Security operations centres (SOCs) have many different organisational functions. From protecting data to studying data breaches, there’s lots of behind-the-scenes work to ensure threat actors stay at arm’s length.

Discover the various SOC team roles and responsibilities as well as the different types of security operations centre services we offer in this article.

Main Roles in SOC Team

SOC team roles can be broken down into the following key areas:

SOC Manager

Like other organisation leads, SOC Managers act as a bridge between the business and their team, helping to coordinate business objectives and communicate updates.

SOC Managers also have a vital role in the auditing process and will direct the team’s priorities when securing data, devices or analysing threat events.

Security Engineer

Security engineers focus on maintaining cybersecurity infrastructure so a company’s security posture isn’t compromised by out-of-date devices or sudden network outages.

SOC security engineers work on testing security features, planning upgrades, and responding to security incidents.

Security Analyst

As their name suggests, security analysts monitor your system for suspicious activity and potential threats.

As soon as they find something, security analysts will assess the severity and pass more complex or specialist cases to colleagues.

Compliance Auditor

Compliance auditors ensure their organisation observes the government regulations and internal company policies, so all information is always handled legally and ethically.

Depending on how big your business is, you may need the support of multiple compliance auditors or implement stricter policies, so you’re compliant no matter what.

Threat Responder

Some SOCs separate the analyst and response roles, so threat responders can pay more attention to active and confirmed threats.

Threat responders work to prevent unauthorised access and minimise the effects of successful data breaches.

Forensic Investigator

Cyberattack methods evolve over time, so forensic investigators will study and analyse a threat’s source, inner workings, and purpose so analysts can recognise it again in the future. This way, similar attempts can be stopped more easily and effectively.

What about other SOC roles?

Some SOCs team roles and responsibilities will be slightly different depending on who you work with. If you know of other SOC job titles and are wondering where they fit, they’re probably already included in the summary above.

What are the duties of SOC?

Now that we’ve covered the roles of a SOC, what does it do? We can break the typical Security Operations Centre services into the following areas:

Management and maintenance

SOC staff spend a lot of time making sure core components of a business’s IT environment, like its cloud infrastructure, is functional and up to date. This is because SOCs require lots of IT infrastructure to host data, run software and coordinate access permissions before they can start preventing data breaches.

Threat detection and prevention

SOC engineers and analysts use cornerstone technologies like SIEM and XDR systems to measure user behaviours and detect unauthorised access attempts. Once they’ve identified and categorised an attack, SOCs then take steps to prevent it.

Threat or attack response

Although it’s a minority of the actual time spent working, this is the most important responsibility of the SOC.

When unauthorised access attempts or data breaches do happen, SOC analysts and response teams will deploy solutions depending on the method and purpose of the attack.

Recovery and remediation

Once a threat has been neutralised, dedicated SOC staff will take over to recover systems. For example, restoring servers with previously backed up data and resetting account log-ins so only authorised users can access them.

Incident analysis and investigation

In the background, and particularly after breach attempts, SOC staff will study and investigate trends in cybersecurity. This helps them update their response playbook and stay ahead of threat actors at all times.

Compliance and risk management

Compliance auditors and SOC managers will regularly review privacy legislation and data handling practices to ensure the company is always in line with legal and internal policy requirements.

Report to Management

Throughout the whole process, SOC team members will send regular reports and updates to the SOC manager, who will then relay them to other stakeholders in the business.

This allows business leaders to understand the current pressures and returns of the SOC, where they’re able to add value and where they may need more support or investment.

The role of SOC is becoming increasingly vital

As you can see, SOC roles and responsibilities are somewhat varied but each team member works to ensure your organisation has round-the-clock data integrity. Security Operations Centres ensure only the right people have the right access permissions, whether it’s studying up on the latest attack methods or implementing proper data handling procedures.

Discover managed SOC solutions from Atech

As a Microsoft pure-play SOC, Atech utilises the latest SOC technologies and delivers full threat remediation capabilities. We also deploy the best-fit tooling for assessing, managing, and securely storing all enterprise data in the cloud. These include Microsoft Defender, Azure Information Protection (AIP), Azure Rights Management (Azure RMS), and Azure AD Identity Protection.

We were extremely proud to be shortlisted as a Finalists in Microsoft’s Partner of the Year Awards 2022 for Endpoint Management, a key component of workplace cybersecurity, earlier this year. As a leading provider of enterprise SOC solutions, we safeguard over 45,000 devices and help companies achieve growth by expanding their work-from-anywhere capabilities.

So, if you’re looking for a managed security services SOC to help you streamline your IT operations, please get in touch with us now.