Page 58 - Cyber Warnings

The Trials and Errors of Security Operations Revealed in New

Report

Roberto Sandoval, Manager, WW SIOC Strategic Solutions & Enablement, HPE Security

The security industry is going through a volatile period. Threat actors are becoming bolder and
evolving quickly, and security organizations are deploying new solutions and developing
advanced detection and response capabilities in attempts to rapidly combat these attackers.
This constant ebb and flow leads organizations into an accelerated response to protect core
assets that is filled with the uncertainty of trial and error.

The departure from traditional security operations models, the adoption of new roles, processes,
and emerging tools, as well as the relentless pursuit of automation are among the topics that
stand out in the fourth annual State of Security Operations report released this month by
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

The report provides insights from more than 180 security operations maturity assessments
within the enterprise and public sector space in 31 different countries. These in-depth
assessments take 3+ days of on-site observation of a security operations center (SOC) by
security experts, and include interviews with service owners, service stakeholders, and
operational practitioners within each organization.

The results and the trends identified through the assessments performed across operational
models and industry verticals are consolidated to produce the findings revealed in the annual
report. The ideal SOC should have defined processes and goals, as well as flexibility to adapt to
new technologies or changing environments and threats; however, many organizations are not
meeting these criteria.

Security Operations are Aligning with Business Objectives like Never Before

For the first time in the 4-year history of the State of Security Operations Report there has been
a major shift in the most mature area of security operations. The report found that the Business
category outperformed the historically leading Technology category once all the data was
consolidated for the previous year.

Based on this data, security organizations are more aligned to business needs and goals than
ever before, and the report shows a 3% improvement year-over-year with 18% of organizations
achieving their security operations goals. While the improvement is encouraging, a majority of
SOCs are still not meeting business objectives.

58 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine January 2017 Edition
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