How to Build a Government SOC on a Budget

Faced with an endless barrage of threats and vulnerabilities, finding the time to develop a proactive risk mitigation strategy is an uphill struggle for government organizations. With so much energy focused  on protecting the perimeter and preventing network penetration, malicious actors (the enemy with no face) already inside your network often goes unnoticed (case in point, the 2015 OPM breach).

But many departments and agencies are shifting to a new cybersecurity approach, one that focuses on a Security Operations Center (SOC). A SOC is a facility that operates 24x7 and houses infosec teams responsible for monitoring, detecting, containing, and remediating IT threats across critical applications, systems, and devices. This is achieved through both security controls and processes and the use of threat intelligence to determine whether an active threat is occurring and the scope of impact.

SOCs typically comprise a team of security analysts, engineers, and managers who oversee security operations. The SOC also works closely with incident response teams to ensure threats are acted on quickly.

But for many government organizations, particularly state and local government, the ideal of building a SOC is a challenge. Finding skilled SOC staff, budget and time, and procuring, integrating, and managing multiple security monitoring technologies and real-time threat updates is a might task.

Not to worry, it is possible to build a SOC on a budget and with limited resources. Check out this eBook from our partner Alien Vault: How to Build a Security Operations Center on a Budget.

You’ll learn what it takes to build a SOC, staffing, key processes you’ll need to perform, and the tools you need at your disposal.