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I am at my desk now, having had my third cup of coffee (yeah I’m still buzzing lool)—and I start thinking about a question that is thrown around so much around security circles: What is the actual difference between a NOC and a SOC? And more to the point, what do they, collectively, really do to an organization’s cybersecurity posture? And over these past couple of decades in this business, from back in 1993 as a network admin watching Slammer worm the PSTN infrastructure to my current gig running PJ Networks and helping banks build zero-trust architectures, I’ve read (and seen) lots of hype and buzzwords about integrating NOCs and SOCs. But the fact is real integration is tough. But also game-changing.
Let’s clear it up first. Of course, the role of your Network Operations Center (NOC) has always been to keep the network up, drive performance, fix outages, and control enterprise equipment. Think of it as the pit crew for your corporate IT highway.
The Security Operations Center (SOC), on the other hand, is the specialized team dedicated to identifying, analyzing and fighting off threats — your company’s cyber guard dog.
But they are blurring, especially in developing threat scenarios of India where organizations are encountering even more sophisticated threats. At PJ Networks, we draw these teams so closely together that they act almost like one living, breathing organism. They provide each other with signals — network disturbances that might be an early warning of a cyber assault, and security alerts that describe possible network vulnerabilities.
It’s as if you hired your auto mechanics to double as expert detectives in case someone’s been messing with your ride.
Why does the NOC matter at all, when it comes to cybersecurity? After all, isn’t that the SOC’s territory?
Well, yes and no. In most companies the NOC is the first to detect odd network conditions, outages and spikes in traffic. Frequently what begins as a networking problem is revealed to be a cyber incident in sheep’s clothing. Bandwidth spikes, odd device activity, or loss of connectivity can be vital early warnings of an infection or malware attack.
In my work helping three banks upgrade their security frameworks recently, I’ve seen firsthand how NOC teams that pick up on these odd spikes first significantly reduce incident-response times. And you know what reduces the cost of incident recovery? Rapid identification and isolation.
Another piece of magic is the fact that NOCs keep the infrastructure it runs on secure by employing strict patch management and asset monitoring, while managing its configuration and devices. Without a watchful NOC, your SOC is akin to attempting to extinguish fires in an arsonist’s warehouse.
We don’t have our NOC and SOC groups with people sitting here staring at screens separately at PJ Networks; we’ve blown up those traditional silos. Our model is predicated on native workflow integration, enabling the NOC operator to escalate suspicious activities directly to the SOC analyst, by way of a shared dashboard or automated ticketing.
How do we pull this off? It’s a combination of technology, process and culture:
And I’ll tell you the truth: Early on, this was a headache. clashes, conflicting priorities. But when we did get it right, our incident response times dropped by half. And the accuracy of threat detection rocketed.
Divide and Conquer Revelations of attackers moving unhindered through a network are seen universally as a death knell for network defenses—a very real threat.
Consider your network as though it were a kitchen. You don’t completely commingle everything in one big pot (which would be operational chaos and a security nightmare). You segment, by separating sensitive networks like those in finance from general traffic of users, so that if one pot boils over, the fire is contained.
We have granular segmentation policies with micro-segmentation on the more sensitive systems at PJ Networks. The firewall configurations are implemented by the NOC teams and the SOC monitors statistical data of segment traffic for unusual conditions.
This is the good old meat and potatoes of threat hunting. Logs from routers, switches, firewalls, servers — they’re gold when you’re able to parse them out and correlate.
We make extensive use of SIEM systems that are connected to FortiAnalyzer to automate the intake of logs and spotting early warnings. We want to ensure our NOC teams can do that (triage and initial analysis) as quickly as possible to identify anything that is not part of a normal traffic raising a flag.
By scanning constantly within our client environments and patching the vulnerabilities (which is actually something that is often maintained and handled operationally in the NOC), we reduce the attack surface the SOC is “fighting” over.
And here’s a lesson of sorts: Stop waiting for your SOC to uncover your vulnerabilities. The NOC should be the one to deployment scheduled scans and drops, SOC can determine risks impacts.
PJ Networks strategic alliance with Fortinet is a part of our combined strategy. FortiAnalyzer serves as the central nervous system—receiving logs, alerts, and analytics from the wider network.
Together with a strong SIEM forensics team, we construct a dynamic threat detection bio system. This combo enables:
We even have built-in network performance monitoring that natively drives security insights to SOC analysts – bringing all of this full circle. Very handy, particularly for complicated multi-location installs.
One of the more notable occasions came just last year, when flying the Indian leg of a financial client I faced a sudden ransomware outbreak. Thanks to our NG-SOC integration:
NOC performed network segmentation and firewall blocks within a few minutes
Result? The breach was limited to a branch office – no data exfiltration, no lateral movement.
Without that teamwork, the attack would have consumed their entire network. That experience simply reinforced for me what I already knew: your NOC is more than just general IT maintenance—it is a frontline weapon in your fight to remain secure.
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In regulated fields, the joke is on the one who doesn’t comply. CISOs and security architects understand that when NOC and SOC workflows are in sync, audit readiness get’s a whole lot easier.
In PJ Networks we perform all of the following functions seamlessly:
A single source of truth for operational and security data allows organizations to sail through compliance audits with ease — and to sidestep those nail-biting fines.
Look—I get it. Even today, a few still think of NOCs as glorified helpdesks, treating SOCs as the true protectors of the digital world. But after decades of hands-on experience — even learning some things the hard way — there is no better formula than combining these teams, workflows and tools.
At PJ Networks, we are building on this further supported by our technology partnerships and through a belief that cyber-security is a team game. So if you are a CISO, a facilities director, or a security architect and you’re trying to figure out how to capitalize on the NOC and turn it into a cybersecurity beast—start with culture and then get some technology in there that actually works together to provide unified visualization, technology like FortiAnalyzer that integrates all of the information together and provides usable, actionable data that you can use to actually visualize what’s going on in your network, who’s trying to connect, and are they being stopped—that is the future of the NOC stack, and make sure that your NOC isn’t just fixing cables, ports, and switches, but is actually running itself like a threat detection powerhouse.
And one final note: Don’t let AI-powered buzzwords blind you to what’s actually going on under the hood. Technology is only as effective as the person wielding it. So pull yourself a strong coffee, build your team and get that integration right. It’s worth it.
—Sanjay Seth
Cybersecurity Consultant
PJ Networks Pvt Ltd
