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Engineering Intelligence: Why AI Alone Will Not Build Future-Ready SOCs (And What Will)

Engineering Intelligence: Why AI Alone Will Not Build Future-Ready SOCs (And What Will)
10:28


Today adaptable, context-aware SecOps are vital for managing advanced cyber threats. While AI lays the foundation for this SOC adaptability, engineering intelligence builds the structure.

Security Operations Centers (SOCs) find themselves at a critical juncture. Traditional approaches that have long been the backbone of SOC are increasingly falling short against sophisticated cyber threats.

  • Last year, Amazon faced nearly 1 billion cyber threats daily—many of which were fueled by artificial intelligence (AI).
  • In a recent survey, 74% of CEOs were concerned about their organizations’ ability to avert or minimize damage to the business from a cyberattack.

As we look to the future, it's clear that a fundamental transformation is needed—one that harnesses the power of engineering intelligence to revolutionize how SOCs operate and protect organizations.

Fragmented and Reactive: The Achilles’ Heel of Modern SOCs

Today's SOCs face a myriad of challenges that hinder their effectiveness and resilience. Perhaps most glaring is the significant gap in collaboration between SOCs and other business units.

All too often, security alerts are treated as isolated incidents, divorced from their broader implications for the organization. This siloed approach not only limits the SOC's ability to provide comprehensive protection but also fails to align security efforts with overall business objectives.

Moreover, many SOCs remain stubbornly reactive in their approach. Instead of proactively identifying and mitigating risks, they find themselves constantly scrambling and responding to threats only after they've materialized. A reactive mindset combined with fragmented data and disjointed incident response workflows, leads to delayed resolutions and increased vulnerability.

This is a widespread SOC situation. Take a look at just a few of the quotes from attendees at the CIO-CISO Roundtable on SOC Operations that Netenrich held in August 2024:

 

"The logs...are not insightful...they should give forensic analysis for the incident."
“SOC gets alerted...but still we are doing that activity again. It is disjointed."
"How do you recover quickly...not just remediate but also recover lost ground?"

- Netenrich CIO-CISO Roundtable on SOC Operations, August 2024


Data-Driven SOCs as a Business Enabler

Today, cyber threats put businesses at risk—financially, legally, and reputationally:

  • In 2024, a ransomware attack forced Change Healthcare to pay $22 million in ransom.
  • T-Mobile had to pay a $31.5 million settlement following an FCC investigation into multiple data breaches between 2021 and 2023.

Security leaders must move beyond viewing security as a purely technical function and instead recognize it as a critical business enabler. This shift in perspective opens the door to a more holistic, data-driven approach to transform security operations.

As CISOs and CIOs at our roundtables often highlight, “SOCs need to stop reacting to alerts and start proactively identifying trends in data before a major breach happens.”

Engineering Intelligence: What Does It Offer SOCs?

For SOCs, efficacy is their North Star. They must measure success by their ability to detect and neutralize threats while minimizing business impact, not by the number of alerts they receive.

The key to this transformation lies in embracing engineering intelligence combined with artificial intelligence (AI)—tapping deeper insights from vast data streams for higher effectiveness. We believe five facets define this approach:

  • Signal explosion: An effective SOC leverages all their data effectively. Rather than reducing alerts, SOCs will embrace a broader scope of threat detection, maximizing signals to uncover hidden risks.
  • Actionable Intelligence: This increased data will correspond with higher clarity rather than increased noise—clear, contextual, and prioritized insights that empower teams to take the right actions quickly.
  • Unified observability: These rich, contextual insights will be possible because of visibility across platforms and data sources. A unified approach will ensure that SOCs have a full understanding of their threat landscape, enabling informed decisions.
  • Outcome-orientation: The focus will be on addressing the most critical threats before they escalate, and therefore minimizing business impact while improving overall security.
  • Continuous improvement: Finally, this approach will help build and maintain rich data ecosystems that let SOCs scale and continuously refine their cybersecurity strategies over time.

We can achieve all this by leveraging advanced technologies and methodologies: artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms which continually train on the latest attack tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). These automated tools become valuable cyber threat hunters, enabling SOC teams to process vast amounts of security data efficiently, identifying patterns and anomalies that human analysts might miss.

How Engineering Intelligence Delivers Advanced Insights

An engineering-led SOC is empowered to develop custom tools and integrations tailored to its specific environment and threat landscape. This approach enables the integration of diverse data sources and advanced analytics, providing a more comprehensive view of security risks and organizational vulnerabilities.

By leveraging threat intelligence feeds and data sources, SOCs can incorporate the latest information on new threats, attack patterns, and indicators of compromise into their detection architecture.

The result is a shift from a reactive to a proactive security posture, with improved threat detection, informed decision-making, and better prioritization of threats based on their potential business impact.*[BB4] Automated systems can quickly analyze and prioritize security events, leading to quicker response times and more effective threat mitigation. Ultimately, this helps SOCs stay ahead of sophisticated attackers and minimize damage from cyberattacks.

Imagine a SOC where analysts can instantly contextualize a security alert within the broader organizational landscape. They could immediately understand not just the technical details of a threat, but its potential impact on business operations, customer data, and regulatory compliance. This situational awareness ensures that responses are informed, timely, and aligned with the broader organizational goals.

Overcoming Challenges to SOC Transformation

However, the path to a data-driven SOC is not without its challenges. Organizations may face resistance to change, particularly from those comfortable with traditional security approaches. There's also likely to be a significant skills gap, as many current security professionals may lack the engineering expertise required for this new paradigm.

Operational disruption is another hurdle to overcome. Implementing new tools, rethinking workflows, and retraining staff can temporarily impact a SOC's effectiveness. Additionally, budget constraints may make some organizations hesitant to invest in what they perceive as a costly transformation.

Despite these challenges, the benefits of an engineering-driven SOC far outweigh the hurdles:

  • Enhance threat detection and response capabilities
  • Improve alignment between security efforts and business objectives
  • Empower SecOps teams to zero in on high-priority alerts, filtering out low-value noise

How Netenrich Can Help

Netenrich’s Adaptive MDR solution, powered by Resolution Intelligence Cloud™, enables SOCs to achieve an engineering intelligence operating model by focusing on three key pillars: data engineering, detection engineering, and response engineering.

  • Data engineering ensures high-quality data ingestion and normalization.
  • Detection engineering uses AI to identify and prioritize threats with precision.
  • Response engineering automates workflows for faster, consistent incident handling.

This approach fosters continuous improvement, enabling SOCs to enhance their security posture with proactive, data-driven methodologies.

By leveraging advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, Netenrich’s solution enhances threat detection capabilities, reduces false positives, and enables more efficient prioritization of security events based on their potential business impact. The platform’s ability to integrate diverse data sources and apply advanced analytics provides SOCs with a comprehensive view of their security landscape, enabling faster incident response times and more effective threat mitigation.

In addition, Netenrich’s engineering-centric approach allows for the development of custom tools and integrations tailored to specific environments, fostering continuous innovation and adaptability in the face of evolving cyber threats.

Conclusion: Engineering the Future of SecOps

Engineering intelligence sets the stage for a proactive security posture, allowing SOCs to identify potential risks before they escalate, ensuring that businesses are protected from evolving threats.

But, CIOs and CISOs need more than new tools to create an engineering culture in their SOCs. They must develop fresh perspectives and imagine new methods for addressing their problems. SOC managers also must foster a culture where technical principles direct the formulation of solutions and decision-making, one where excellence in engineering intelligence serves as the cornerstone of SecOps.

As we look to the future of cybersecurity, it's clear that the traditional SOC model is no longer sufficient. By embracing engineering intelligence and transforming SOCs into data-driven, proactive centers of excellence, organizations can stay ahead of evolving threats and ensure robust protection in an increasingly complex digital landscape. The time for SOC 2.0 is now – are you ready to make the leap?

Discover how Netenrich can help your SOC pave the path to efficacy. For more information on using engineering intelligence to amplify your SOC operations, contact us.

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