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Every organization faces the challenge of balancing operational efficiency with cybersecurity. Network Operations Centers (NOCs) and Security Operations Centers (SOCs) are designed to tackle these priorities—but which one does your business need?
Because they offer different focuses, it’s important to know what they are, how they compare with one another, and how to effectively use them in your organization.
Understanding the roles and differences between these two key pieces of an organization’s systems is crucial for businesses that want to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to their organization’s IT efficiency.
What is SOC?
A Security Operations Center (SOC) is a centralized team that is an organization’s frontline defense against cyber threats. It monitors, detects, analyzes, and responds to cybersecurity incidents in real-time.
The SOC operates as the first line of defense against cyber threats, ensuring that an organization’s sensitive data, systems, and networks are protected from unauthorized access, breaches, and other security risks.
The SOC’s primary goal is to protect sensitive data, ensure compliance with security standards (especially if the organization is in a sensitive industry), and mitigate risks before they can impact the organization.
Key responsibilities of a SOC
As we mentioned, a SOC team’s main job is to identify, monitor, and respond to security threats. A SOC team usually uses highly advanced tools that incorporate Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems to monitor activity, looking for anything suspicious in real time. As cybersecurity professionals, a SOC team knows its way around a SIEM tool.
A SOC team will also do their best to manage vulnerabilities and ensure compliance with their organization’s IT infrastructure. To do this, they conduct regular vulnerability assessments and audits that aim to find weak points within their overall security solution, as well as any missing industry regulation requirements, like reviewing access control policies under HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act).
And if an incident occurs, the SOC team will conduct investigations and implement mitigation strategies in an attempt to minimize the damage. These investigations are also meant to uncover the root cause of the incident and take steps to prevent it from happening again.
A SOC example in action
Let’s say a healthcare organization falls victim to a ransomware attack.
Luckily, the SOC team is able to detect unusual file encryption activity inside of their SIEM system. By acting swiftly, they’re able to isolate the affected systems and block the bad actor’s access to the organization, while simultaneously beginning the recovery processes to ensure patient data remains uncompromised.
This proactive approach of vigilant monitoring and fast thinking meant the SOC helped the organization to minimize possible downtime and protect their sensitive data, saving them from a very expensive and complicated headache.
What is a NOC?
A Network Operations Center (NOC) is a centralized team whose main focus is to monitor and maintain an organization’s IT infrastructure, specifically when it comes to keeping the network running at peak performance with minimal downtime.
Key responsibilities of a NOC
Ensuring uptime and availability of network services
NOCs are constantly monitoring the health of their network, to make sure that they’re up and running around the clock. By using a proactive approach when it comes to monitoring and watching for issues, they’re able to keep downtime to a minimum (ideally 0%) to ensure the organizational operations are running smoothly.
Troubleshooting network-related issues
NOCs also need to identify and address network-related problems that they may experience like connectivity problems, hardware malfunctions, and configuration errors, being sure to resolve any potential issues that arise quickly to keep operational losses that may have been caused to a minimum.
Network optimization and bandwidth management
By analyzing and monitoring network traffic, NOC teams can also optimize the network’s bandwidth usage, ensuring that latency is kept to a minimum and that the users on the network can do what they need to.
An NOC example in action
Imagine there’s an e-commerce company experiencing a sudden network outage in early December due to the Christmas shopping frenzy. An NOC team would be the ones to detect this issue through its real-time monitoring tools, which may be an NDR system that’s focused on network functionality.
Next, they’d need to identify the source of the outage and swiftly resolve it. Especially during a holiday frenzy like early December, every hour that they’re down could result in thousands and thousands of dollars in missed revenue. In other words; the NOC team is crucial, especially in a time like this!
By keeping an eye on network performance and uptime, an NOC can help an organization be sure its content (which could be in the form of anything digital) doesn’t get interrupted before it reaches its users.
What’s the difference between NOC and SOC?
The main difference between SOC and NOC is that an NOC focuses on the network, while a SOC focuses on an organization’s security. While they share some similarities and a common goal of managing an organization’s IT environment, they aim to achieve this goal with separate and distinct approaches.
Aside from having a different overall focus, NOC and SOC teams also use different tools that are generally tailored to their specific goals. NOC tools usually focus on network performance and reliability, with a heavy emphasis placed on features like network monitoring and bandwidth analysis. While SOC teams generally rely on SIEM-based tools that offer features like intrusion detection and encryption protocols for maximum security.
The education within these teams is also usually different. An NOC is usually staffed by network engineers and technicians who are well-versed in maintaining networks and optimizing the usage of hardware. SOCs are usually made up of more cybersecurity professionals who have studied threat detection, vulnerability assessment, incident response, and a host of other cybersecurity-focused skills.
How they can work together
While NOCs generally work to ensure that networks are running at maximum performance, SOCs do everything they can to protect the organization as a whole from malicious attacks. This is why together, a SOC and NOC actually create an IT management strategy that covers more aspects, allowing for both peak performance and security.
So what should you use: a SOC, NOC, or a combination?
The decision of whether you should implement a SOC, NOC, or both within your organization depends on your specific IT needs. For organizations with high-traffic networks, working with an NOC to ensure smooth sailing can often work out best. For example, a media streaming company may want to work with an NOC to optimize the incredible amount of bandwidth that their network uses.
Businesses that own/handle a lot of sensitive data, like financial institutions or healthcare providers, are strongly recommended to work with a SOC to protect this data against potential cyber threats and ensure you’re staying within compliance requirements with regulating bodies. And if you’re saying “That won’t happen to us”, when you think about falling victim to cybersecurity…remember that most victims don’t think that they’re up next!
For larger organizations that deal with both high volumes of network traffic and sensitive data, using an approach that combines SOC and NOC will very likely be in your best interest.
Handle your organization’s IT security the smart way
Before you figure out what type of cybersecurity system you’re going to implement, evaluate your unique needs and then test whether a NOC, SOC or a combination of both is the best option for your and your organization’s IT needs.
And if you’d like to take your IT management and security to the next level, try Atera’s all-in-one platform. Atera is the first IT management platform to introduce agentic AI (Action AI™). It includes Remote Monitoring & Management, IT Automations, Patch Management, Scripting, Helpdesk & Ticketing, Reporting, and dozens of integrations, all from a single platform.
With industry-leading network monitoring and discovery tools, as well as security integrations to cover every aspect of your organization’s cybersecurity strategy, you won’t need to mix and match.
And the cherry on top is that we offer a 30-day free trial, so you can see how we’re transforming the way IT management is done without even giving us a credit card.
Try Atera for free today!
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