How to Optimize Your Security Operations Center (SOC)

Looking to transform your Security Operations Center (SOC) into a premier cybersecurity powerhouse? Let’s dive in together! First, let’s align on what your SOC should be doing versus what it is doing to protect your organization against evolving cybersecurity threats. To illustrate, let’s turn to an example from basketball legend LeBron James. At 40, he remains one of the best players in the world—not just because of natural talent, but because of his relentless training. Like LeBron, your SOC can only excel with the right kind of consistent preparation.

Step 1: Training Your Tools

Your SOC is like LeBron’s training regimen: every tool in your environment needs its own form of exercise to stay effective. Imagine LeBron’s weekly schedule:

• Monday: Weight training
• Tuesday: Plyometrics and yoga
• Wednesday: Weight training
• Thursday: More plyometrics and yoga
• Friday: Leg day
• Saturday: Plyometrics and yoga again

Now apply this logic to your SOC. You’ve invested in cutting-edge tools like next-generation firewalls, endpoint security, email security, SIEMs, and SOAR platforms. But are they optimized? Instead of waiting for an attack or making random adjustments, use Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS)—or as we at Cymulate call it, Continuous Security Validation. Here’s an example schedule for optimizing your tools through continuous validation:

• Monday: Email Gateway Validation
• Tuesday: Phishing Awareness
• Wednesday: Web Gateway Validation
• Thursday: Endpoint Security Validation
• Friday: Web Application Firewall Validation
• Saturday: Full Kill Chain Simulation

This daily training process ensures your prevention and detection tools, as well as your SIEM, are consistently improving. Over time, this approach produces “Golden Alerts”—accurate correlations of events that minimize false positives, enabling automated responses and freeing your team to focus on critical security challenges.

Step 2: Training Your Processes

Optimizing your SOC goes beyond tools. It requires well-honed processes. Ask yourself:

• How often do we perform penetration tests?
• Did our last configuration change make us more secure or less secure?
• Are we prepared for the latest zero-day threats?

Relying solely on annual penetration tests or static change control processes won’t cut it. Instead, adopt Security Assurance, a modern approach to validating controls before, during, and after changes. With Cymulate’s Continuous Security Validation platform, you can schedule and automate pen-test simulations, ensuring your processes evolve as dynamically as your environment.

Step 3: Training Your People

People are often the weakest link in cybersecurity. To combat this, training must be ongoing and comprehensive—not just for general employees but for your security professionals too. Take a page from Sir Richard Branson’s playbook: “Take care of your employees, and they’ll take care of your business.” For security teams, this means providing advanced training opportunities. Cymulate’s Purple Teaming module empowers your SOC to simulate real-world attack scenarios, even if your team lacks adversarial expertise. This not only strengthens their skills but also boosts their ability to handle diverse threats effectively.

Start Optimizing Your SOC Today

Optimizing your Security Operations Center is a journey, but the steps are clear:

1. Train your tools with continuous security validation.
2. Refine your processes to adapt to modern security challenges.
3. Empower your people with the knowledge and skills they need.

At Cymulate, we believe in your ability to build a mature, effective SOC. Ready to get started? Contact us today and take the first step toward a stronger cybersecurity posture.