SOC Analyst Tier 1

The field of Information Security deals with the ever-growing volume of threats to businesses and government entities. While hardening computer and network infrastructure with patching, firewalls, and intrusion protection systems is important, those tools will probably never stop the threats completely. Adept individuals are needed to monitor the security tools, watching for threats that bypass the automated protections. The analysts in the Security Operations Center (SOC) are the last line of defense. The SOC tries to detect and remediate threats that make it past the protections. The SOC analyst role has traditionally been an entry-level position, but a great deal of knowledge and skills are necessary for success.

The success of a SOC is difficult to measure since attackers and attacks never stand still: Everything is a moving target. Success is typically measured by reducing organizational risk by detecting, remediating, and automatically preventing future instances of known attacks. In reality, this is far beyond the capability of most SOCs today. And to make matters even worse, SOC analysts rarely have the tools, tactics, procedures, or training to deal with all the threats that can affect organizations today. Nobody wants to admit how difficult the struggle is, which means it’s difficult to even get the conversation going.