Building an appropriate defense to meet the challenges of today’s complex and chaotic threat and risk environment requires organizations to rethink their cybersecurity. That includes evolving your security operations to be more current, with access to the right mechanics and insights and the ability to focus on the security issues that impact your business most.

Like all transformative processes, creating a best-in-class SOC takes time and commitment, but it’s well worth the investment. Fundamental to this evolution is managing complexity and better use of the disparate tools already in your security stack, including best-of-breed solutions.

MOVING TO AN OUTCOME-BASED SECURITY STRATEGY IS A MUST

Rethinking cybersecurity to meet today’s complex challenges is about more than just consolidating security tools and technologies. It is about shifting your mindset to an outcome-based strategy rather than being alert driven. This business-focused approach will help you identify the objectives your organization needs to achieve to protect and enable the business and drive resiliency. An outcome-based security strategy helps you to, among other things:

  • Understand and manage your security risks
  • Protect your systems more proactively
  • Minimize the impact of an incident through better planning
  • Amplify the talents of your SOC analysts and reduce fatigue

RIPPING AND REPLACING? THERE’S NO NEED

An outcome-based security strategy can help you improve security operations efficiency and increase security confidence throughout your business. Focusing more on specific risks and outcomes also allows you to make more informed decisions about new security investments — investing in tools that fit your security operations strategy rather than rushing to purchase the latest ones.

By no means does adopting an outcomes-based security strategy and creating best-in-class security operations translate to “ripping and replacing” what’s in your current tech stack. Once you baseline where you are and map out where you should be, you can start to mature your operations. You’ll have a much better handle on which security technologies are working best for you, what else you need, and what you don’t.

ALIGNING THE ELEMENTS OF BEST-IN-CLASS SECURITY OPERATIONS

There are several attributes and qualities of a modern, world-class security operations program, and here’s a quick look at the most critical ones:

  • Driving singular, actionable situational awareness across the enterprise
  • Focus on metrics that can help mature security programs while enabling the business
  • Strategic integration of automation, AI and machine learning
  • Empowering every SOC analyst with context and content to amplify their talents
  • Proactive operations that drive resilience

A unified workbench is a critical element of a best-in-class SOC — it’s what allows your security teams to move away from the exhausting “swivel chair” approach to proactively managing security. And Open XDR is focused on driving this essential, singular, actionable visibility by unifying all stages of the security lifecycle. The approach lets you aggregate relevant security data from all sources, including SIEM and EDR tools, regardless of deployment model — on-premises, cloud or hybrid — eliminating blind spots.

A new ReliaQuest e-book, Best-in-Class Security Operations — and What It Takes to Get There, takes a close look at the hallmarks of world-class security operations. It also offers recommendations to help you modernize your security operations program and explains why ReliaQuest’s approach is essential to creating and operating a best-in-class security operations team. It will allow you to “force multiply” your security team — and much more.

Download the free ReliaQuest e-book, Best-in-Class Security Operations — and What It Takes to Get There today.