SOC – Given the complexity and constant evolution of cyberthreats and the cybersecurity industry, it is vital for organizations to ensure that their security practices and measures scale with the growth of the business. One of the major factors in this effort is using certain Security Operations Center (SOC) metrics to gauge the effectiveness of the security tools and practices in place.

With the help of some key SOC metrics, organizations can gain insight into how successful their cybersecurity strategy is, where there are areas of concern, and what processes can use improvement. This can help you to ensure the continued effectiveness of your cybersecurity strategy as your organization grows over time.

Key SOC Metrics to Track

There are a number of quantifiable metrics that organizations can utilize in order to establish the effectiveness of their security measures. Key SOC metrics that can help your organization include:

• Mean Time to Detect (MTTD): The average amount of time that an organization takes to detect and identify a security incident after it begins, measuring the effectiveness of detection tools.
• Mean Time to Respond (MTTR): The average of the total amount of time that an organization takes to contain or resolve a security incident after it occurs, providing insight into the organization’s incident response abilities.
• Mean Time to Investigate (MTTI): The average amount of time from the team acknowledging a security alert to resolving the issue.
• False Negative Rate and False Positive Rate: The frequency of false negatives, genuine security threats that are incorrectly determined not to be risks, and false positives, an innocuous activity that gets flagged as a threat. These metrics help to gauge the accuracy of the organization’s threat detection measures.
• SOC Capacity and Expected Work: The total time that the security team has to respond to security alerts and the total amount of work they are expected to receive in a given month. These help organizations determine if the team’s capacity cannot handle the volume of alerts.

The Importance of Using SOC Metrics for Your Benefit

Organizations often aim for business growth without giving due consideration to scaling their security efforts to match. But as an organization grows, it is essential to proactively think about evolving security practices and tools to both keep up with the progress of the business and aid in achieving business objectives.

Using SOC metrics is an effective, risk-aware way to make sure that an organization’s security strategy is aligned with the threat landscape and the size and capability of the business. Many factors can help organizations make decisions regarding their security tools and practices, but measuring the real-life effectiveness of those measures is one of the most direct ways to gauge the success of your security strategy.

Beyond quantifying many aspects of protection to determine how effective the security strategy is, organizations can also use these metrics to establish areas of particular concern and work out a way forward. With the advantage of key SOC metrics, organizations can see where their security strategy fulfills its goals and where it falls short. This allows them to alter and evolve their policies to more effectively fight threats, remediate security incidents, and maintain compliance with relevant laws and regulations.

How to Leverage SOC KPIs for Business Growth

Important SOC metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are a crucial part of growing any organization, aiding teams in determining how effective their security measures are and what the best steps are for improving security. Ensuring that security efforts scale to meet business growth is vital, and organizations can use SOC KPIs to help them decide which tools and practices to implement in order to continue to meet business goals and maintain security as the organization expands.

Key SOC metrics can be leveraged for business growth in a variety of ways, such as:

• MTTD can be used to evaluate the efficacy of an organization’s threat detection capabilities, including technological solutions and cyber hygiene and best practices. As an organization grows, it is more likely to see higher volumes of cyberthreats, making threat detection an essential factor.
• MTTR and MTTI can demonstrate the capacity of the organization’s security incident investigation, containment, and remediation measures, providing insight into the security team’s threat response strategies.
• False Negative Rates and False Positive Rates can offer additional information regarding the organization’s threat detection measures, highlighting places where existing threat detection is lacking in effectiveness or accuracy.
• SOC capacity and expected work metrics can assist organizations in measuring the success of their security teams. This is especially useful for business growth as it can reveal if security teams are overwhelmed with more work than they can reasonably handle.

Conclusion

Using SOC KPIs is a helpful way for businesses to measure the effectiveness of their security strategies and adjust their efforts to ensure security as the organization grows. With real data regarding the success of the various tools and practices in place, an organization can make informed decisions about the trajectory of its cybersecurity strategies through projected business growth. The use of these metrics can not only aid organizations in ensuring security as the business grows, but also contribute to achieving business goals.

About the author:

PJ Bradley is a writer on a wide variety of topics, passionate about learning and helping people above all else. Holding a bachelor’s degree from Oakland University, PJ enjoys using a lifelong desire to understand how things work to write about subjects that inspire interest. Most of PJ’s free time is spent reading and writing. PJ is also a regular writer at Bora.