In short
A Security Operations Centre (SOC) is a team that watches your systems for signs of attack around the clock and responds when something looks wrong. SOC-as-a-Service gives smaller businesses that protection without hiring their own security team.
SOC in one sentence
A SOC is a team of security analysts, supported by specialist tools, who monitor your organisation's devices, networks, cloud services and user accounts 24 hours a day, looking for signs of an attack and acting on them quickly.
What a SOC monitors
Laptops, desktops and servers, looking for malware and suspicious behaviour.
User accounts, looking for impossible logins, password spraying and unusual access, especially in Microsoft 365.
Networks and firewalls, looking for unusual traffic or connections to known malicious addresses.
Email, looking for phishing campaigns and compromised mailboxes.
Cloud services, looking for risky configuration changes.
What happens when something is detected
Tools generate alerts, but most alerts are noise. The SOC's job is to investigate each one, decide whether it's a real threat and, if it is, contain it. That can mean isolating a laptop from the network, disabling a compromised account or blocking a malicious address, often within minutes.
The SOC then tells you what happened, what was done and what to change to stop it happening again.
Why attacks often happen out of hours
Attackers know that most businesses aren't watching at 2am on a Sunday. Ransomware is frequently launched overnight or at weekends so it can spread before anyone notices. A 24x7x365 SOC closes that gap.
Do small businesses need a SOC?
Building an in-house SOC takes several full-time analysts and expensive tools, which is out of reach for most small and medium-sized businesses. SOC-as-a-Service shares that team and technology across many clients, so you get round-the-clock monitoring for a predictable monthly fee.
If your business holds customer data, relies on Microsoft 365, or would struggle to operate for a week without its systems, it's worth considering.
SOC-as-a-Service from Nexa SecureIT
Nexa SecureIT provides 24x7x365 SOC-as-a-Service to businesses in Glasgow and across Scotland's Central Belt, alongside vulnerability management, penetration testing and Cyber Essentials support.