How to Start Modernizing Your Security Operations
Find out key strategies to modernize your security operations.
What challenges are getting in the way of modernization? Can shifting focus help? What is SOC modernization? What are the modernization trends, and how does threat detection play a role? Most importantly, how to move towards modern security operations? Karthik Kannan, founder and CEO of Anvilogic, explores these questions and shares strategies for modernizing security operations.
Security leaders agree that adopting a modern approach to security operations is necessary to transform the future. However, even most large organizations that need to be faster, are slow to begin a transformation. Since it is “not one size fits all,” security leaders must first understand what steps can be taken and create their path toward Security Operation Center(SOC) modernization.
As organizations begin the road to modernization, they are looking to upgrade their architecture for scalability and cloud readiness. For example, with a security data lake, this shift comes with starting to replace legacy technology that’s been leveraged for 10+ years. Many tools and processes that worked are outdated and cause security teams to burn out by carrying the heavy burden of dealing with mundane, repetitive tasks that would be better automated. When teams can begin to modernize, they can achieve higher levels of efficacy and efficiencies by introducing AI-led insights, recommendations, detections, hunting, and more.
Roadblocks to Modernizing Security Operations
Here are a few factors that make it difficult to upgrade processes and modernize security:
Current investments: Organizations have already spent massive amounts of money on their existing investments. It is not as easy as “rip-and-replace.”
Cultural change: Teams are often comfortable with their platforms and processes, so making changes can be complicated and uncomfortable.
An excessive amount of point products: Tools are continually adopted across organizations, which means security practitioners must become tools and data experts to stay ahead of an ever-growing attack surface. Security practitioners’ time spent working with tools and going back to maintain what was already implemented removes their ability to focus on detecting what is essential. All the mundane tasks lend themselves to creating a skills gap, burnout, and security becoming a bottleneck.
The industry has been coming together to fix these challenges, which is driving momentum for organizations and the industry toward a transformation. The trends leading this transformation don’t only address the challenges but also help guide how organizations can begin to modernize their security operations. SOC modernization comprises many facets that can quickly become complex, so it’s good to remember throughout the journey to refer back to the goals and guiding principles you created, readjust as necessary, and take it one step at a time.
Trends that Embrace Security Operations Modernization
One trend is with some younger, not necessarily smaller, “born on the cloud” companies. These younger cloud-native companies have had the luxury of starting on the cloud, which enables them to leapfrog to a more modern approach. They can discard the paradigms and labels attached to the industry, including methods like legacy views of log management. It is easier for these companies to look to more cost-effective solutions and away from monolithic legacy systems. Making this shift is not as easy for well-established companies with previous investments. However, the need to move forward while making changes that some cloud-native companies can do immediately remains strong.
The second trend is the start of enterprise transformation, where CISOs and SOC managers consider upgrading their architectures to handle newer workloads and compensate for the constant talent shortage. By investing in modernizing the technology stack, organizations can realize team benefits because their hired talent is being trained and retained on newer technology. Additionally, by automating mundane tasks, both downstream response actions and upstream detection engineering actions — the security team can focus on exciting hunting and investigations, and the organization as a whole can become more proactive instead of reactive. So there’s a lot of that upgrading of the environment happening.
In a recent ESG report, 60% of security professionals surveyed believe that the time spent on detection engineering is more valuable than nearly any other activity. Because threat detection is such an important focus, security teams prioritize investment in rules development, refinement, and management. Security leaders also put a premium on time spent on detection engineering compared to other security operations activities. However, limited skills exist in this critical area, limiting many from making progress. The current detection engineering processes typically require multiple weeks to develop, test and implement new detection rules. This time-consuming process creates further challenges for security teams to allocate sufficient resources to this critical task. Combined with the accelerating pace of new threat introduction and a general lack of resources and skills needed, for many keeping up can seem like an almost impossible task.
As organizations re-architect core security operations infrastructure, particular focus is needed to ensure that investments in detection rules can be applied across multiple detection mechanisms, thereby optimizing detection engineering investments.
See More: 3 Cybersecurity Considerations to Secure Your Remote Business
How to Get Started with Modernization
With the shift to the cloud, organizations are either all-in, in the middle of it, or taking a cautious or phased approach. More than likely, many investments have already been made in legacy or monolithic technologies. These investments have taken a lot of time and effort, so a “rip-and-replace” approach is not likely to occur. Instead, organizations should adopt a hybrid approach to modernizing their technology stack by continuing to use legacy technologies they have in place while incorporating a security data lake and cloud-based solutions that unify data, wherever it resides, to detection and response workflows.
Moving toward a hybrid approach necessitates conversations and buy-in from business leaders. While the conversation around risk to the business is likely to persist, it is important to move the focus from only risk or abstract concepts like a “modernization project,” which can be perceived as an abstract concept, to be more centered on efficiency.
In an ESG Report, 96% of all security professionals surveyed indicated that they made tradeoffs between efficacy and efficiency to keep up with security alerts. Efficiency is the key to discussing and justifying investments to modernize security because efficiency can translate to dollars and hours saved, increased security maturity, and detection coverage. Solution providers should help provide these metrics to organizations to simplify a CISO’s job and help demonstrate value to leadership.
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MORE ON SECURITY OPERATIONS:
- Advanced XDR: Lifting Security Operations to the Next Level
- Security Operations Centers (SOCs) May Be the Key as Companies Look To Improve Their Cyber Defenses
- 5 Best Practices for Running a Security Operations Center (SOC)
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