SOCaaS for Indian Enterprises: Securing the Ever-Expanding Attack Surface
Indian companies today are dealing with an ever-expanding attack surface.
- The transition to remote working has increased the proliferation of mobile devices operating beyond traditional security perimeters.
- The use of third-party supply chains can lead to exponential growth, but also exponential fallout if breached.
- IoT devices are rapidly becoming a crucial part of business, with little consideration given to their potentially weak security controls.
- And because of these possible vulnerabilities, they are being targeted by increasingly advanced cyberattacks from a host of bad actors, ranging from individual attackers to government-backed APT groups.
Consider this – according to research done by Prahar, India could attract nearly 1 trillion cyberattacks annually by 2033. A majority of those predicted attacks will be toward Indian enterprises, and a single successful attack could lead to a halt in operations, decreased brand reputation, and massive financial fallout. According to RBI’s report on currency and finance, the average cost of data breaches in India hit $2.18 million in 2023, up 28% from 2020.
The Case for a Centralized SOC in Today’s Perimeter-less World
With so many devices, networks, endpoints, and a general push towards multicloud strategies, the perimeter has been extended to such a level that it is hard to predict where the next attack is going to come from. Findings from the PWC 2024 Global Digital Trust Insights – India Edition show that Indian organizations are most concerned about cloud-related threats (52% of respondents), attacks on connected devices (45%), hack-and-leak operations (36%), and software supply-chain compromise (35%). With so many potential vulnerabilities, a centralized Security Operations Centre (SOC) that uses 24×7 monitoring to help identify, mitigate, and respond to threats becomes essential in both an information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) sense.
To that end, many organizations invested in an in-house SOC. However, maintaining and optimizing it over time has become a major challenge, with companies having to deal with burnouts, false positives, alert fatigue, cybersecurity skills shortages, and a constantly changing threat landscape. It can become impossible to keep up with your SOC principles on both IT & OT landscapes – in many businesses, SOCs don’t have the proper governance mechanisms to take quick action. That can be highly detrimental during an attack, where every second counts.
Ultimately, the goal is to keep the business running without cyber impact while also improving customer experience. Therefore, enterprises are outsourcing their operations to the many managed security services India has to offer, with SOCaaS (Security Operations Centre as a Service) becoming an increasingly attractive proposition. Here are some of the reasons for this choice:
| The Scenario with In-House SOCs | The Scenario with SOCaaS |
| Often, in-house SOCs are led by short-staffed IT teams. | Our SOCaaS is handled by a dedicated team focused on this specific task. |
| To optimize your in-house SOC, you will have to hire competent security experts in a market where demand is significantly more than supply. | Our SOCaaS team has best-in-class security experts who fortify your systems through a strategy that involves advanced automation. |
| You will have to spend a lot of time getting the best solutions for every aspect of your SOC scope. | Our SOCaaS is augmented with best-in-breed security solutions that work together as a powerful whole. |
| Adherence to industry and location-specific regulations is another thing on your in-house SOC’s plate. | Our SOCaaS adheres to all major regulatory requirements across industries and locations. |
| Initial costs of setting up your SOC will be high, with staffing, equipment, physical space, licenses and software to be considered. | These costs are significantly decreased in SOCaaS, as they are shared by multiple customers under a pay-as-you-use pricing model. |
| Scaling up your SOC as your organization grows will take great investment. | You can scale up economically and effortlessly with our SOCaaS solution. |
Why SOCaaS is the Answer for Indian Enterprises
The rate of SOCaaS adoption has increased dramatically in India for different reasons across sectors like healthcare, pharma, and manufacturing. In particular, demand for enhanced maturity linked to the adoption of advanced technologies is seen more from banking & financial services, mainly because of the stringent regulations present in their industry.
One such recent regulation is the Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience Framework (CSCRF), a set of SEBI mandates to all players operating within its Regulated Entity (RE) classification in India’s financial markets. The mandate of a 24x7x365 SOC to monitor, prevent, predict, detect, investigate, and respond to cyber threats is one of the core requirements of CSCRF.
SEBI was cognizant that setting up an in-house SOC could lead to great difficulties for smaller REs, for all the reasons we highlighted earlier. Therefore, they have given REs these options: their own/group SOC, a market SOC (mandatory for small-size & self-certification REs), or a third-party managed SOC, like the one we have in our cybersecurity suite.
Here are the key SOC functions SEBI mandates:
- Continuous Monitoring: This involves keeping a constant eye on all vectors, and immediately notifying the relevant authorities wherever there are instances of abnormal or suspicious behavior.
- Log Management: Aggregation and correlation of data from various networks, endpoints, applications, firewalls, OS, etc. to establish a baseline for normal behavior.
- Alert Management: Monitoring all the alerts that occur once things deviate from the baselines, discarding false positives, and determining the potential impact of threats.
- Threat Response: Acting as a digital ‘first responder’ during incidents, isolating endpoints and limiting the fallout with as little disruption to business operations as possible.
- Root Cause Analysis: Post occurrence of an incident, SOCs are responsible for analyzing all the logs to identify the root cause and prevent its reoccurrence.
While this is going on, SEBI also mandates measuring the functional efficacy of your SOC every year for all REs except qualified REs, who have to do it every 6 months. This entails thorough audits, where vulnerability assessment & penetration testing (VAPT) plays a key role. Vulnerability assessments are inside-out – they scan systems, networks, and applications for potential vulnerabilities like outdated software, missing patches, and misconfigurations. Penetration testing is outside-in – they simulate real-world attacks to test every aspect of your security controls.
While we highly recommend incorporating SOCaaS into your operations, we are aware of the initial challenges. It involves sharing your data with a third party, which has its risks. Furthermore, depending on which SOCaaS provider you go with, the onboarding process may be time-consuming, resulting in a potential risk exposure in this vulnerable phase.
All these challenges can be overcome by choosing a trusted, dynamic SOCaaS provider, like us. Here are ways of distinguishing an ineffective SOCaaS provider from an effective one:
SOCaaS vs. In-House SOC: A Comparison
| An Ineffective SOCaaS | An Effective SOCaaS (like ours) |
| Specific KPIs and SLAs are not clearly defined at the time of agreement. | There is a focus on results and improving key metrics like mean time to remediate (MTTR) and mean time to investigate (MTTI). |
| There is incomplete integration between all the SOC technologies, leading to data silos and reduced operational efficiency. | All technologies within the SOC are seamlessly integrated, and processes are displayed in a simplified, unified dashboard. |
| SOC governance is neglected, with not much clarity when it comes to roles & responsibilities. | There is an establishment of clear roles, responsibilities, and decision-making frameworks. |
| Threat alert management and incident response are done manually, impeding swift & effective response actions and generating high false positive alert rates. | All these tasks are done with advanced automation capabilities that improve efficiency, reduce human errors, eradicate false positives, and alleviate the workload on analysts. |
| Effective planning, integration, and functioning of playbooks and workbooks is lacking. | Numerous standardized, predefined playbooks are followed to ensure consistent & effective handling of security incidents. |
| There is a lack of a threat-hunting function, leading to a constantly reactive security posture. | Threat intelligence platforms keep track of emerging threats, allowing you to be proactive when it comes to security. |
Key Trends Shaping the Future of SOCaaS
Ultimately, SOCaaS solutions have to be constantly evolving to be ready for both today’s and tomorrow’s threats. Here are some trends we see when it comes to the future of SOCaaS:
- Attackers are increasingly using AI and ML in their attacks, so we must use them for our strategies. AI can scan billions of data points in real-time, spotting behaviors that even seasoned analysts might miss. Furthermore, it could be used for instant incident response, reacting in seconds instead of minutes or hours. It isn’t surprising that organizations that use AI & automation extensively in prevention saved an average of $2.22 million compared to those that didn’t, according to IBM Cost of Data Breach 2024.
- Reducing false positives is essential for organizations to optimize the time and skills of your teams. This boils down to not taking every alert at face value, but understanding the contextuality behind every activity. This trend has seen SOCs move away from traditional SIEM-based solutions to more data-driven monitoring platforms.
- The migration to the cloud for most enterprises should also see a migration towards cloud-based SOCs which are well-versed with the platforms and facilitate the remote monitoring & management that is essential in this BYOB era. Additionally, you can leverage the scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness that cloud brings when it comes to your SOCaaS provider.
Our solution ticks every single box when it comes to the security requirements for your SOC. Here are all the tools we have in our suite:
Our SOCaaS Suite: The Best Security Operations for Indian Enterprises
| SOC Functions | SOC Solutions |
| Continuous Monitoring | Splunk Observability for tracking network activity
Opentext ITOM for system performance monitoring Zabbix for identifying potential security threats Tenable for managing vulnerabilities effectively |
| Root Cause Analysis | EnCase for effective, insight-led analysis |
| Threat Intelligence | Recorded Future, Anomali & Google Threat Intel |
| Threat Detection | Google Chronicle, ArcSight, and InnSpark for real-time monitoring, log management, and correlation of security events |
| Incident Response | Google Siemplify and Splunk Phantom use predefined playbooks to coordinate responses & ensure timely resolution of incidents. |
| VAPT | Nessus, Qualys and OpenVAS |
We believe our suite is the best security operations as a service India has to offer. Click here for a free demo of our SOCaaS solution.
