Cyberattacks today are more frequent, more sophisticated, and more damaging than ever. Businesses of every size face adversaries armed with advanced tools and tactics. For example, the recent data breach affecting Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler, and Cloudflare disrupted operations at those big tech companies. And they're not alone: A recent KPMG survey found that 40% of C-suite cyber leaders at billion-dollar companies reported suffering a cyberattack in the past year. Even the largest enterprises, with deep investments in security, remain vulnerable—and reactive defenses are no longer enough.
A security operations center (SOC) centralizes monitoring, detection, and response to today’s fast-moving cyber threats. A SOC serves as the command hub for defending a business’s digital infrastructure. Its primary role is to bring people, processes, and technology together to monitor, detect, and respond to cyber threats around the clock.
Why Modern Businesses Can’t Do Without an SOC
A SOC offers proactive protection in this environment by continuously monitoring for indicators of compromise, containing threats before they spread, and coordinating efficient incident response if attackers do gain a foothold in an organization. SOCs are staffed by skilled professionals like security analysts, who review alerts and investigate suspicious activity, and threat hunters, who proactively search for hidden adversaries and emerging attack techniques.
SOC teams can reduce time to detection and remediation, which minimizes both financial and reputational damage. An SOC is an operational necessity in the face of the growing data security crisis.
Modern SOCs depend on advanced tools to function effectively. Security information and event management (SIEM) platforms gather log data from across the enterprise and highlight unusual activity. Security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) solutions streamline incident workflows and automate repetitive tasks, freeing analysts to focus on critical threats. Real-time analytics enable SOC staff to spot anomalies as they occur, and give them a chance to contain risks before they escalate. Rubrik solutions like Data Threat Analytics can support SOC operations with intelligent visibility.
Compliance and Regulatory Pressure: SOCs for CCPA, HIPAA & GDPR
Laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) impose strict requirements on how data is collected, stored, and safeguarded. An SOC supports compliance with such laws by providing the continuous data visibility, rapid breach detection, and the audit-ready documentation regulators demand.
SOC teams can supply detailed logs of monitoring activity, access controls, and incident response, demonstrating that appropriate measures are in place to protect sensitive information. For companies operating under GDPR, for instance, such documentation is an important component of achieving GDPR compliance. These practices not only reduce the risk of violations but also build customer confidence in an organization’s ability to handle personal data responsibly.
SOC vs. Traditional IT Security: Key Differences and Advantages
Traditional IT security models often rely on decentralized, reactive defenses—individual teams or isolated tools focused on specific areas like perimeter defense, antivirus, or patching. These fragmented systems typically activate once a threat has already occurred, creating gaps in visibility and increasing the risk of delayed or incomplete response.
By contrast, an SOC offers protection that is centralized, proactive, and integrated. Staffed 24/7, an SOC continuously monitors, analyzes, and responds to threats in real time, significantly reducing attacker dwell time and limiting potential damage. What’s more, SOCs excel at correlating data from multiple sources—network traffic, endpoint logs, cloud services, identity systems—transforming fragmented inputs into coherent intelligence you can act on quickly. This unified visibility not only improves threat detection but also streamlines analysis and response, contrasting sharply with the siloed structure of traditional IT setups.
Building an SOC: In-House vs. Outsourced
Making the choice between establishing an internal Security Operations Center or partnering with a managed security services provider (MSSP) hinges on several critical factors: cost, control, expertise, scalability, and alignment with business goals.
Factor | In-House SOC | Outsourced SOC (MSSP) |
|---|---|---|
Control & Context | Offers greater visibility and centralized management. | Requires strong communication to compensate for potential lack of organizational context. |
Cost | High upfront and ongoing investments in infrastructure, staffing, and training. | Lower, predictable subscription-based pricing. |
Expertise & Speed | Deep alignment with internal systems and swift remediation. Talent gaps and burnout are challenges. | Immediate access to specialized analysts and threat technology without recruitment delays. |
Scalability & 24/7 Ops | Scaling internal teams and systems takes time and resources; continuous coverage is difficult. | MSSPs scale quickly and provide round-the-clock monitoring and response. |
How Rubrik Supports Your SOC Strategy
Rubrik can elevate SOC effectiveness in a number of ways. For example, by integrating with SIEM tools like Microsoft Sentinel and CrowdStrike Falcon, Rubrik enriches event correlation and context analysis, allowing SOC teams to respond with more precision and speed. And Rubrik's continuous data protection capabilities add another layer, making secure, immutable backups instantly accessible to SOC teams in case of compromise.
Meanwhile, anomaly detection and threat monitoring capabilities help identify suspicious activity in backup data, giving defenders the ability to detect and stop threats that might evade traditional controls.
Security operations centers reduce risk, strengthen compliance, and preserve trust by unifying visibility and response. Investing in SOC capabilities can build resilience, reputation, and regulatory alignment. Rubrik’s suite of data and identity security solutions helps organizations beef up their SOC with visibility, automation, and rapid threat response.
Get a demo of Rubrik Security Cloud to see how you can increase your organization’s monitoring, detection, and response to evolving cyber threats.