What are SOC Frameworks?
Cybersecurity frameworks are becoming more important in SOCs to guard against more sophisticated assaults.
Introduction
Cybersecurity frameworks are becoming more important in SOCs to guard against more sophisticated assaults.
Frameworks are used by SOCs to manage and mitigate cyber risk, as well as to guide their approach to and knowledge of the attack and defensive techniques, to continually improve operations.
Many recent SOCs incorporate adversarial models in analyst processes, such as the MITRE ATT&CK architecture.
This offers the SOC an advantage in defending against assaults and allows automation that assists investigation results.
Frameworks for security operations centers (SOCs) standardize the tactics used by various SOCs regarding their specific defensive measures.
This contributes to the protection, detection, and mitigation of cyber threats and the continual improvement of business operations.
The most cutting-edge SOCs include adversarial models in analyst processes, such as the MITRE ATT&CK framework, for more successful investigations and the inclusion of automated technology.
These safeguards are established to strengthen the SOC’s defenses against possible attacks.
Four Common SOC Frameworks
SOC Framework №1: NIST Cybersecurity Framework
The NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) consists of standards, best practices, and recommendations for threat lifecycle management. A SOC can use this framework to evaluate, direct, and enhance critical security metrics, hence providing a mature approach to corporate security.
Organizations use the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF) to construct their cybersecurity strategy, producing a road map that contributes to reducing cybersecurity risk.
It assists companies in characterizing their current state of security and comparing it to the condition they want to achieve. This technique helps discover security holes and addresses such issues.
The Goals of the NIST CSF and Benefits
The NIST Critical Security Framework (CSF) assists companies in protecting critical infrastructure by strengthening security in several ways.
It entails building a profile to assess the current levels of cybersecurity measures and to determine new feasible cybersecurity regulations and standards to enhance the present state.
Additionally, it assists in communicating newly required regulations and creating a new cybersecurity program.
The following is a list of the NIST CSF’s five primary functions:
Identify
Determine the potential threats to different components, such as assets, systems, and data, and then educate yourself on effectively managing those threats.
Protect
Preserve and put protections in place to protect the essential services provided by Preserve and put protections in place to protect the vital services offered by the infrastructure.
Detect
Determine what defines a cybersecurity incident and how it should be detected.
Respond
Respond refers to specifying the steps taken in reaction to a detected cybersecurity incident.
Recover
Recover entails determining which services should be prioritized to build resiliency and outlining the capabilities necessary to restore degraded services.
SOC Framework №2: MITRE ATT&CK
The MITRE ATT&CK framework is used to intelligently identify “right of bang” approaches, which are used after an attack has already begun since it is a model of multiple adversarial behaviors that can be seen.
Its core focus is on four use cases: threat intelligence, detection and analytics, assessment and engineering, and adversary emulation and red teaming.
An actor’s techniques are the actions they do to bring about their chosen strategies. The outcome is a tactic.
Evidence from past assaults is utilized in the MITRE framework to learn about the manifestation of these strategies, the methods employed, probable reaction procedures, and important data sources.
This allows see through the eyes of the attacker and have a deeper comprehension of how these strategies play out.
SOC Framework №3: Cyber Kill Chain Framework
The Cyber Kill Chain architecture was developed by computer scientists working at Lockheed Martin as a phased method for detecting and preventing attacks that span the whole attack life cycle.
The actions of a typical threat actor serve as the basis for the kill chain, which in turn creates an archetype for its foundation.
The kill chain comprises eight essential steps, the first of which is reconnaissance and the eighth and last of which is data exfiltration.
Activities on the cyber death chain are triggered when attack vectors such as brute force or phishing are used.
Each step of the chain is tied to a certain kind of action included in a cyber assault.
The first stage can be difficult to identify. In addition, the kill chain does not consider assaults that commence from inside the perimeter.
The basic phases of the kill chain are as follows:
During the reconnaissance stage, threat actors observe and seek to analyze the environment from the outside in. Their goal during this stage is to determine the strategies and targets that will be used during the assault.
Intrusion is when threat actors use the information they gathered and the judgments they came to during reconnaissance to begin making efforts at breaking into a system.
These intrusion attempts are often performed by utilizing malware or exploiting vulnerabilities.
Exploitation is the process by which threat actors take advantage of vulnerabilities and distribute malicious code to obtain a stronger foothold inside the target.
Privilege escalation is a technique that threat actors employ to get unwanted access to more data and rights. This is often accomplished by elevating their privileges to that of an administrator.
Lateral movement refers to the process by which threat actors break into a system and then move laterally to other accounts and strategies to acquire leverage, such as more data or greater permissions.
Obfuscation and anti-forensics refer to threat actors’ efforts to disguise their traces. These efforts often include establishing false trails, corrupting data, and cleaning logs to mislead or stymie forensics experts.
Denial of Service (DoS) is an attack carried out by threat actors to disrupt regular access for users and systems. Their objective is to thwart any monitoring, tracking, or blocking efforts directed against the assault.
Exfiltration is the step at which threat actors take data from compromised systems. It is important to keep in mind that the first stage can be difficult to identify. In addition, the kill chain does not consider assaults that commence from inside the perimeter.
SOC Framework №4: Unified Kill Chain (UKC)
The Unified Kill Chain synthesizes the Cyber Kill Chain and the MITRE ATT&CK paradigm.
To achieve this, it makes the most of what’s good in one framework while minimizing what’s bad about others.
There are now 18 links in the attack chain, and each phase is composed of 3 sub-steps:
- Initial foothold
- Propagation across a network
- Action on objectives
This single-kill chain framework provides a more accurate, time-oriented, and all-encompassing method for guarding against cybersecurity attacks.
It provides a launching point for the company to reorient its investments in cybersecurity and its defensive capabilities, which in turn guides intelligence collection, detection, prevention, and response.
Using the unified kill chain, SOCs can facilitate systematic analysis and comparison of threats and attack methods.
Assault phase sequencing can prioritize detection efforts and better map countermeasures to specific points in an assault.
The framework aids in triaging and modeling potential attack vectors during times of crisis.
The full UKC expands the possible number of assault stages to eighteen and divides each of those phases into three main steps: establishing a foothold, expanding the network, and acting on goals.
This updated approach offers a more accurate, timely, and complete way of resolving cybersecurity risks from start to finish than its predecessor.
The ever-changing nature of security frameworks demonstrates the need for adaptability in this high-stakes field of perpetual upheaval.
