🎯 Turning Insight into Action

Building a SOC or outsourcing to an MDR provider is not just a technical exercise — it’s a strategic business decision.

After analysing the challenges and common mistakes, the next step is to operationalise the lessons learned.

Below are the ten most critical recommendations to ensure your SOC — whether in-house, outsourced, or hybrid — achieves resilience, agility, and measurable outcomes.

🔹 1. Start with a SOC Maturity and Readiness Assessment

Before building anything, measure where you stand.
A SOC maturity assessment identifies existing detection coverage, response capability, and operational gaps.
Frameworks such as NIST CSF, MITRE ATT&CK, and Essential Eight provide measurable baselines.

  • Assess detection coverage vs known TTPs.
  • Benchmark incident response times (MTTD, MTTR).
  • Map capabilities to compliance frameworks.

Quote from Loris Minassian (Founder @ CyberStash)
“You can’t improve what you haven’t measured.”

🔹 2. Define a SOC Mission and Charter

A SOC without a defined mission becomes reactive and unfocused.
A SOC Charter should clarify purpose, authority, and measurable outcomes aligned to business priorities.

Include:

  • Core objectives (e.g. detect, respond, hunt, recover).
  • Governance structure and escalation authority.
  • Business outcomes and KPIs.

Tip: Align the charter with your organisation’s risk appetite — not just IT objectives.

🔹 3. Build a Multi-Disciplinary Team

A world-class SOC is not just analysts and engineers — it’s a fusion team.
Bring together talent across disciplines:

Role Function
SOC Analysts (Tier 1–3) Detect, triage, investigate
Threat Hunters Proactively find stealthy activity
Incident Responders Contain and recover from breaches
Platform Engineers Manage SIEM/XDR/EDR infrastructure
Threat Intel Specialists Translate global insights into detections
SOC Manager / Governance Lead Oversee operations and metrics

Quote from Loris Minassian (Founder @ CyberStash)
“SOC maturity is not static — it’s cyclical.”

🔹 7. Establish Governance, Oversight, and Metrics

Without governance, SOC operations drift.
Create a SOC Steering Committee comprising security leadership, IT, and business executives to review metrics and align priorities.

  • Define key metrics:
    • Mean Time to Detect (MTTD)
    • Mean Time to Respond (MTTR)
    • Detection coverage (MITRE mapping)
    • False positive ratio
  • Hold quarterly performance reviews.
  • Use dashboards that link SOC output to business risk reduction.

Quote from Loris Minassian (Founder @ CyberStash)
“Metrics are the language of trust between the SOC and the board.”

🔹 8. Design for Hybrid Operations from Day One

Even if you build in-house, design for co-management.
Hybrid models allow scalability, continuous coverage, and external validation.

  • Use MDR partners for 24×7 triage.
  • Retain internal authority for incident response and compliance.
  • Ensure shared visibility through SIEM/XDR dashboards.

Tip: A hybrid SOC future-proofs your operations against talent shortages and scaling challenges.

🔹 9. Align SOC Operations to Business Outcomes

SOC performance should be measured in terms of business risk reduction, not just technical metrics.

  • Link detections to critical assets and business processes.
  • Translate cyber metrics into business language for executives.
  • Prioritise incidents by financial and operational impact.

Quote from Loris Minassian (Founder @ CyberStash)
“The SOC exists to protect value and company reputation — not just data.”

🔹 10. Invest in Modernisation and Knowledge Retention

Threats evolve faster than SOCs.
Schedule annual or semi-annual SOC Modernisation Sprints to refresh detections, integrations, and training.

  • Update rules for emerging adversary tactics.
  • Refresh integrations with new data sources (cloud, identity, APIs).
  • Rotate analysts through red team simulations and tabletop exercises.

Quote from Loris Minassian (Founder @ CyberStash)
“Modernisation isn’t a project — it’s a rhythm.”

📊 Summary Table — 10 SOC Recommendations

# Recommendation Outcome
1 SOC Maturity Assessment Establish baseline and roadmap
2 SOC Charter Define purpose and authority
3 Multi-disciplinary Team Balance technical and analytical skills
4 Early Automation Reduce noise and increase speed
5 VM Integration Close the prevention–detection loop
6 Continuous Improvement Framework Track maturity growth
7 Governance & Metrics Drive accountability and alignment
8 Hybrid Design Enable scalability and resilience
9 Business Alignment Demonstrate value and impact
10 Modernisation & Training Maintain operational relevance

💡 Strategic Takeaway

Whether you build, outsource, or co-manage, your SOC must evolve as fast as the threats it defends against.
The organisations that succeed are those that combine strategy, structure, and continuous learning — transforming their SOC from a compliance function into a business advantage.

Quote from Loris Minassian (Founder @ CyberStash)
“The best SOCs are not the biggest — they’re the most adaptive.”