🚧 Why Building a SOC Is Harder Than It Looks

Every CISO dreams of a SOC: a room filled with glowing dashboards, threat hunters in headsets, and incidents resolved before they become headlines.

But behind that vision lies a reality few anticipate — the sheer complexity of standing up and sustaining a SOC that can operate 24×7 under constant pressure and rapidly shifting threat landscapes.

Quote from Loris Minassian (Founder @ CyberStash):
“Anyone can buy a SIEM — few can operate a SOC.”

Below are the ten challenges most organisations face when building an internal SOC from the ground up.

🔹 1. The Global Cyber Talent Shortage

The demand for skilled SOC analysts, threat hunters, and engineers far exceeds supply.
Finding Tier 2/3 analysts who understand adversary tactics and can interpret complex detections is extremely difficult — and retaining them is even harder.

  • High turnover and burnout rates (20–40% annually).
  • Analysts poached by vendors and consulting firms.
  • Skills decay if staff are not rotated through incident response and threat hunting.

Tip: Consider hybrid models where MDR providers supply Tier 1 triage while internal teams focus on high-value analysis and response.

🔹 2. The 24×7 Coverage Problem

True resilience requires round-the-clock operations.
That means multiple shifts, overlapping rotations, and coverage for public holidays and leave — a logistical and budgetary nightmare for most organisations.

Typical staffing for continuous coverage: 12–15 people for a team of five analysts per shift.
Few companies budget accordingly.

Quote from Loris Minassian (Founder @ CyberStash)
“A SOC that sleeps is a SOC that misses.”

🔹 3. Tool Sprawl and Platform Integration

SIEM, EDR, NDR, SOAR, Vulnerability Scanners, Threat Feeds — each solves a different problem but rarely talks to the others out of the box.
Integration costs in time and resources are massive, and without proper correlation, analysts are forced to pivot manually between dashboards.

  • 10–15 integrations on average for a mid-size SOC.
  • Misaligned data schemas cause blind spots.
  • SIEM licensing costs inflate with log volume.

Tip: Adopt platforms that offer native integration or open APIs to reduce engineering overhead.

🔹 4. Alert Fatigue and Data Noise

The average SOC handles thousands of alerts daily — most false positives.
Without proper tuning and automation, analysts drown in noise, focusing on volume instead of value.

  • 60–80% of SOC alerts are non-actionable.
  • MTTR and MTTD metrics suffer dramatically.
  • Analysts lose confidence in the system’s accuracy.

Quote from Loris Minassian (Founder @ CyberStash):
“Detection engineering and automation are not luxuries — they’re lifelines.”

🔹 5. Incident Response Maturity

Many internal SOCs detect incidents but lack the playbooks and decision authority to respond quickly.
When incidents occur outside business hours, response lags until morning — an unacceptable delay in modern threat scenarios.

  • Lack of runbooks for containment and communication.
  • Escalation ambiguity between IT and security.
  • Delays in forensic collection and impact assessment.

Tip: Define response ownership and escalation paths before the SOC goes live.

🔹 6. Threat Intelligence Without Context

Enterprises often subscribe to multiple threat feeds but fail to operationalise them.
Without context or correlation to internal telemetry, intelligence becomes noise — not knowledge.

  • IOC feeds expire quickly.
  • Lack of analyst context leads to false decisions.
  • Valuable intel sits unused in email or Excel files.

Quote from Loris Minassian (Founder @ CyberStash):
“Threat intelligence delivers its greatest value when it fuels active defence — blocking threats before they strike. Supporting investigation and response is valuable, but secondary.”

🔹 7. Compliance and Audit Pressure

An internal SOC must produce audit-ready evidence for every detection, response, and remediation event.
Frameworks like ISO 27001, Essential Eight, and NIST demand structured documentation and traceability.

  • SOC metrics often don’t align with audit language.
  • Manual reporting creates gaps and inconsistency.
  • Missed controls lead to non-compliance findings.

Tip: Automate reporting and align SOC outputs to governance frameworks from day one.

🔹 8. Cost Overruns and Hidden Expenses

Initial budgets focus on tools and people, but ongoing expenses — licensing, log storage, training, and maintenance — quickly escalate.

Typical hidden costs:

  • Log storage growth (10–30% annually).
  • Continuous SIEM rule maintenance.
  • Analyst training and certifications.
  • Infrastructure and support contracts.

Quote from Loris Minassian (Founder @ CyberStash):
“SOC operations age like software — if you don’t update them, they decay.”

🔹 9. Tool and Process Obsolescence

The threat landscape moves faster than most internal roadmaps.
A SOC built in 2022 can be technically obsolete by 2025 if it fails to adopt new data sources (cloud, identity, API traffic) or modern detections (behavioural and AI-assisted).

  • Outdated detections miss modern TTPs.
  • Static dashboards replace adaptive analytics.
  • Legacy hardware limits scalability.

Quote from Loris Minassian (Founder @ CyberStash):
“SOC modernisation isn’t optional — it’s survival.”

🔹 10. Culture and Expectation Misalignment

Many SOC projects fail because the business and security teams view the mission differently.
Executives expect instant results; analysts need time to build content and stability.
Without clear KPIs and shared objectives, trust erodes on both sides.

  • Unrealistic expectations of “100% visibility.”
  • Friction between IT operations and security.
  • Lack of executive understanding of SOC value.

Tip: Define success metrics early — MTTD, MTTR, coverage percentage, false-positive ratio — and communicate them to the board.

🧩 Summary Table — Challenges vs Impact

Challenge Impact on SOC Effectiveness
Talent shortage Reduces coverage and response depth
24×7 coverage Increases cost and burnout risk
Tool sprawl Slows investigations, creates blind spots
Alert fatigue Missed critical incidents
Response immaturity Extended dwell time of threats
Threat intel ineffectiveness Missed early warnings
Compliance pressure Audit failures, reputational risk
Cost overruns Budget shock, reduced investment
Obsolescence Detection gap against new TTPs
Culture misalignment Loss of executive trust and support

🧭 Strategic Insight

Every organisation underestimates the effort required to operate a SOC.
Building it is difficult; sustaining it is an endless discipline of modernisation, training, and governance.

Quote from Loris Minassian (Founder @ CyberStash):
“SOC excellence is not achieved by buying technology — it’s earned through operational resilience.”