in their knowledge base.
Continuous learning is a ticket to stay ahead of the threat. Therefore, provide seamless access to research and training, and sponsor certifications such as GIAC Intrusion Analyst Certification (GCIA) and Attack Security Certification Professional (OSCP).
Create a team culture where members can distribute knowledge and build trust. Maintain regular threat briefings and security drills (e.g. Red Team and Blue Team Simulations) to identify process gaps and improve escalation paths.
These drills help each team member act quickly if an organization is attacked. It is also important to practice coordination with Legal, PR and IT teams. Executive tabletop exercises, testing decision-making processes under pressure, is also a great idea.
6. Governance, Metrics, and Reporting
Defines success metrics including MTTD/MTTR, AI accuracy, and false positive rates. Fastest detection limits damage, and faster response minimizes the impact of an incident. If AI is very accurate, it can help you build trust in automation. At the same time, low false positives reduce analyst workload.
A fair workload distribution and alert volume across the SOC shift ensure balance and reduce the risk of burnout. Tracking incident statistics is not enough. It also needs to be continuously monitored for employee well-being. A healthy SOC team means high morale and consistent performance.
A real-time dashboard and monthly review are required for all of the above. Provide as much visual as possible and include deep dives in your team lead. SOC managers and T3 analysts need comprehensive insights to optimize their tools, improve compliance and business risks, and manage team health.
Conclusion
The synergy of skilled personnel, streamlined processes, advanced AI, and integrated tools is the fundamental power to keep company names out of their headings.
Powered by AI, 24/7, SOCs protect organizations from highly advanced, sustained threats. Helps you successfully address the limitations of SIEM, Siems, Soars, EDRS, and SOC Co-Pilots through seamless integration of automation, people, processes and tools.
Radiant’s unique adaptive AI SOC platform streamlines processes and empowers analysts, threat hunters and security specialists. Non-relane automation of the platform and accuracy above 95% help SOC teams overcome various hurdles. Limited scope of EDR, co-pilot analyst reliance on analysts, Siem’s expensive complexity, Soar’s manual playbook.
Additionally, the wide range of integration makes it scalable and cost-effective.
If you want to see Radiant working, just click. Book a demo today.
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