Today’s Security Operations Centers (SOCs) are being stress-tested as never before. As the heart of any organization’s cybersecurity apparatus, SOCs are the first line of defense, running 24/7 operations to watch for alerts of attacks and appropriately address those alerts before they become all-out crises. Yet with ransomware attacks maintaining first place as the top attack type X-Force incident response remediates, those crises are becoming uncomfortably commonplace.
The best way to prepare for a crisis is to live through one. Ideally, this experience would come through a simulated crisis rather than a real one, although both can deliver valuable lessons. Being forced to address challenges you never fully anticipated, experiencing rushes of adrenaline that challenge your cognitive thinking skills, and racing against the clock to uncover evidence of an attack within mountains of data can provide valuable insight — and experience — that can make all the difference when a major cyber incident arrives. In other words, there is great value in putting your SOC team into the hot seat and allowing them to fully experience a crisis.
Having a plan for a cyber attack is crucial. But actually testing that plan, ideally in an immersive, realistic environment, can make the critical difference between effective response and quick containment, or a downward spiral into a complete cyber catastrophe, based on X-Force experience and observation working with hundreds of clients. As we have noted previously on SecurityIntelligence, “Tabletop exercises and technical training are important, but they can’t replicate the heart-pounding, real-world impact of a cyber range.” Indeed, cyber range exercises can put playbooks, teamwork, and technical skills to the test an ..
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