Last updated at Tue, 19 Jul 2022 14:00:01 GMT

Eight in 10 organizations collect, process, and analyze security operations data from more than 10 sources, ESG identified in a new ebook SOC Modernization and the Role of XDR, sponsored by Rapid7. Security professionals believe that the most important sources are endpoint security data (24%), threat intelligence feeds (21%), security device logs (20%), cloud posture management data (20%), and network flow logs (18%).

While this seems like a lot of data, survey respondents actually want to use more data for security operations in order to keep up with the proliferation of the attack surface. This expansion is driving the need for scalable, high-performance, cloud-based back-end data repositories.

More data, more noise

Organizations are increasingly investing in technology to achieve executive goals and deliver on digital transformation strategies – every company is becoming a software company in order to remain competitive and support the new work normal.

With more technology comes greater potential for vulnerabilities and threats. Security operations center (SOC) analysts are an organization’s first line of defense. In order to effectively stay ahead of potential threats and attacks, security teams rely on vast amounts of data to get an overview of the organization and ensure protection of any vulnerabilities or threats.

However, it’s nearly impossible for organizations to prioritize and mitigate hundreds of risks effectively – and not just due to the skilled resource and knowledge shortage. Security teams need to filter through the noise and identify the right data to act on.

“In security, what we don't look at, don't listen to, don't evaluate, and don't act upon may actually be more important than what we do,” Joshua Goldfarb recently wrote in Dark Reading.

Focus on what matters with stronger signal-to-noise

Though SOC analysts are adept at collecting vast amounts of security data, they face a multitude of challenges in discerning the most severe, imminent threats and responding to them in an effective, timely manner. These teams are inundated with low-fidelity data and bogged down with repetitive tasks dealing with false positives. In order to reduce the noise, security professionals need a good signal-to-noise ratio. They need high-fidelity intelligence, actionable insight, and contextual data to quickly identify and respond to threats.

With Rapid7, organizations can ensure visibility for their security teams, eliminating blindspots and extinguishing threats earlier and faster. InsightIDR, Rapid7’s cloud-native SIEM and XDR, provides SOC analysts with comprehensive detection and response.

With InsightIDR, security professionals can leverage complete coverage with a native endpoint agent, network sensors, collectors, and APIs. Teams can go beyond unifying data to correlate, attribute, and enrich diverse datasets into a single harmonious picture.

  • Detailed events and investigations – Track users and assets as they move around the network, auto-enriching every log line.
  • Correlation across diverse telemetry – Single investigation timeline for each alert, and all the details of an attack in one place.
  • Expert response recommendations – Alerts come with recommended actions from Rapid7’s global MDR SOC and Velociraptor’s digital forensics and incident response playbooks.

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