Should You Merge Your SOC and NOC into a SNOC?

When a DDoS attack masks a ransomware dropper — and your network team doesn’t flag it to security — who’s responsible?

Too often, organizations treat uptime and security as separate conversations. The network operations center (NOC) keeps systems running, and the security operations center (SOC) protects those systems from threats. But when infrastructure and cyber threats collide — as they often do — isolated teams become a liability.

A firewall misconfiguration leads to an outage. An anomaly on the network turns out to be an exfiltration attempt. Because alerts exist in silos, neither team connects the dots until the damage occurs.

The solution? Some organizations are moving toward an SNOC — a Security Network Operations Center that merges the responsibilities of the NOC and SOC into a unified team or command center. But convergence isn’t a fit for everyone.

This article explores the core differences between an NOC and SOC, the rising case for convergence and how to evaluate whether the SNOC model is right for your organization. We’ll also cover key benefits and risks and why many businesses choose to partner with a managed SNOC provider like Red River.

Network Operations Center vs. Security Operations Center: What’s the Difference?

Before you can determine if convergence is right for you, it’s crucial to understand how each function operates.

SOC: Security Operations Center

The SOC focuses on cybersecurity. It detects, investigates and responds to security incidents using tools like SIEM (Security Information and Event Management), EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) and threat intelligence platforms. The SOC monitors for compromise indicators, such as:

• Unauthorized access attempts.
• Malware infections.
• Suspicious user behavior.
• Data exfiltration or policy violations.

SOC teams typically include analysts, incident responders and threat hunters.

NOC: Network Operations Center

The NOC ensures uptime and infrastructure performance. It monitors and manages network traffic, device health, application performance and connectivity. The NOC team is responsible for:

• Maintaining service level agreement (SLA) performance.
• Preventing network and application downtime.
• Monitoring bandwidth and latency.
• Managing configuration and firmware updates.

While the SOC looks for bad actors, the NOC guards against service interruptions.

However, increasingly, these two critical infrastructures meld in an integrated approach. Instead of a network operations center vs. a security operations center approach, organizations form a blended approach called the SNOC.

SNOC: Security Network Operations Center

A SNOC combines the commitment to uptime together with the search for bad actors, either in a physical space or as a unified team and process. It enables joint monitoring of infrastructure and security events, allowing faster detection and coordinated response.

The idea is simple: combine infrastructure awareness with security visibility. However, it can be complex in practice, especially without the right tools or cross-trained staff.

Why Merge? The Case for a SNOC

As IT and security environments grow more complex, the line between infrastructure issues and security threats becomes harder to define.

Consider the following scenarios:

• A user reports a slow application. Is it a traffic issue or data theft in progress?
• An endpoint is behaving oddly. Is it misconfigured, or compromised?
• A VPN spike occurs overnight. Is that a patch deployment or lateral movement by an attacker?

A SNOC gives teams the context to answer these questions in real-time, reducing finger-pointing and speeding up root cause analysis.

Key Benefits of a SNOC Model

A SNOC model gives organizations the ability to respond faster, see threats and performance issues in context and eliminate the silos that slow down decision-making. Businesses strengthen their defenses and service delivery by unifying their infrastructure and security operations.

Holistic Visibility into Performance and Security

When security and infrastructure data live in separate dashboards, it’s easy to miss connections. A SNOC creates a single world view for monitoring systems and threats — especially useful in cloud-native, hybrid or distributed environments.

For example, when a device goes offline, the NOC might log it as a hardware issue. But an SNOC analyst would check whether the device also triggered a malware alert before disconnecting and investigating further.

Faster Incident Correlation and Response

Speed is everything in incident response. In a traditional model, alerts can bounce between the NOC and SOC before reaching the right person. That delay gives attackers more time to cause damage.

An SNOC triage team can immediately investigate alerts from both lenses — reducing mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR).

Red River’s Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service enables a rapid response by combining machine learning with human-led threat detection, delivering 24/7 visibility into potential breaches.

Reduced Silos Between Teams

The longer a business maintains distinct NOC and SOC teams with different tools and priorities, the harder it becomes to work together under pressure. A SNOC fosters collaboration through shared goals, training and incident workflows.

It also minimizes redundant alerts and streamlines escalation paths. No more asking, “Is this a network issue or a security problem?” — it’s both teams’ problem from the start.

Cost Efficiency Through Shared Resources

Operating two teams with separate tools, licenses and training paths creates cost duplication. A SNOC reduces spend on:

• Redundant monitoring platforms.
• Duplicate headcount for overnight or weekend coverage.
• Manual triage effort from both sides.

Consolidation can improve ROI for mid-sized organizations while freeing their resources for higher-value initiatives.

The Hidden Challenges of SNOC Convergence

Organizations must analyze the benefits and pitfalls when considering a network operations center vs. a security operations center or a combined SNOC.

While the benefits are clear, merging your SOC and NOC is no small task. Here are some of the most common pitfalls.

Highly Skilled, Cross-functional Teams Required

Few professionals are equally comfortable with firewall logs and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing tables. Building or hiring an SNOC team means finding (or training) personnel who can handle security and infrastructure triage. This upskilling takes time and planning.

You also need clear role definitions. Without them, SNOC staff risk burnout — or worse, dropping the ball because no one knew who was supposed to own the alert.

Process Complexity

Bringing network and security ops together requires more than a new name on the door. It demands:

• Integrated ticketing systems.
• Unified alert management.
• Shared playbooks and runbooks.
• Cross-functional leadership alignment.

Without proper workflows, convergence can result in confusion, duplicated work or missed security alerts.

Risk of Unclear Priorities

Critical incidents can fall through the cracks when everything becomes everyone’s job. SNOCs need strong triage frameworks to assign urgency, route alerts and define escalation procedures, especially when network performance and cybersecurity goals conflict.

This kind of muddy water is why many businesses turn to managed SNOC providers, who already have proven frameworks to support unified operations without sacrificing clarity.

Who Should Consider a SNOC?

While any organization can technically move toward SNOC operations, certain types are especially well-positioned to benefit from a blended approach.

Mid-to-large Enterprises with Mature IT and Security Programs

If your infrastructure already includes centralized monitoring, threat intelligence platforms and observability tools, you’re likely SNOC-ready. These organizations often face alert overload and overlapping team responsibilities — which convergence helps solve.

In mature environments, siloed operations are a barrier to speed and scalability. As threats grow more complex and corporate infrastructures become more distributed, separate teams to manage availability and security can lead to duplicate efforts or missed correlations. A SNOC brings unified context to each alert, allowing analysts to prioritize incidents more effectively and resolve them faster. It also streamlines tool usage, reduces redundancy and fosters better alignment across your IT and security roadmaps.

Organizations with Hybrid or Distributed Environments

Companies operating across data centers, cloud platforms and edge devices need integrated visibility. A SNOC helps reduce blind spots between systems and ensures consistent response regardless of where the issue arises.

Teams Under Pressure to Improve Response Times and Reduce Costs

If your organization is trying to improve SLAs, reduce MTTD/MTTR or consolidate tools, an SNOC approach can deliver results faster than piecemeal improvements to siloed teams.

One survey of IT professionals revealed that organizations with full-stack observability — which aligns with SNOC principles — experience a median outage cost 37% less than those without such observability. These organizations reported faster MTTD and MTTR, leading to fewer outages and higher ROI.

A recent TechRepublic report cited Gartner’s forecast that by 2026, 75% of organizations with operational technology environments will merge NOC and SOC functions.

With that said, there are still a few scenarios that should lead companies back to the either/or discussion of a network operations center vs. a security operations center and not toward a melded approach.

When You Should Not Merge Your SOC and NOC

Merging isn’t always the right choice. Sometimes, the SNOC can introduce more risk than benefit; particularly if the organization isn’t ready.

For example:

• If your SOC or NOC is still maturing, the organization should likely focus on building strength in each before you attempt to unify. Immature processes + convergence = chaos.
• If you have regulatory separation of duties. Strict functional separation between operations and security teams, often an industry-specific requirement, doesn’t lend itself to a consolidated approach.
• If you use outsourced or compartmentalized vendors, the SNOC may be difficult to implement when teams scatter across multiple third parties.

That said, these limitations don’t mean you’re stuck. With the right provider, you can integrate workflows and alerts while keeping team boundaries in place to achieve many SNOC benefits without full convergence.

Why Many Organizations Turn to Managed SNOC Services

Building an internal SNOC takes time, budget and specialized talent, which are in short supply for many IT and security leaders. That’s why many companies partner with managed service providers Red River.

With Red River’s Managed NOC Services and MDR capabilities, you get:

• A unified escalation path for both network and security alerts.
• 24/7/365 coverage with U.S.-based support teams.
• Advanced threat detection paired with proactive network monitoring.
• Integration with your existing systems and security stack.

Red River can also help you assess your SNOC readiness and build a tailored roadmap to encompass decision-making around the network operations center vs. security operations center vs. SNOC discussion.

NOC vs. SOC: Is it Time to Merge?

A SNOC model offers faster response, better visibility and reduced silos — but only if you’re prepared.

The key is alignment of people, tools and processes. If your team is stretched thin or lacking maturity, consider working with a trusted partner like Red River. You’ll get the benefits of convergence without the operational risk.

Ready to find out if an SNOC model is right for your business? Talk to Red River. Whether you’re exploring SNOC strategy or just need better visibility across IT and security, we can help.

Let’s build a smarter, faster and more resilient operations model together.

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