As the volume and sophistication of cyber-attacks accelerates, security operations centers (SOCs) have become the focal point for consolidating the necessary people, processes and technology for an organization’s defense and response.

The trouble is that most IT and business leaders don’t really know their real level of risk vulnerability. They have no real visibility into all the potential vulnerabilities that might be exploited, let alone a means to fix them.

But organizations can keep up with modern threats by adopting an analytics-driven SOC. A successful SOC can improve an organization’s incident detection and response while accelerating and enhancing its security posture.

This paper expounds on what Gartner defines as the 5 essential capabilities needed for an intelligent – or analytics-driven – SOC:

• Advanced analytics
• Threat intelligence
• Automation
• The ability to proactively hunt and investigate
• The adoption of an adaptive security architecture