Is Your Network Operation Center Oppression Your Security Operation Center?

Without a doubt, there is a remarkable similarity between the Network Operations Center (NOC) and the Security Operations Center (SOC). Inappropriately, these comparisons often lead to the misunderstanding that the duties of each role are identical. Combine this with the general opinion that having an NOC eliminates the need for a formal SOC and creates situations of tension, resolution and sometimes intimidation. In practice, both the network operation center and security operation center provide a unique value to an organization, but only if they can work together and work together.

Key Differences

The first step in linking the Network Operations Center (NOC) and the Security Operations Center (SOC) in a harmonious relationship involves recognizing and understanding the key fundamental differences between both roles. Yes, both teams may have some responsibility in the identification, evaluation, resolution, and escalation of the problem, but the final separation of these two groups is the nature of the problem and its subsequent consequences. 

For example, NOCs are generally responsible for handling incidents that affect availability and performance, while SOCs primarily focus on incidents that may affect asset safety. Both are working towards a common goal of managing risk, but approaching and achieving that goal is very different.

Performance Measure

NOC and SOC are also measured differently in terms of performance. The Network Operations Center's job is to administer, maintain and comply with service level agreement report (SLAs), as well as handle incidents in a way that limits potential downtime as much as possible. In summary, NOC technicians measure themselves on how to optimize system availability and performance. Security operations centers, on the other hand, are mainly classified by their level of confidential data protection or "security" titles.

Both tasks are so important for the success and continued profitability of the organization that they should be treated as separate but equivalent functions. Unfortunately, many organizations fall into the trap of believing that both can be combined into a single universal operation. This can cause a disaster, not because one cannot handle the other duty, but because of the surprising contrasts that each one addresses his role.

Separated But Together

Another important reason why NOCs and SOCs must operate separately is that they work together and have specific skill sets that belong to the technicians of each discipline. For example, NOC analysts must be competent in network, systems and applications engineering. This extensive experience and educational requirements can lead to the false opinion that NOC team members are somehow smarter or more skilled.

In practice, SOC analysts must show an equally complex set of skills specific to safety engineering, so they must discover the notion that NOC representatives are somehow better. Bringing these clear and equally important differences home will help repair fences and build more consistent departmental relationships based on mutual respect and understanding.

What further complicates the situation is the nature of the enemy with which each group must deal daily. The noc ops center on naturally occurring system events and the SOC faces very differently "intelligent enemies", such as hackers and other cybercriminals. As a result, the solutions and strategies that each group needs to develop, implement and maintain vary widely. Waiting for one group to adapt to the policies, processes, and priorities of the other group is a recipe for disasters.

Increase in demand = increase in sales.

Finally, there are many demands and pressures placed on each of these groups, and the reality of how to respond thereafter. Security operations centers tend to have a much greater turnover than NOCs, and the average employment of Level 1 COSs is less than approximately two years. This is mainly due to the unstable and ever-changing nature of security operations. The permanence of NOC representatives tends to be quite long. It makes sense, then, that simply waiting for NOC analysts to assume the role of SOC will result in greater staff reductions and, consequently, higher turnover rates. Most companies pay an expensive price.

Matches in the Sky

Ultimately, the ideal solution to avoid the problem between NOC and SOC is to find a way to recognize, understand and respect subtle but fundamental differences and promote collaboration and cooperation between them. That's one way to achieve this goal is to connect both computers using automation. The SOC will focus on identifying and analyzing security incidents, using the data collected to suggest modifications to the NOC, and the NOC can evaluate and implement the modifications accordingly and improve overall operations.

Does NOC Automation Eliminate Human Need?

Whether you work in a dedicated network operations center (NOC) or operate just like part of a team that handles incoming inputs, you have probably heard rumors about the concept of NOC automation. Technology would almost eliminate the need for human workers. NOC automation will really replace personal human. Not really. In fact, on the contrary, there are actually five ways to make your work even better.

Avoid Alert Fatigue

The network operation center and its small counterpart process a large number of tickets every day. Logic predicts that the higher the number of tickets, the more difficult it will be to do the job efficiently. That is why many people in this field experience exhaustion, sometimes known as fatigue. Also, with so many small problems that are being addressed, it can be difficult to focus on the right amount of attention in critical situations. In other words, the entire organization may suffer.

NOC automation allows much of the daily repetitive work to be transferred to the machine, optimizing and optimizing the entire alert process. Add options for self-service automation. This allows end-users to handle many of their own simple requests, such as resetting passwords.

Improve Communication

When an incident occurs in a busy NOC environment, it is surprisingly easy for the process to hit a bottleneck or shuffle and lose. This is especially the situation where climbing is required. Forefront employees can initiate applications immediately, but if the process is not managed properly, they will not know where to go from there. NOC Automation is specially designed to expedite the notification and escalation process, so that everything moves smoothly and in a timely manner through the pipe.

When the IT staff responds to the notification, an automatic tracking message is activated after a predefined period of time. Once the problem is resolved, the incident will be closed and a recovery notification will be sent. If the difficulty remains open, an alert is automatically lead to the system administrator for additional review and consideration. This ensures that the communication lines are always open and flow freely, eliminating costly delays.

Large-Scale Incident Management

If the incident is triggered and NOC employees can respond, there is usually no problem. But what if the person cannot respond or does not have the ability to respond in a timely manner? The lack of certain automated strategies greatly increases the risk of tickets being biased. The implementation of NOC automation makes the incident management process much more efficient.

When an incident is triggered, appropriate personnel will be notified. This is where technology really makes a difference. If the person does not respond within the specified time, the system automatically scales the incident to the next person in order. In addition, notifications and responses can be sent in several ways, including email and SMS, which simplifies the entire process.

 Get Better Knowledge About Best Practices

The best NOC team know that staying at the forefront of the game requires continuous process improvement. This is achieved through detailed and strategic reports and analysis. If done manually, this can be a burden to perform and is probably at the top of the list of tasks that are probably less fun. Fortunately, NOC Automation has improved tracking and reporting capabilities. This means that the data you need is available ad-hoc with the click of a button. You can then perform advanced analyzes to identify and develop best practices for continuous success and future improvement.

Customer Management Or Escalation

Depending on the type of service provided by the noc network operation center, it may be a requirement that the client is aware of the status of the incident. In addition, the leaders of your organization, including senior management and, in some cases, certain shareholders, should be aware of situations such as a significant suspension. In both cases, discovering who needs to know what and who executes an open dialogue in front of this communication is a difficult and time-consuming task.

With NOC automation, alerts are automatically sent to designated stakeholders, so they are kept in a loop and workflow can be configured to notify other business stakeholders of serious incidents. In addition, generating detailed reports on incident resolution performance and average repair time (MTTR) to satisfy management and understand them reduces the need for follow-up and manual status reports.

In conclusion, NOC automation is not designed to take over and replace human workers, but is designed to improve and complement the skilled workforce that works within.