What is SOC as a Service and how is it different from a traditional SOC?

A traditional Security Operations Centre requires significant capital investment: SIEM software licences, security tooling, dedicated infrastructure, and a team of security analysts working in shifts 24/7. For most businesses, building this in-house costs over $1 million USD annually when you account for staffing alone. SOC as a Service provides the same capability through a managed service model — you get 24/7 security monitoring, expert analysts, and enterprise-grade tooling without the infrastructure investment or hiring challenge. Our SOC monitors multiple clients simultaneously, allowing us to spread the cost of world-class capabilities across an entire client base.

How long does it typically take attackers to be detected without a SOC?

According to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average time to identify a breach is 287 days — nearly ten months. During that time, attackers are typically moving laterally through the network, escalating privileges, identifying valuable data, and establishing persistence. The average time to contain a breach once identified is an additional 80 days. Our SOC monitoring changes this fundamentally: we aim to detect and contain active threats within hours, not months, dramatically reducing the blast radius of any successful intrusion.

What log sources do you need access to in order to monitor our environment?

Effective SOC monitoring requires logs from multiple source types: endpoint logs (Windows Event Logs, Sysmon, EDR telemetry), network device logs (firewall logs, switch logs, DNS query logs), authentication logs (Active Directory, Azure AD, VPN), server application logs (web servers, databases, email gateways), and cloud platform logs (Azure Activity Log, AWS CloudTrail). We provide a detailed log source requirements document during onboarding and can work with whatever log sources your environment currently provides, expanding coverage systematically over time.

What is the difference between a SIEM alert and a confirmed security incident?

A SIEM alert is any event or correlation that matches a detection rule. The majority of raw SIEM alerts are false positives — legitimate activity that superficially resembles a suspicious pattern. Our SOC analysts triage every alert, applying context, threat intelligence enrichment, and investigation to determine whether it represents genuine malicious activity. Only alerts that our analysts confirm as genuine threats are escalated as security incidents requiring response. This analysis layer is what separates our service from simply forwarding raw SIEM alerts — you receive confirmed, actionable security incidents.

Can you respond to incidents on our behalf or do we need our own security team?

We can execute a defined set of containment actions on your behalf under agreed response authority — this typically includes isolating infected endpoints, blocking specific IP addresses or domains at the firewall, disabling compromised user accounts, and revoking active authentication tokens. For actions that require physical access or fall outside our agreed scope, we provide detailed incident response guidance and work alongside your team in a war-room model. Clients without an in-house security team can also retain us for full incident response support as a separate engagement.

Does our business need a SOC if we already have a firewall and antivirus?

A firewall and antivirus are necessary baseline controls, but they are not sufficient for detecting sophisticated attacks. Firewalls inspect network traffic at the perimeter but do not detect lateral movement inside the network or attacks that arrive through legitimate channels (phishing, compromised credentials, supply chain). Antivirus catches known malware signatures but misses fileless attacks, living-off-the-land techniques, and zero-day malware. A SOC monitors what happens after an attacker gets past these controls — which, for a sufficiently motivated attacker, they will.

SOC as a Service

SOC as a Service — 24/7 Threat Detection and Response.

The average attacker dwells inside a network for 287 days before being detected. By then, the damage is done. Infraspine's SOC as a Service delivers enterprise-grade 24/7 security monitoring, threat detection, and incident response without the $1M+ annual cost of building an internal Security Operations Centre. Our analysts watch your environment around the clock, confirm real threats from SIEM noise, and contain incidents before they become breaches.

24/7/365

Security Monitoring

<30min

Threat Response

1M+

Events/Day Analysed

99.9%

Threat Detection Rate

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The Business Case

Why Most Businesses Cannot Afford to Go Without a SOC

Building an internal SOC to the standard required to detect modern threats requires a minimum team of 6–8 security analysts (to cover 24/7 shifts), a SIEM platform costing $100,000–$500,000 per year in licensing, threat intelligence subscriptions, EDR tooling, and a senior security architect to design and maintain the detection logic. The total annual cost for a functional internal SOC exceeds $1 million USD — which puts genuine 24/7 security monitoring out of reach for the vast majority of businesses.

The threat landscape in 2024 makes this gap dangerous. Ransomware attacks have increased 75% year-on-year. Business email compromise losses exceed $2.7 billion annually. State-sponsored threat actors now target mid-market businesses as supply chain entry points to larger targets. And the average breach cost in Pakistan's financial and manufacturing sectors has risen significantly as organisations become more digitally dependent.

SOC as a Service changes the economics completely. By operating a shared SOC platform monitored by a team of dedicated security analysts, we deliver enterprise-grade detection and response capability at a cost accessible to businesses of all sizes. You get the analysts, the tooling, the threat intelligence, and the 24/7 coverage — without the hiring challenge, infrastructure cost, or operational overhead of building it yourself.

Enterprise SOC capability without enterprise-level cost

Average breach detection time: 287 days → hours with SOC

Confirmed threat incidents only — no alert flood to manage

Compliance evidence generation built into every engagement

Build vs Buy SOC Comparison

Internal SOC

Infraspine SOC

Annual Cost

$1M+

Fraction of cost

Time to Operational

12–18 months

2–4 weeks

Analyst Coverage

Shift gaps likely

24/7/365 guaranteed

Threat Intelligence

Single feed

Multi-source integrated

Technology Stack

1–2 platforms

Best-of-breed portfolio

Staff Turnover Risk

High

Not your problem

SOC Capabilities

Six Core SOC Service Areas

Comprehensive security operations from SIEM deployment through threat intelligence integration to compliance reporting.

SIEM Deployment & Management

A Security Information and Event Management platform is the brain of any SOC — it collects logs from every system in your environment, correlates events across sources, and surfaces the patterns that indicate malicious activity. We deploy, configure, and manage your SIEM platform, building and tuning detection rules specific to your environment and threat profile. Log sources are onboarded systematically to ensure complete coverage across servers, network devices, endpoints, cloud workloads, and applications.

SIEM platform deployment and initial configuration
Log source onboarding across all environment types
Custom detection rule development for your threat profile
Ongoing rule tuning to reduce false positives over time

Threat Detection & Analysis

Detection is where most security tools fail — they generate thousands of alerts per day but very few of them represent genuine threats. Our SOC analysts apply a combination of SIEM correlation rules, behavioural analytics, and human expertise to separate real threats from noise. Every alert that cannot be immediately dismissed as a false positive receives analyst investigation. We look for indicators of compromise, lateral movement patterns, data exfiltration behaviour, and persistence mechanisms that automated tools miss.

MITRE ATT&CK framework-aligned detection logic
Behavioural analytics for insider threat and anomaly detection
Multi-stage attack correlation (kill chain analysis)
Analyst-led investigation for all medium and high-severity alerts

Incident Response & Containment

Detection without response is just an expensive alarm that no one answers. When our SOC confirms a genuine security incident, we do not just send you an email and wish you luck — we execute a defined incident response plan. Immediate containment actions such as isolating compromised endpoints, blocking attacker IP addresses, disabling compromised accounts, and revoking active sessions can be executed within our agreed response authority. For incidents beyond remote containment, we escalate to your team with full context and recommended on-premise actions.

<30-minute confirmed threat response with containment actions
Endpoint isolation, account lockout, and network block capabilities
Incident response playbooks for common attack scenarios
Post-incident report with timeline, impact assessment, and recommendations

Threat Intelligence Integration

Our SOC integrates commercial and open-source threat intelligence feeds to enrich every security event with context about known malicious infrastructure, attack techniques, and threat actor behaviours. When a connection to a known malicious IP is detected or a file hash matches a known malware sample, we know instantly — without waiting for analysts to manually check lookups. Threat intelligence also informs proactive hunting, allowing us to search your environment for indicators of campaigns currently targeting your industry.

Commercial threat intelligence feed integration
IP, domain, and file hash reputation enrichment in real time
Industry-specific threat intelligence for your sector
Proactive threat hunting based on current campaign indicators

Vulnerability Management

Continuous vulnerability management keeps our SOC informed of the attack surface your organisation presents to potential adversaries. We run authenticated vulnerability scans against all in-scope assets on a regular schedule, prioritise findings using CVSS scores and real-world exploitability data, and track remediation through to closure. When a new critical vulnerability is disclosed, we immediately assess whether affected software is present in your environment and advise on priority patching or compensating controls.

Scheduled authenticated vulnerability scanning across all assets
CVSS scoring with real-world exploitability prioritisation
Remediation tracking with SLA from finding to closure
Zero-day impact assessment within hours of CVE disclosure

Compliance Reporting (ISO 27001, PCI-DSS)

SOC operations generate significant compliance evidence value. Our monthly compliance reports map SOC activities and findings to the control requirements of ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and other relevant frameworks. Log retention is managed to meet audit requirements (12+ months by default, 24+ months available). Incident response documentation is structured to satisfy regulatory incident reporting requirements. When you face an audit, our SOC reporting package significantly reduces the evidence gathering burden on your internal team.

Monthly compliance evidence reports mapped to ISO 27001 and PCI-DSS
12+ months of log retention as standard (24+ months available)
Incident response records formatted for regulatory reporting
Audit support and evidence package preparation on request

Security Platforms & Tools in Our SOC Stack

Microsoft SentinelSplunk Enterprise SecurityIBM QRadarWazuhElastic SIEMCrowdStrike FalconSentinelOneDarktraceCortex XSOAR

FAQs

SOC as a Service Questions Answered

Common questions from organisations evaluating managed security operations.

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10+ years enterprise experience