Key SOC Tools Every Security Operations Center Needs

In an ever-changing cybersecurity landscape, a well-equipped Security Operations Center (SOC) is vital for protecting organizations from cyber threats. With the right security operations center tools, SOCs can efficiently monitor, detect, and respond to potential incidents, thereby enhancing overall security operations. Leveraging advanced SOC tools, or SecOps tools, ensures that security teams can stay ahead of threats, minimize risks, and maintain a robust security posture. From endpoint detection to automated response, these tools are essential for a comprehensive defense strategy.

To help you navigate the complex world of SOC tools, we will explore key categories and top vendors in each area, highlighting their primary benefits and potential drawbacks. 

1. Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)

Overview: Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools are designed to monitor end-user devices (endpoints) to detect and respond to cyber threats. These tools provide out of the box detection logic, visibility into raw endpoint telemetry to perform investigations, and empower users to contain hosts, ban files, and kill processes and network connections. As a security team, this should be among the first tools you consider in your arsenal.

Top Vendors:

• CrowdStrike
• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
• SentinelOne

Benefits:

• Real-time monitoring and detection of endpoint threats
• Automated response and remediation capabilities
• Detailed forensic data for incident investigations
• Scalable to cover a large number of endpoints

Drawbacks:

• Can generate a high volume of false alerts, leading to alert fatigue
• May require significant configuration and tuning to optimize performance
• Endpoint telemetry is highly voluminous and can require significant expertise to understand and respond quickly

2. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) or Event Storage

Overview: Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems collect and analyze log data from various sources within an organization’s IT infrastructure. They provide centralized visibility, enabling the detection of security incidents through correlation and analysis of logged events. In some cases, organizations may just need to have logging information retained, but not readily available for search – which can be significantly less expensive.

Key sources may include network traffic/flow logs, VPN and multifactor authentication logs, DHCP logs, custom application logging, and any data needed for compliance retention.

Top Vendors:

• Microsoft Sentinel
• Splunk
• Sumologic
• AWS S3 / Azure Blob (Storage only)

Benefits:

• Centralized log management and analysis
• Real-time monitoring and alerting of security events
• Ability to easily build your own rules across multiple data sources

Drawbacks:

• Can be extremely expensive to operate and maintain
• High complexity in deployment and configuration
• Potential for high false positive rates if not properly tuned

3. Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

Overview: Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tools help organizations manage and ensure the security compliance of their cloud environments. These tools continuously monitor cloud infrastructure for misconfigurations, compliance risks, and security vulnerabilities. The leading initial access vector for ransomware operators has been public vulnerability exploitation, so identification and response to known vulnerability has become increasingly important for security teams.

Top Vendors:

• Wiz
• Orca

Benefits:

• Continuous monitoring of cloud environments
• Automated detection and, in some cases, remediation of misconfigurations
• Enhanced visibility into cloud assets and security posture
• Support for compliance standards and frameworks

Drawbacks:

• Can generate a large volume of findings, requiring manual prioritization
• Historically have not provided Detection and Response signal for threats (Wiz’s recent Gem acquisition changed that)

4. Cloud Detection and Response (CDR)

Overview: Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) tools are focused on detecting and responding to threats within cloud environments. They provide visibility into cloud-native activities and detect suspicious behaviors specific to cloud infrastructure. Given most security teams' lack of general cloud-native experience, having dedicated tooling to bootstrap your team and make threat identification easier is crucial, allowing your team to effectively safeguard your cloud environment without needing extensive cloud expertise.

Top Vendors:

• Gem
• Permiso
• ClearVector

Benefits:

• Specialized detection for cloud-native threats
• Real-time threat detection and response capabilities
• Scalable to accommodate dynamic cloud environments

Drawbacks:

• Potential for high costs depending on usage and data volume
• Requires integration with other security tools for comprehensive coverage

5. Response Automation

Overview: Response Automation tools streamline and automate the response to security incidents, reducing the time and effort required for manual interventions. These tools can automate repetitive tasks, orchestrate complex workflows, and ensure consistent response actions.

Top Vendors:

• Tines
• Torq
• Cortex XSOAR

Benefits:

• Accelerates incident response times
• Reduces the workload on SOC analysts
• Ensures consistent and repeatable response actions
• Integrates with a wide range of security tools and platforms

Drawbacks:

• Initial setup and configuration can be complex and time-consuming
• Requires ongoing maintenance and updates to workflows and integrations
• Actions are going to be static and highly alert dependent. No room for variability.

6. What we’re building: Investigation Automation

The most time consuming part of a security team’s workflow is performing investigations on the alerts generated in your environment. With Prophet AI for Security Operations, users can transform mountains of alerts into security answers with clear transparency and explainability around how the solution arrived at the determination – and that’s without ever writing a single line of code, having a “bake-in” period for AI models, or needing to build your own workflows.

Since Prophet Security is powered with modern LLMs in concert with more traditional AI models, it can accommodate new rules and custom detections out-of-the-box. Best of all, it takes the feedback you provide from using the tool during investigations to improve outcomes specific to your organization in the future.

Our Benefits:

• Dramatically decreases incident response times
• Reduces the most challenging workload for SOC analysts
• Ensures consistent and repeatable investigative quality
• Not a “7th single pane of glass” - Integrates with your existing operational workflow in Slack, JIRA, ServiceNOW, etc.

How to get started

Discover how Prophet Security can lower your risk and boost Security Operations productivity by streamlining alert triage and investigation, freeing up your team to focus on more impactful tasks. Request a demo of Prophet AI to learn how you can triage and investigate security alerts 10 times faster.

Further reading

What is MFA fatigue attack?
Investigating geo-impossible travel alert
Top 3 scenarios for auto remediation
Automated incident response: streamlining your SecOps
SOC metrics that matter
Demystifying SOC automation
Alert triage and investigation in cybersecurity: best practices
SOC analyst challenges vs SOC manager challenges
Alert tuning best practices: keys to reducing false positives
How to investigate Okta alerts
AI SOC: Key to solving persistent SOC challenges
AI SOC Analyst: A comprehensive guide