The Modern Security Operations Center

The Industry Standard, Vendor-Neutral Guide to Managing SOCs and Delivering SOC Services

This completely new, vendor-neutral guide brings together all the knowledge you need to build, maintain, and operate a modern Security Operations Center (SOC) and deliver security services as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.

Leading security architect Joseph Muniz helps you assess current capabilities, align your SOC to your business, and plan a new SOC or evolve an existing one. He covers people, process, and technology; explores each key service handled by mature SOCs; and offers expert guidance for managing risk, vulnerabilities, and compliance. Throughout, hands-on examples show how advanced red and blue teams execute and defend against real-world exploits using tools like Kali Linux and Ansible. Muniz concludes by previewing the future of SOCs, including Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) cloud technologies and increasingly sophisticated automation.

This guide will be indispensable for everyone responsible for delivering security services—managers and cybersecurity professionals alike.

* Address core business and operational requirements, including sponsorship, management, policies, procedures, workspaces, staffing, and technology
* Identify, recruit, interview, onboard, and grow an outstanding SOC team
* Thoughtfully decide what to outsource and what to insource 
* Collect, centralize, and use both internal data and external threat intelligence
* Quickly and efficiently hunt threats, respond to incidents, and investigate artifacts
* Reduce future risk by improving incident recovery and vulnerability management
* Apply orchestration and automation effectively, without just throwing money at them
* Position yourself today for emerging SOC technologies

Joseph Muñiz, Technical Solutions Architect and researcher at Cisco, has extensive experience designing security solutions for Fortune® 500 corporations and the US Government. His current role gives him visibility into the latest cybersecurity trends from both leading vendors and customers. He runs thesecurityblogger.com, a popular resource for security and product implementation.
Aamir Lakhani is a leading senior security strategist. He is responsible for providing IT security solutions to major enterprises and government organizations. Mr. Lakhani creates technical security strategies and leads security implementation projects for Fortune 500 companies. Aamir has designed offensive counter-defense measures for the Department of Defense and national intelligence agencies. He has also assisted organizations with safeguarding IT and physical environments from attacks perpetrated by underground cybercriminal groups. Mr. Lakhani is considered an industry leader for creating detailed security architectures within complex computing environments. Writing under the pseudonym Dr. Chaos, Mr. Lakhani also operates the popular security social media blog, which is hosted at DrChaos.com. In its recent list of 46 Federal Technology Experts to Follow on Twitter, Forbes magazine described Aamir Lakhani as “a blogger, InfoSec specialist, super hero…and all around good guy.”

1. Introduction to Security Operations and the SOC 2. Building a SOC 3. SOC Services 4. People and Process 5. Centralizing Data 6. Threat Intelligence 7. Threat Hunting 8. Incident Response, Recovery, and Vulnerability Management 9. Data Orchestration 10. Future of SOC