SOC Analysts manage and monitor a range of detection technologies to identify, investigate and respond to threats, 24/7/365. But what does the role of a SOC Analyst actually involve day-to-day, what are the rewards and challenges of the job, and how do people get into it as a career? To find out more, we spoke with SOC Shift Lead, Anthony Howell.

Strong, resilient security operations require the proper melding of people, technology, and processes to achieve the goal of reducing the likelihood and impact of cyberthreats. The right security operations center (SOC) will strengthen the overall security resiliency of an organization. The wrong one will tax your team—leading to mistakes, breaches, and losses.

This is a follow-up to our previous blogposts covering the Log4j vulnerability and the Deep Scan tool we made available to help identify vulnerable systems. As we close the first month of 2022, we looked into the activity related to the Log4Shell vulnerability CVE-2021-44228 observed across our 2,3000+ customers. Many of you will empathize with the struggle to find all instances of the vulnerable Log4j component, especially at the scale that comes with having a large customer base.

The discipline of threat intelligence began to be incorporated in cyber defense processes within private sector companies nearly a decade ago. Over the past few years, more and more organizations began to establish their own threat intelligence operations, building Security Operations Centers (SOCs), incident response (IR) capabilities and threat intelligence teams.

The growing wave of cybercrime targets businesses in every industry, and law firms are no exception. With many unique cybersecurity risks, law firms are more onerous to secure than other organizations. In addition to having to fend off threats from cybercriminals, they must also overcome the threat posed by hacktivists and nation-states. Law firms are especially attractive to bad actors because attorneys need access to highly sensitive data to provide legal services.

SOAR — or security orchestration, automation and response — is a collection of processes, software and tools that allows teams to streamline security operations. SOAR platforms are a hot topic in the realm of cybersecurity these days, and with good reason.

How prepared is your business to fend of bad actors seeking to infiltrate your network systems and breach your data? Imagine, if you will, the following scenario: It’s 5:30 am, and an employee has just clicked a malicious link in a phishing email. An attacker, armed with ransomware, has just gained access to your enterprise.

The FBI recently warned and advised on a current scam in which bad actors mail malicious thumb drives in packages and trick recipients into thinking there is a legitimate reason for connecting the thumb drive to their computer. Let’s be clear. DON’T. Don’t stick that thing in your computer. You don’t know where it’s been!

Arctic Wolf joins the Gartner Peer Insights Customer First Program in the vulnerability assessment and managed detection and response service. The members of the Arctic Wolf team are excited to announce that we have pledged to be a Customer First vendor in the vulnerability assessment and managed detection and response service. Our team at Arctic Wolf takes great pride in this program commitment, as customer feedback continues to be a critical priority and shapes our products and services.

It would be hard to overstate the critical importance of security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) capabilities for the effective mission success of security operations centers (SOC). Without a solid SOAR capability in place, an SOC will be easily overwhelmed with routine and repetitive tasks that in and of themselves could become a vulnerability.