Standing up a security operations center (SOC) is the most effective way to achieve continuous cybersecurity monitoring and protection. However, the cost of doing so — recruiting, onboarding, training, and retaining staff, acquiring and maintaining the necessary software and hardware infrastructure, and dedicating the time and resources — is an unmanageable expense that takes years for many organizations. Insourced SOCs are harder to build, take longer to stand up, and cost more.
Let’s review the key cost areas organizations must consider when building a SOC and explore whether the best option may be enlisting a managed security services provider to handle your cybersecurity for you in either a hybrid or outsourced SOC model.
ECS SOC at a Glance
50+ unique commercial and open-source intelligence feeds
Finely tuned automated scoring algorithms minimize false positives
Our cyber threat intelligence team currently tracks over 17,000 adversaries
Cybersecurity professionals are in increasingly high demand. The analysts, engineers, incident responders, and managers who constitute a SOC typically command competitive salaries along with a negative unemployment rate. They bring sought-after technical expertise, but also ongoing expenses related to training, education, and certification, which many organizations cover to compete for top talent.
Cybersecurity professionals also average a 20 percent annual turnover rate. This is due in large part to the high operational tempo of the typical SOC, which creates an inherently stressful working environment. Stress from inadequate training and lack of resources also plays a role in SOC burnout. Some estimates place the cost of employee replacement anywhere from one-half to twice that employee’s annual salary.
Outsourcing your SOC to a managed security services provider eliminates costs related to onboarding, training, and retention. This also gives your organization access to top-tier talent with proven deployment and implementation experience, maximizing the effectiveness of your SOC. The ability to choose from a range of solution delivery options, from a fully managed service to a short-term service engagement, provides yet another degree of control over cost.
The cybersecurity programs, applications, and solutions that power your SOC — endpoint detection, security analytics, threat intelligence, orchestration, cloud security, data loss, vulnerability management, penetration testing, etc. — can be a recurring cost to your organization’s bottom line. Those costs include:
- Tool acquisition, implementation, and regular maintenance and upgrades
- Ongoing personnel training
- The energy-intensive facilities needed to house your hardware
By partnering with a managed security services provider, you remove both the financial and labor burdens of in-house tools as well as the expensive use of physical space. In their place, you gain cost-effective access to powerful threat detection and response solutions.
Automated Intelligence Flow
Standing up a SOC can take months or even years, which could leave your organization vulnerable to potentially costly breaches. In the interim, many organizations may opt for stopgap security solutions that are themselves costly and, often, inefficient.
Opting for a managed security services provider means getting immediate access to a full suite of threat hunting, prevention, investigation, and remediation capabilities, minimizing the risk to your organization.
There is a superior alternative to standing up a SOC in-house: outsourcing the challenge to a proven partner who can provide managed security services at a significantly lower cost. ECS provides access to the world-class expertise and cutting-edge solutions that drive a successful SOC, while requiring only a fraction of the time and financial investment it takes to build and manage it yourself.
