Working With Microsoft Sentinel - Traditional SOC Challenges

By Ashwin Venugopal -

 









Introduction

SOC (Security Operations Center) is responsible for improving an organization's threat detection and protection with the help of various cybersecurity technologies. It is a team of highly professional IT security officials, whose job is to analyze the organization's entire IT infrastructure for any security threat and take preventive measures on real-time basis.

Mainly, it can unify an organization's security tools, practices, and response to security incidents, that can surely improve preventive measures and security policies, achieve faster threat detection, cost-effective response to security threats. An SOC can also help in improving customer confidence by simply strengthening the overall IT security of an organization.

However, SOC team also faces some challenges on daily basis.

Traditional SOC Challenges

  • High Volume of Security Alerts- Since, the number of security alerts are increasing by the day, a considerable amount of an analyst's time always waste upon investigating their credibility and warnings. This sometimes leads to major slip like some alerts being missed or the serious ones just sliding through the cracks.  Ideally, an analyst's time should be used on finding ways to reduce he timing between breach detection and response.

  • Rising Infrastructure Cost and Upfront Investment- There is always some budget constraints in every business. It is quite difficult to monitor, evaluate, and manage security operations, while simultaneously justifying the spendings. Organizations are increasing their investment in cybersecurity measures, but, how much is sufficient in this era of increased cyber threats is not easy to determine.

  • Shortage of Skills and Knowledge- This is another challenge. Organizations could not find appropriately skilled officials, leaving the remaining staff to fill the void. Moreover, not knowing enough also obstructs the ability to perceive a threat at hand, since, SOC teams receives more false positive and negative responses and wastes time in tracking them. 

  • Sophistication of Threats- Since, the cybersecurity attackers have become more sophisticated with the skillset and tools to bypass conventional defenses (including endpoint security and firewalls), it is not easy to outsmart them in their own game.

  • Too Many Disconnected Products- Generally, all the organizations have many security tools to overcome all types of cyber threats. Hence, they tend to be disconnected from each other, restricting the scope of identifying the sophisticated threats that can cut across security silos. 

  • Unknown Threats- The traditional signature-based detection, firewalls, and endpoint detection cannot identify an unknown threat, and it is difficult to detect and defend against zero day threats for the SOCs. 

Conclusion

SOC analysts are the first line of defense in an IT infrastructure and faces many more challenges on daily basis, however, with proper resources, methodologies, and training, they can overcome these challenges and properly secure the data. 




















































Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Deployment (Part 3)

By Ashwin Venugopal -
Image
  To read part 1, please click  here To read part 2, please click  here Microsoft Monitoring Agent (MMA) MMA is used across multiple Microsoft solutions and has undergone a few name changes as its features and functionality have evolved. If it is being considered to be used, then following areas should be covered during a Microsoft Sentinel deployment project: Consider the timelines and the strategy for a migration to AMA (Azure Monitor Agent) before the MMA end-of-life.  Consider the central deployment and management methodology for MMA. Determine which endpoints are in scope for deployment as these affect the log ingestion volume significantly.  Azure Monitor Agent (AMA) Organizations with MMA as the main Microsoft Sentinel agent should start planning the migration to AMA as soon as possible to avoid a rushed migration. One of the main advantages of AMA is the ability to control the log collection policy centrally and apply different policies against different...
Read more

Deployment (Part 1)

By Ashwin Venugopal -
Image
  To read part 2, please click  here To read part 3, please click  here Azure Resources Microsoft Sentinel needs following resources to be created: Subscription (if a dedicated subscription(s) will be used) Resource group(s) Log Analytics workspace(s) Automation rules/playbook Alert rules Workbooks Microsoft Sentinel offers hundreds of alert rules, workbooks, and automation playbook templates along with hunting scripts. The templates can be used to activate/deploy schedule alerts, create customized dashboards, create automation playbooks and perform threat-hunting activities. Generally, once deployed, the resources created have to be adjusted to match the existing environment, configure local credentials, etc. Methods of deployment: Manual- Administrator can manually configures the Microsoft Sentinel resources with the help of Azure portal. Any manual process has the inherent risks of human operator error, lack of compliance with potential change control procedures, and u...
Read more

Project Resourcing (Part 2)

By Ashwin Venugopal -
Image
  To read part 1, please click  here Engineering - SIEM The SIEM engineers configures Microsoft Sentinel, including Log Analytics, Logic Apps, workbooks, and playbooks. They are also responsible for the following high-level tasks: Initial configuration of Azure tenant, including provisioning required resources, assigning access roles, and configuring workspace parameters like log retention, resource tagging, and blueprints.  Deployment and configuration of syslog/CEF log collection agents in appropriate locations to collect logs from on-premises devices. Generally, it will be joint effort of both system engineer and SIEM engineer, involving configuration and potential troubleshooting.  Working with system owners to enable log forwarding and configuring any required parsing of log data in Log Analytics.  Working with security operations to create and deploy KQL analytic rules to offer detections for SOC/Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSRIT) use. Tuning...
Read more