What Are SOC Services?
SOC services, or security operations center services, refer to solutions and teams dedicated to monitoring, detecting, analyzing, and responding to cybersecurity events in an organization’s IT environment. These services manage threats using a combination of people, processes, and technologies to protect data and systems around the clock. They centralize cybersecurity functions, enabling organizations to rapidly identify and mitigate attacks before they cause damage.
SOC services come in various forms, ranging from fully staffed internal teams to outsourced, cloud-delivered options. Their core value lies in providing real-time visibility into network activities, aggregating and analyzing logs from multiple sources, and leveraging threat intelligence for proactive defense. By offering centralized monitoring and response, SOC services are a foundational component in modern enterprise security strategies.
Core Functions of SOC Services
Continuous Monitoring and Log Management
Continuous monitoring is central to SOC operations, providing real-time visibility into network traffic, user activities, and system states. SOC teams utilize a variety of sensors and log collectors to aggregate data from endpoints, servers, firewalls, and other network devices. This data collection forms the basis for detecting anomalies and suspicious behaviors. Log management involves the parsing, indexing, and storage of vast amounts of security logs. Effective log management enables the correlation of diverse events across the infrastructure, which is essential for identifying multi-stage attacks. Proper log retention practices also facilitate later investigations, compliance, and forensic activities, supporting a robust security strategy.
Threat Detection and Intelligence
SOC services rely on analytics and threat intelligence to detect threats efficiently. Automated tools sift through login attempts, network flows, and system events to flag patterns that indicate cyberattacks or policy violations. Correlating this data with up-to-date threat intelligence ensures the SOC can detect the latest tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by attackers. Threat intelligence feeds provide external context and enrichment to internal event data, making detection more accurate and actionable. By leveraging global intel sources, SOC analysts can prioritize alerts that pose real business risks and ignore false positives. This proactive stance enables the SOC to anticipate and prepare for emerging threats before they impact the business.
Incident Response and Remediation
Incident response is a primary SOC function, focused on minimizing damage and restoring normal operations following a security event. SOC teams follow established playbooks to contain, investigate, and eradicate threats using structured methodologies. Key activities include isolating affected systems, collecting evidence, and communicating with stakeholders. Remediation extends incident response by addressing the root causes and implementing fixes to prevent future occurrences. SOC teams coordinate with IT and business units to apply patches, update configurations, and improve security controls. Documenting incidents and responses enables organizations to understand patterns and continuously refine their security processes.
Learn more in our detailed guide to SOC incident response
Threat Hunting and Root Cause Analysis
Threat hunting is a proactive SOC activity where analysts search for hidden threats that evade automated detection. Using hypotheses based on recent tactics and global threat intelligence, hunters investigate endpoints, network behaviors, and log data to spot indicators of compromise. This approach uncovers advanced persistent threats and insider threats that standard tools may miss. Root cause analysis complements threat hunting by determining how threats infiltrated systems and spread internally. Understanding the tactics employed helps prevent recurrence and enhances detection capabilities. By documenting findings and sharing insights across the organization, SOC services reduce response times and improve future threat resilience.
Compliance Management
Compliance management is a critical SOC responsibility, ensuring adherence to industry standards and regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, or NIST. SOC teams track regulatory changes, manage audit trails, and ensure security controls meet mandated requirements. Regular compliance audits and automated reporting streamline proof of compliance for internal and external stakeholders. Beyond avoidance of legal penalties, compliance validates the maturity and effectiveness of an organization’s security operations. A well-run SOC tailors monitoring and reporting to show both real-time and historical compliance, enabling organizations to respond quickly to external audits and reduce the administrative burden of security governance.
Types of SOC Services and SOC Operational Models
1. In-House SOC (Dedicated SOC)
An in-house SOC, or dedicated SOC, is managed and staffed entirely by the organization’s own employees. This model provides complete control over security operations, allowing for custom-tailored processes, direct oversight, and integration with business functions. With an internal team, organizations can adapt policies and workflows to their unique risk profile and data sensitivity requirements.
However, building and maintaining an in-house SOC demands significant investment in skilled personnel, technology, and infrastructure. Recruiting and retaining experienced analysts is challenging and costly. The model is often suitable for large enterprises with complex security needs, stringent compliance obligations, and substantial resources to support ongoing operations and training.
2. Virtual SOC (vSOC)
A virtual SOC leverages distributed teams and cloud-based tools, enabling remote monitoring and response without requiring a physical security operations center. This model offers flexibility and scalability, with security professionals collaborating from various locations and responding to threats in real time.
Virtual SOCs are well-suited for organizations with geographically dispersed assets or a need for remote capabilities. Virtual SOCs minimize infrastructure costs and can be established more rapidly than traditional, brick-and-mortar SOCs. However, ensuring communication consistency and robust remote access controls is essential. Organizations adopting a vSOC must invest in collaboration tools and well-defined processes to ensure efficiency, accountability, and regulatory compliance.
3. Managed SOC (Outsourced SOC)
Managed SOC involves outsourcing security operations to a third-party provider with specialized expertise and resources. These vendors deliver monitoring, detection, and response as a managed service, often bundling the latest tools and access to experienced analysts. Managed SOC models help organizations achieve advanced security capabilities without direct investment in recruiting or infrastructure.
While managed SOC services deliver cost and operational efficiencies, they require careful upfront planning to define roles, data sharing protocols, and incident escalation paths. Organizations must ensure that service level agreements (SLAs) match their risk appetite and compliance needs. Success depends on strong partnership and integration between the organization and SOC provider.
4. SOC-as-a-Service (SOCaaS)
SOC-as-a-Service (SOCaaS) delivers security monitoring and response via the cloud, with operations handled by external experts. This subscription-based offering makes SOC capabilities accessible to organizations of all sizes, particularly those lacking the budget or staff for a dedicated SOC. SOCaaS providers offer 24/7 monitoring, rapid threat detection, and incident response through a scalable, cloud-based platform.
One of the main benefits of SOCaaS is predictable, usage-based pricing, which helps control costs. Rapid setup and integration with cloud or hybrid environments also drive adoption. However, due diligence is needed to ensure data privacy, regulatory compliance, and coordination with internal IT teams. Effective communication channels are critical for maximizing the value of SOCaaS.
5. Hybrid SOC
A hybrid SOC blends internal security staff and processes with external resources, either managed SOC vendors or SOCaaS providers. This model enables organizations to leverage existing investments and retain some direct control, while filling skill or coverage gaps with third-party expertise. Hybrid SOCs are often adopted by organizations in transition, or those scaling up security capabilities. Hybrid SOCs allow flexible allocation of incident response, monitoring, and compliance responsibilities. Organizations can keep critical decision-making in house while outsourcing 24/7 coverage or special projects. The main challenge for hybrid SOCs is ensuring effective collaboration, clear escalation paths, and shared visibility between internal and external teams.
6. AI-Powered SOC
An AI-powered SOC integrates artificial intelligence and machine learning into core security operations to automate detection, triage, and response. These systems analyze massive volumes of log and telemetry data to identify patterns and anomalies that indicate potential threats. By learning from past incidents, AI algorithms continuously improve their accuracy in distinguishing malicious activity from normal behavior. Natural language processing is also used to summarize incident reports and extract key insights from unstructured threat intelligence feeds, reducing analyst workload and speeding up investigations.
AI-powered SOCs typically include automated threat scoring, behavioral analytics, and decision-support systems that assist analysts in prioritizing alerts and recommending actions. Combined with technologies like SOAR and XDR, AI can automatically trigger containment or remediation actions based on predefined confidence thresholds. This reduces time-to-detect and time-to-respond, even in high-volume environments.
For small in-house security teams, AI acts as a force multiplier—handling routine tasks at scale, reducing false positives, and allowing human teams to focus on more complex threats. AI-driven SOCs are especially valuable for organizations seeking high efficiency without proportional increases in staffing.
SOC Services vs. Related Security Services
SOC vs. SIEM
A SIEM (security information and event management) platform is a technology solution that ingests, aggregates, and analyzes logs from across the IT environment. It provides a centralized place for storing security events, correlating patterns, and generating alerts. However, a SIEM by itself does not investigate or respond to threats.
A SOC is the team and process that makes use of the SIEM’s data to identify, analyze, and remediate incidents. The SOC defines detection rules, tunes alerts to reduce false positives, and uses SIEM data as evidence in investigations.
While organizations can deploy SIEM without a SOC, this often results in alert overload with little actionable response. Similarly, a SOC without a SIEM lacks the visibility and centralized data needed for effective detection. In practice, SIEM is a critical tool within a SOC but not a replacement for the analysts, processes, and decision-making that turn raw alerts into meaningful action.
SOC vs. MSSP
A managed security service provider (MSSP) delivers outsourced monitoring, log collection, and basic security event analysis as a service. MSSPs are typically structured around delivering predefined services to multiple clients at scale, focusing on coverage and cost efficiency. They usually provide alerting, patch management, firewall monitoring, and compliance support, but they may not go deep into advanced investigation or custom response.
A SOC provides active defense, tailored processes, and continuous improvement in detection and response. SOC teams conduct threat hunting, root cause analysis, and detailed investigations, whereas MSSPs tend to focus on raising alerts and notifying clients.
Organizations may use MSSPs as a first layer of monitoring but still require SOC expertise for escalation and decision-making. For mature security programs, MSSPs can complement a SOC, but they rarely replace the need for in-depth, dedicated security operations.
Learn more in our detailed guide to SOC vs MSSP
SOC vs. NOC
A network operations center (NOC) is focused on availability, performance, and reliability of IT infrastructure. Its mission is to ensure that networks, servers, and applications are running smoothly. Tasks include monitoring uptime, resolving outages, and addressing issues such as latency, configuration errors, or capacity problems. The NOC’s primary concern is service delivery and operational continuity, not security.
A SOC focuses exclusively on protecting systems and data from threats. It investigates suspicious activity, manages incident response, and reduces risk from adversaries. While the functions are distinct, they often intersect in real-world scenarios. For example, a denial-of-service attack may appear to the NOC as a performance issue but is in fact a security incident that requires SOC involvement. Effective organizations establish collaboration between NOC and SOC teams, ensuring operational issues are quickly distinguished from security threats and that responses align across both domains.
SOC vs. MDR
Managed detection and response (MDR) providers offer outsourced detection and response services with a strong focus on rapid containment and remediation. Unlike traditional MSSPs, MDR vendors go beyond monitoring by investigating alerts, applying analytics, and often taking direct action to isolate threats. MDR services are typically delivered by specialized teams using modern detection tools, endpoint agents, and threat intelligence feeds to provide faster, more precise responses.
A SOC encompasses a broader mission. In addition to detection and response, SOCs handle compliance reporting, vulnerability management, threat hunting, and coordination with business units. SOCs may incorporate MDR as part of their operations, but they are not limited to it. MDR can be thought of as a specialized subset of SOC services, optimized for organizations that lack in-house response capabilities. For businesses that want a complete, long-term security program, a SOC provides the comprehensive oversight, processes, and integration needed to manage both immediate threats and ongoing governance requirements.
Learn more in our detailed guide to SOC vs MDR
SOC Service Roles and Responsibilities
Here are some of the key roles required to provision SOC services and perform in-house SOC operations.
SOC Manager
The SOC manager is responsible for overseeing daily operations, managing staff, and ensuring the SOC meets its objectives. This role involves setting priorities, developing processes and playbooks, and leading the SOC team to maintain high effectiveness and morale. The manager also acts as a bridge between the SOC and executive leadership, translating security requirements into business terms.
Security Analysts (Tier 1, 2, 3)
Security analysts form the backbone of SOC operations, working in tiers based on experience and responsibility:
- Tier 1 analysts handle initial alert triage, investigating routine issues and escalating complex threats as needed.
- Tier 2 analysts manage in-depth investigations, correlating evidence to determine the scope and impact of incidents.
- Tier 3 analysts are specialists who handle advanced threats, perform forensics, and develop custom detection techniques.
Threat Hunters
Threat hunters are specialized SOC personnel who proactively seek sophisticated threats that evade standard security controls. They create hypotheses about emerging attack vectors, then actively search through logs, network traffic, and endpoint data to uncover hidden threats. Threat hunters use manual techniques and custom tools to identify, contain, and help remediate advanced persistent threats (APTs) and insider attacks.
Forensic Analysts
Forensic analysts focus on investigating and documenting security incidents in depth. They collect and analyze digital evidence from compromised systems, mobile devices, and network logs to reconstruct attacker activities and determine the breach’s root cause. Forensic analysis helps answer key questions such as what happened, how it happened, and which data was affected.
Incident Response Leads
Incident response leads coordinate the technical and organizational aspects of handling major security incidents. They develop and execute incident response plans, assign tasks to analysts, and communicate with business leaders, legal teams, and third parties as incidents unfold. The response lead ensures information flows efficiently and that actions taken align with regulatory and business requirements.
SOC Tools and Technologies
Operating a modern SOC requires a full stack of security technologies. When an organization outsources SOC services, these technologies are typically provided and operated by the SOC service provider. When operating a SOC in-house, the organization typically needs to procure these technologies itself and ensure staff are skilled in operating them.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
SIEM systems are the central data aggregation and analysis engines for SOCs. They collect event logs from various sources—servers, endpoints, firewalls, and applications—and correlate this information in real time to detect threats and anomalies. By normalizing and indexing disparate log formats, SIEMs enable rapid querying, investigation, and forensic analysis.
Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR)
SOAR platforms automate repetitive security operations, streamlining workflows and incident response in SOC environments. They integrate with SIEMs, firewalls, and ticketing systems to facilitate automatic enrichment, investigation, and even containment actions based on predefined playbooks. SOAR tools enable consistent, faster handling of incidents with fewer manual touchpoints.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
XDR platforms unify detection and response across multiple security layers, such as endpoints, networks, servers, and cloud workloads. They go beyond SIEM by correlating signals across different tools, enhancing visibility into sophisticated multi-vector attacks. XDR leverages automation and AI-driven analytics to prioritize real threats and facilitate rapid response.
Vulnerability Management
Vulnerability management tools continuously scan assets for known weaknesses, misconfigurations, and missing patches. These tools provide prioritized reports, enabling SOC teams to remediate high-risk exposures before adversaries exploit them. Effective vulnerability management reduces attack surfaces and meets regulatory requirements for continuous risk assessment.
User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)
UEBA solutions leverage machine learning to analyze baseline behaviors for users and devices, detecting deviations that may indicate insider threats or compromised accounts. By monitoring logins, resource access, and activity patterns, UEBA identifies suspicious behaviors that standard rule-based systems may overlook. When anomalies are found, alerts are generated for SOC investigation.
Best Practices for Successfully Implementing SOC Services
Whether an organization outsources SOC services or deploys an in-house SOC team, here are best practices that can ensure a positive return on investment
1. Perform Continuous Validation and Red Teaming
To ensure SOC services are effective, organizations must continuously validate their detection and response capabilities. This involves red teaming—simulated attacks by internal teams or external specialists—to test how well the SOC detects, investigates, and responds to real-world adversary techniques.
Continuous validation exercises, such as breach and attack simulation (BAS) and purple teaming, help identify blind spots in monitoring, gaps in response workflows, and misconfigured detection rules. These exercises provide structured feedback loops for improving playbooks, alert tuning, and automation. For outsourced SOCs, red teaming also tests the vendor’s responsiveness and escalation processes, making it a critical performance evaluation tool.
2. Comprehensive Readiness Assessment
Before implementing or onboarding SOC services, organizations should conduct a detailed readiness assessment. This includes evaluating existing security controls, asset inventories, logging capabilities, and network visibility to ensure that the SOC has sufficient data to work with.
Key readiness indicators include centralized log aggregation, endpoint coverage, defined escalation protocols, and integration with identity systems. For outsourced SOCs, readiness also involves aligning on roles and responsibilities, SLAs, and data-sharing agreements. A mature readiness assessment identifies gaps that may hinder the SOC’s ability to detect and respond, allowing teams to remediate them early.
3. Invest in Joint Playbooks and Runbooks
Well-defined playbooks and runbooks are essential for coordinated incident response. Organizations should work with their SOC provider to co-develop tailored procedures for common scenarios such as phishing, ransomware, and unauthorized access.
Playbooks define the high-level workflow, while runbooks provide step-by-step technical actions. Collaborative development ensures these documents reflect the organization’s infrastructure, business context, and risk appetite. For external SOCs, this alignment is critical—without it, incident handling may be delayed or misaligned with internal policies. Joint playbooks ensure fast, consistent action and reduce confusion during high-stress incidents.
4. Ensure Your SOC Can Monitor All Relevant Infrastructure
SOC effectiveness is limited by its visibility. Organizations must ensure that their SOC—internal or external—has telemetry from all critical infrastructure, including endpoints, cloud services, SaaS platforms, and on-prem systems.
This means forwarding logs, configuring APIs for monitoring tools, and instrumenting assets with agents or sensors as needed. For outsourced SOCs, gaps in visibility are common when integrations are incomplete or cloud services are not fully covered. Regular asset and coverage reviews help validate that new systems and services are monitored, and that telemetry quality is sufficient for detection.
5. Establish Strong Onboarding and Integration
SOC services should be treated as an extension of internal teams. A structured onboarding process ensures that the SOC provider understands the organization’s environment, key assets, threat model, and escalation contacts.
This includes access to network diagrams, incident response policies, asset inventories, and business context for critical applications. Integrating the SOC with IT ticketing systems, CMDBs, and identity platforms improves workflow automation and situational awareness. Poor onboarding leads to misaligned priorities, slow response, and friction between teams. A clear integration plan helps the SOC operate effectively from day one.
6. Build Clear Communication Pathways
Timely, accurate communication is critical during incident response. Organizations must define communication protocols between internal teams and SOC providers, including escalation thresholds, preferred channels (e.g., email, Slack, ticketing), and availability expectations.
Roles and responsibilities for incident handling should be documented in a RACI matrix, ensuring clarity around who leads, approves, and acts during events. For external SOCs, having named contacts and response SLAs is vital. Regular status meetings, reporting cadences, and access to shared dashboards strengthen the relationship and ensure ongoing alignment between the organization and SOC.
Building Your AI-Driven SOC with Radiant Security’s Agentic AI
Radiant Security is an Agentic AI SOC platform that automates alert triage, investigation, and response across the security lifecycle. The platform is designed to reduce false positives by roughly 90%, enabling analysts to spend more time on verified threats rather than manual triage. Radiant also aims to shorten investigation and response times (MTTR) and lower operational costs, while helping teams avoid the fatigue that often comes with high alert volume.
Key capabilities include:
- Agentic AI triage and investigation for all alert types, including previously unseen or low-fidelity ones.
- Transparent reasoning that shows how and why the AI reached its conclusions, helping analysts validate decisions and build trust.
- Integrated response with one-click, executable action plans that can be carried out manually or automated when appropriate.
- Log management with unlimited retention, delivered at a cost significantly lower than traditional SIEM platforms.
- AI feedback loop that allows teams to influence and adjust triage behavior using environmental context, improving accuracy over time.
Radiant provides a unified environment for handling alerts, investigations, response actions, and log data, with an emphasis on efficiency, clarity, and analyst control.
