Why SOC as a service?

In today’s COVID-19 affected world, the proliferation of remote working environments means that data leakages and compromised information are increasingly becoming part of the ‘new normal’.

Nowadays, companies can purchase virtually anything as a cloud-based service, from software to infrastructure, even something as critical as cyber security. The significant changes to and challenges experienced in business operations over the past six months mean the demand for cyber security has grown significantly, and it comes as no surprise that enterprises can now purchase a security operations centre as a service (SOCaaS).

Good news for South African businesses is that CyberAntix, a South African-owned SOCaaS provider, is able to provide immediately. CyberAntix’s offering is backed up by international support from NIL, a leading global SOC provider.

According to Dr Pierre Jacobs, Head of Operations and Compliance at CyberAntix, cyber crime continues to be big business, so truly effective cyber security requires focus and expertise. After all, he says, with so many potential attack vectors and an increasingly clever population of criminals trying to hack their way in, a comprehensive detection and response capability is vital.

“An SOC offers exactly such a capability. However, investing in a physical SOC can be prohibitively expensive, while expertise in the field is also difficult to come by. Generally, it makes more business sense to outsource the detection and response capability to a reliable SOCaaS provider, because setting up an internal SOC capability is typically three times more costly than utilising an outsourced model,” he says.

“A SOCaaS detection and response capability effectively establishes a completely new and independent layer of defence, capable of identifying, preventing or significantly limiting business loss.”

Jacobs adds that the CyberAntix SOCaaS is a state-of-the-art implementation of managed cyber security services, focusing on managed detection and response, with associated advanced services. The latter includes proactive threat hunting, incident response, code reviews and vulnerability assessments.

CyberAntix has based its technology choices and processes on a global industry-leading SOC blueprint from NIL, which runs award-winning SOCs in Europe and the Middle East, points out Jonathan Young, Head of Product at CyberAntix.

“We understand the importance of state-of-the-art security, and have thus entered into partnerships with industry leaders, maintaining our core focus of providing the most effective and efficient monitoring, detection and response service.”

Young explains further that the CyberAntix management team has combined experience of more than 60 years among them, ranging from entrepreneurship to consulting, project management and building of SOCs. This wealth of experience, he says, coupled with a strategy of leveraging the best technologies, offers clients invaluable benefits.

“CyberAntix’s true market differentiator is its partnership with NIL. After all, building a SOC is not easy, as the technological and process integration is complex, while customers typically lack the people or the skills for designing, deploying and operating cost-effective SOCs. Our ability to tap into NIL’s global expertise and customised set of services enables us to offer efficient and cost-effective threat detection and response capabilities through our local SOCaaS,” says Young.

To reinforce NIL’s credentials, he adds that the company’s SOC won the Slovenian Security Product of the Year 2019 Award at the Infosek conference, which is one of the largest security events in the CE region.

An effective SOC is an intelligent combination of people, processes and technology, suggests Morne Terblanche, CyberAntix General Manager.

“We strongly believe in our people, and as such we only appoint the best. Our analysts’ monitoring, detection and response experience ranges across industries such as government, finance, mining and retail, and our continuous skills development programme ensures they remain current with industry-leading global security certifications.

“CyberAntix is perfectly positioned to offer the local market a SOCaaS offering to suit the individual client. Not only do we deliver all the standard Enterprise SOC services, from full 24x7 incident response, penetration testing, vulnerability management and life cycle consulting, but we also provide services for SMMEs and mid-size companies. This means that businesses of any size can ultimately access not only our SOCaaS, but also industry best practices and process excellence, coupled with an international partnership with a global leader in the arena,” highlights Terblanche.

“CyberAntix’s main objective is to make a difference using behavioural security: driving down cost through continuous security behaviour improvements,” concludes Terblanche.