Building a Security Operations Center: 5 Best Practices

Key Takeaways

• A security operations center (SOC) is a dedicated team and facility for monitoring, detecting and responding to cybersecurity threats in real time.
• Building a SOC requires careful planning across five core areas: strategy, technology, staffing, incident response and continuous improvement.
•  SOC models range from fully internal to fully managed (SOCaaS), each with different tradeoffs in cost, control and operational complexity.
• Cybercrime costs are escalating rapidly; organizations without a proactive security posture face growing financial and reputational exposure.
• Key SOC technologies include SIEM, SOAR, EDR and XDR — selecting the right stack requires matching tools to your threat environment and team capabilities.
• For organizations that cannot support an in-house SOC, Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) offer scalable access to SOC capabilities without the overhead.

Hackers continue to hone their criminal schemes, forcing industry leaders to either level up cybersecurity measures or expose sensitive and valuable data. Last year, a survey indicated that 9 out of 10 American chief information security officers (CISOs) believed their organizations were vulnerable to a cyberattack. Forward-thinking digital security professionals note that building a security operations center (SOC) ranks among the best solutions to protect cloud-based networks and the wide-reaching endpoints used by businesses today.

In a perfect world, funding and building a security operations center would harden an enterprise’s defense to the point that the vast majority of hackers would look elsewhere. However, creating a private SOC comes with certain challenges that most companies cannot realistically overcome. At Red River, we work diligently with industry leaders to find the right cybersecurity solutions. The following highlights SOC best practices, their benefits, obstacles and a pathway forward. We hope this information helps you make an informed decision about protecting your digital assets and business.

What Is a Security Operations Center (SOC)?

A security operations center is a centralized function, combining people, processes and technology, whose purpose is to monitor, detect, analyze and respond to cybersecurity threats on an ongoing basis. Some SOCs operate from a dedicated physical facility where security data flows to be assessed; others function as distributed or virtual teams. 

Either way, the mission is the same: maintain continuous visibility into an organization’s threat environment and respond before incidents escalate.

SOCs vary in scope and structure, but most share a common operating model. Low- and medium-severity alerts are often handled through automated responses, while high-level or complex threats require human analysis and intervention. The SOC sits at the intersection of technology, process and expertise, pulling together endpoint telemetry, network traffic, cloud logs and threat intelligence into a unified picture of organizational risk.

These are elements and benefits common to an SOC.

• Centralized Security Management: Security operations centers bring all the cybersecurity facets together under one roof, so to speak. These include 24-hour monitoring, anomaly detection and threat response. An SOC also helps simplify regulatory compliance and reporting.
• Dynamic Threat Detection and Response: Using machine learning and AI, an SOC oversees a non-stop flow of business network traffic. Unusual and suspicious activities are ferreted out from troves of data. The cybersecurity professionals who review potential threats make determinations about appropriate responses.
• Real-Time Threat Response: By funneling critical information into a central hub, automated and human reaction times are streamlined. Because an SOC and the accompanying technologies act in real-time, the responses can be equally fast.
• Consistent Compliance: Building a security operations center and funding it put a powerful deterrent in place. An SOC can be tailored to exceed the data protection regulations of a given industry.

It’s important to keep in mind that building a security operations center does not completely eliminate risk. Each cybersecurity hub provides a pre-determined level of protection, based on the investment into staffing, applications and other factors. While they offer a proactive defensive posture that outpaces enterprise-level antivirus software and firewalls alone, decision-makers are tasked with determining how much risk they are willing to shoulder. One of the obstacles many organizations tussle with is paying for 24/7 cybersecurity personnel, next-gen technologies and utility costs.

Benefits of a Security Operations Center

Building and funding a SOC is a significant investment, to be sure. However, there are many operational and strategic advantages that justify it. Here are just some of them:

• Centralized security management: All cybersecurity functions, like 24-hour monitoring, anomaly detection and threat response, operate from a unified platform, simplifying both operations and compliance reporting.
• Dynamic threat detection: Using machine learning and AI, a SOC continuously analyzes network traffic and system behavior, surfacing anomalies that pattern-matching tools would miss.
• Real-time response: Centralized data ingestion compresses detection-to-response timelines. Automated playbooks handle common scenarios; analysts handle the rest.
• Consistent compliance support: A well-configured SOC can be tailored to the specific requirements of your industry, e.g., HIPAA, PCI DSS, CMMC or GDPR, maintaining the documentation and controls auditors expect.
• Proactive security posture: Unlike reactive security tools, a SOC shifts the organization from responding to incidents after they occur to identifying and disrupting threats before they cause damage.

Security Operations Center vs. Network Operations Center (SOC vs. NOC)

A SOC and NOC are frequently confused because both involve centralized monitoring operations with specialized teams (and, to be honest, both acronyms sound alike). The distinction is fundamental: a SOC focuses on security, while a NOC focuses on availability. 

In practice, the two functions complement each other but operate according to different priorities, tools and success metrics.

Types of Security Operations Center Models

Not every organization needs (nor can support) the same SOC structure. The right model depends on your budget, internal expertise, risk tolerance and regulatory environment.

The hybrid model has grown in popularity as organizations look to retain control over sensitive functions while offloading the operational burden of 24/7 monitoring to a managed partner. SOCaaS offerings, like those Red River offers, are designed to integrate with existing internal security functions rather than replace them.

Building a Security Operations Center: Why Your Organization Needs a SOC?

Even a cursory glance at the statistical information involving cybercrime demonstrates why building an SOC is mission-critical. In 2024, cybercrime in the U.S. reached an all-time high, costing companies upwards of $452 billion. By the end of 2025, that figure is expected to exceed $639 billion. Now comes the truly scary part. By 2028, the financial impact of cybercrime on honest businesses will likely triple to $1.82 trillion. The favorite methods used by cybercriminals included distributed denial of service (DDoS), man-in-the-middle (MItM) attacks and 6 in 10 organizations took a hit from some form of ransomware in 2024.

The rising numbers and financial losses associated with cyber-intrusions show that the protection of digital assets is trending in the wrong direction. Too many organizations are knowingly susceptible to malware, ransomware and brute force attacks. Others are simply not keeping pace with evolving criminal tools and methods. Building a security operations center or working with a cybersecurity firm could be the game-changer companies need right now.

5 Security Operations Center Best Practices

1: Planning the SOC

The first step to building a security operations center calls for bringing all the key stakeholders together and having a candid, fact-based conversation. The hard data shows that businesses will continue to take larger financial hits when hackers penetrate their defenses. The number of CISOs who believe their organization is at risk remains far too high, given what’s at stake. But the cost of building an SOC to deliver constant monitoring, detection, automated responses and threat expulsion can prove expensive.

A leadership team can go all-in and fund the SOC, offset costs by working with a third-party Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP), or run a higher risk of getting hacked by sticking with less costly measures. If you decide to move forward and build an SOC to protect your company, these are planning phase steps to consider.

Assess Cybersecurity Needs

Conduct an audit of all digital assets, applications and infrastructure and determine to what extent each element requires protection. Some items may call for heightened security, while others may not. A cybersecurity assessment provides invaluable information about what is at risk and how much business professionals are willing to invest to keep data out of harm’s way.

Determine Risk Tolerance

Cybercriminals have no intention of relenting. They will find workarounds for the latest and most proactive security measures. That’s why decision-makers need to understand that nothing is foolproof and some risk will always be present. How much you are willing to invest and the cybersecurity expertise of your staff or MSSP will largely dictate your organization’s risk exposure.

Key Stakeholder Involvement

With the financial resources established and an understanding of data protection needs, integrate key stakeholders into the conversation and rollout. The IT department, management team and department heads all have a role to play. By aligning key stakeholders, companies create a cybersecurity culture that is greater than the sum of the parts.

2: Choose and Implement Technology

Choosing and onboarding SOC technology requires thoughtful consideration. There are no plug-and-play solutions that cover all scenarios. By working with a cybersecurity expert, you can review the levels of data value, necessary protections and infrastructure, and select applications and processes that support goal achievement.

There are a variety of SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) solutions available to help analyze huge swaths of data and detect unusual activities. Some of the standard options involve technologies that provide 24-hour monitoring, machine learning that can be tweaked to recognize real threats from false positives, and those that support streamlined responses and alerts.

3: Staffing Your Security Operations Center

Recruitment has been a thorn in the side when companies move to build their own SOC. Research indicates there are more than 1.1 million cybersecurity professionals holding positions in the industry. There are upwards of 500,000 unfilled U.S. jobs, and the global shortage is expected to exceed 3.5 million by year’s end. The skills gap continues to hamstring organizations when building a security operations center. To overcome this obstacle, incentives, enticing benefits and high salaries are ways employers can onboard a competent SOC staff.

Once an SOC leader is in place, it’s not uncommon to hire staff members who require initial and ongoing training. This aspect of maintaining an SOC comes with time and efficiency costs. Training naturally takes away from hours that could otherwise be spent monitoring, updating systems and responding to credible threats. When SOC staff attrition naturally occurs, the hiring and training process starts all over again. Although in-house cybersecurity recruitment, hiring and training can be accomplished, it comes at a premium.

4: Incident Response Planning

This may be something of a simplification, but there are two basic goals of a cybersecurity posture. The first is to harden an organization’s attack surface to such a degree that garden variety hackers and those with medium-level skills won’t bother attempting to breach the network. Most cybercriminals are financially motivated, relatively lazy and seek out low-hanging fruit they can pluck without spending much time or energy.

The second fundamental goal is to create a robust defense that frustrates high-level threat actors who are determined to penetrate a company’s network. Advanced persistent threats are typically sophisticated, well-funded miscreants who engage in corporate and nation-state espionage or look for big-money scores. Information regarding trade secrets, healthcare records, bank accounts and other sensitive data is often worth their efforts. The same holds true for ransomware attacks because organizations are held hostage until they pay for decryption codes.

Deterring and frustrating online thieves can be accomplished by having a proactive SOC in place. But there may come a day when an unsuspecting staff member makes a mistake, an insider goes rogue or an advanced persistent threat devises a new scheme to orchestrate a data breach. That’s when you’ll need a fallback position outlined in a company-wide cybersecurity policy. Key stakeholders will need to know their particular role in defending the organization and best practices involving how to secure information, applications and other digital assets. In other words, building a security operations center doesn’t mean your entity is immune to risk. It does, however, significantly reduce the chance of losing the fight to cybercriminals.

5: Ongoing Maintenance and Continuous Improvement

Developing and implementing a governance framework is critical to ensuring the SOC you build functions proficiently at all times. This normally means not only threat intelligence monitoring but also reviewing the systems and threat landscape. The use of AI, machine learning and other forms of automation has proven beneficial in terms of cost reductions and proactive results. Still, SOC leaders and staff members will be tasked with continually improving response times, technologies and fallback positions that can prevent an organization’s data from being held hostage.

SOC Roles and Responsibilities: Building the Right Security Team

A SOC is only as effective as the team running it. While the exact structure varies by organization size and model, the following roles represent the core functions that a mature security operations team needs to cover.

In smaller or managed SOC environments, individual team members often cover multiple tiers or functions. The important thing is that each area of responsibility is explicitly owned. There should never be a risk of someone going “oh, this is someone else’s problem” when a notification pops up – this is how small issues become big problems. 

Personnel coverage gaps in threat hunting, compliance or engineering are how detection capabilities degrade over time.

Essential Technologies for a Modern SOC

Technology selection is one of the most consequential decisions in building a SOC. The right stack enables analyst efficiency, comprehensive visibility and fast response; the wrong stack creates noise, gaps and operational drag. Key technology categories include:

• SIEM (Security Information and Event Management): The central nervous system of most SOCs. SIEM platforms ingest log and event data from across the environment, correlate it against known threat patterns and surface alerts for analyst review. Modern SIEMs increasingly incorporate AI-driven analytics to reduce false positive volume.
• SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation and Response): SOAR platforms automate repetitive-but-necessary response tasks, like isolating endpoints, blocking IPs or creating tickets, and orchestrate workflows across multiple security tools. They compress response times and reduce analyst fatigue on high-volume, low-complexity incidents.
• EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response): EDR tools provide continuous monitoring and response capabilities at the endpoint level, capturing behavioral telemetry that traditional antivirus cannot. They are essential for detecting lateral movement and fileless attacks.
• XDR (Extended Detection and Response): XDR extends EDR’s capabilities across network, cloud, email and identity telemetry, providing a unified detection and response layer that eliminates silos between endpoint, network and cloud security tools.
• Threat Intelligence Platforms: Feeds and platforms that provide context about known threat actors, indicators of compromise (IOCs) and emerging attack techniques. Threat intelligence enriches alert triage and informs proactive detection rule development.
• UEBA (User and Entity Behavior Analytics): UEBA tools detect anomalous user behavior, like credential misuse, privilege escalation or unusual access patterns, that may indicate insider threats or compromised accounts.
• Vulnerability Management Tools: Continuous scanning and prioritization of vulnerabilities across the environment, enabling the SOC to proactively reduce the attack surface rather than simply respond to incidents after exploitation.

Challenges of Building an SOC

The two most significant issues for a company building a security operations center are recruiting competent cybersecurity professionals and cost. Some peg the cost of staffing alone at $500,000 annually, after making a major investment into infrastructure. These are other challenges companies face when building and maintaining their own SOC.

Changing Threat Landscape

The staff of each SOC must keep pace with the evolving cybersecurity threat landscape. This generally requires team members to take seminars, read up on the latest data protection theories and follow cases of major security failures. The MGM casino hack is a prime example of how an otherwise comprehensive cybersecurity program can run afoul.

False Alarm Fatigue

The professionals who oversee an SOC field a significant number of threat alerts. When systems are tuned to identify subtle anomalies, the sheer volume can prove overwhelming. Unlike machines, real people get fatigued, and that invites human error. Either companies can hire enough people to minimize false alarm fatigue, or they can outsource to a properly staffed MSSP.

Regulatory Compliance

Establishing a fully funded and staffed SOC comes with the added requirement of regulatory compliance. The people handling day-to-day processes must operate within a specific data protection framework. Federal, state and international rules such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Pentagon’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) and the California Consumer Privacy Act, among many others, are regulations that may need to be rigorously observed. This means training SOC staff members about the appropriate methods for protecting digital information and reporting data compromises.

How to Measure SOC Effectiveness (SOC KPIs to Track)

A SOC that is running but not measurably improving security outcomes is a cost center, not a value driver. Organizations should track metrics/key performance indicators (KPIs) that reflect both operational performance and risk reduction over time:

• Mean Time to Detect (MTTD): How long it takes the SOC to identify a security incident after it begins. Shorter MTTD limits attacker dwell time and reduces breach scope.
• Mean Time to Respond (MTTR): How long it takes to contain and remediate an incident after detection. Similarly to the above point, MTTR reflects the effectiveness of response playbooks, tooling and team coordination.
• False Positive Rate: The proportion of alerts that do not represent genuine threats. A high false positive rate wastes analyst capacity and masks real signals.
• Alert Volume and Escalation Rate: Tracking how many alerts are generated, how many are escalated to human review and how many result in confirmed incidents helps calibrate detection sensitivity and staffing requirements.
• Patch and Vulnerability Remediation Rate: The percentage of identified vulnerabilities remediated within target timeframes. This measures the SOC’s proactive risk reduction contribution.
• Compliance Audit Outcomes: For regulated industries, audit results and findings provide a direct measure of whether the SOC is meeting its compliance obligations.
• Incidents Contained Before Impact: The proportion of detected threats successfully neutralized before causing data loss, service disruption or financial harm. This is, arguably, the most direct measure of SOC value.

Alternatives to Building An SOC

Not every company can afford the financial and human resource expense that comes with building a security operations center. While a SOC delivers high-level data protections that include detecting, deterring and repelling threat actors, the challenges of staffing, educating and maintaining the program can prove untenable.

By contrast, an MSSP partner provides scalable access to superior SOC protections. Outsourcing to a firm that specializes in cybersecurity allows businesses to tap into the knowledge and expertise of professionals they might otherwise struggle to recruit. By utilizing security operations centers as a service (SOCaaS), company leaders get the necessary data protection without the challenges.

Make Red River Your MSSP Partner

At Red River, we provide proactive cybersecurity at a scalable rate. We have the expertise and SOC infrastructure to meet your digital security and regulatory compliance needs. If you’d like to learn more about our SOCaaS solutions, contact us today. Let’s get the process started.

SOC Frequently Asked Questions