Open-Source Security Operations Center (SOC)

15Cybersecurity Awareness and Training in SOC Operations

Given that security research consistently cites human error and social engineering as significant causes contributing to cyber breaches, overlooking the human element in security operations center (SOC) operations risks major blind spots. Beyond just tools, processes, and compliance, fostering a culture of cybersecurity awareness, vigilance, and resilience through continuous training uniquely equips frontline SOC teams with an intuition attuned to detection.

The Importance of Cybersecurity Awareness in SOCs

SOCs act as the eyes, ears, and nerves centralizing threat visibility across the enterprise security fabric, spanning endpoints, networks, identities, applications, clouds, and data sets distributed across complex hybrid environments. While prevention technology mitigates known risks to a reasonable degree, skilled adversaries inevitably probe for blind spots and bypass them depending upon environment familiarity, user tendencies, and system knowledge. Every organization faces some inherent detection gaps requiring human discernment sharpened by experience to notice precursor patterns announcing sophisticated intrusions, insider threats, or novel attacks typically absent from standard indicators.

Analyst intuition separates novice practitioners drowning in mundane alerts versus seasoned experts reading between the lines, picking up obscure anomalies, and insinuating advanced danger early based less on clear technical ...