SecOps (security operations) is a strategic approach to cybersecurity that fosters integration and coordination between IT and security teams to protect IT systems and digital assets more effectively from cyber threats, hackers, and cyberattacks.
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In the past, most IT and security teams tended to work as completely separate units, independent from one another. But as cyber threats have become more sophisticated and insidious, there’s a growing need for a more unified, integrated, and proactive approach that encourages greater collaboration and cooperation between security and IT teams.
SecOps (security operations) meets that need by bringing together the experience and expertise of IT and cybersecurity personnel to mitigate risks, identify and prevent cyberattacks more effectively, respond to security incidents faster, and safeguard the entire IT infrastructure.
SecOps protects businesses by combining tools, procedures, and practices like rapid threat detection and response, vulnerability scanning, continuous automated system monitoring, advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies, and the latest threat intelligence.
Common threats dealt with by SecOps teams include:
- Cyberattacks
- Hackers
- Malware and ransomware attacks
- Data breaches and theft
- Phishing schemes
- Insider threats
- Botnet assaults
- Data leaks
- SQL code injection and cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks
- Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks
Why is SecOps important?
Organizations today are facing a barrage of increasingly complicated threats on a daily basis. Even a single successful cyberattack or data breach can cause significant and lasting harm to productivity, the brand, and the bottom line.
SecOps helps organizations defend themselves against cyber threats by adopting a coordinated, integrated, and proactive approach that makes sure cybersecurity is a priority—not an afterthought.
While traditional cybersecurity focuses on protecting networks, servers, databases, applications, and other IT assets from threats, and on mitigating the damage caused by attacks when they do occur, SecOps goes farther. One of its goals is to embed a cybersecurity-first mindset in every facet of an organization’s management, IT, and operational processes.
This approach offers a number of compelling benefits over traditional methods of IT security, including:
- Greater cross-silo collaboration between IT and security teams
- Real-time visibility into potential cyber threats and cybersecurity vulnerabilities
- Improved IT performance and risk management capabilities
- Streamlined incident response times to reduce the duration and severity of security breaches
- Enhanced compliance with industry and government data privacy regulations, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
- A stronger and more resilient security posture
By taking a proactive rather than reactive approach, SecOps can identify potential threats earlier, respond to them more quickly, and help minimize the risks of attacks, breaches, and other potentially costly business disruptions.
Plus, by promoting collaboration, integration, and a heightened sense of shared responsibility, SecOps also creates a more security-conscious culture not only among IT and cybersecurity personnel, but throughout an entire organization.
What are the core functions and components of effective SecOps?
Most SecOps strategies combine several core functions or features to help reduce the overall risk of cyberattacks and safeguard IT systems and data. These include:
- Incident detection and response—to identify potential breaches or policy violations and contain, mitigate, or recover from cyberattacks.
- Threat intelligence and AI-driven analytics—to proactively predict, prepare for, and defend against new indicators of compromise (IoCs), evolving vectors of attack, and new and emerging cyber threats.
- Continuous monitoring and reporting of network traffic, user behaviors, access logs, configuration settings, and application performance indicators—to identify any irregularities or abnormalities, support regulatory compliance, reduce the number of false positives, and enable more accurate, effective, and informed decision-making.
To achieve these goals, SecOps teams utilize a variety of tools, tactics, and technologies to enhance collaboration between IT and security units, and strengthen an organization’s overall security posture. This includes tools like:
- AI-powered intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS)
- Agentic security information and event management (SIEM)
- Agentic security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR)
- Network detection and response (NDR)
- Endpoint detection and response (EDR)
- Extended detection and response (XDR)
- Next-generation firewalls (NGFWs)
- Vulnerability scanning
- Threat intelligence metrics and reports
Examples of SecOps best practices
In addition to the right tools and core functions, organizations generally need to leverage several recognized best practices to build a robust and proactive SecOps framework. This includes implementing or incorporating practices like:
- Fostering cross-team collaboration between security, IT, and other units
- Offering continuous training opportunities and awareness programs on the principles, practices, and importance of security operations
- Automating tasks like threat detection, vulnerability scanning, and incident response to reduce workloads on security teams and enable faster responses to breaches or attacks
- Prioritizing the use of threat intelligence to adapt security measures to the latest new or emerging forms of attack
- Conducting regular ongoing threat assessments, security drills, and strategy reviews to continuously improve security and cybersecurity systems
What are the main challenges faced in SecOps?
As business needs change, new technologies emerge, and cyber threats continue to evolve, organizations face several challenges when it comes to developing, implementing, and maintaining an effective SecOps strategy.
For example, as cyber threats become more frequent and complex, SecOps teams must constantly adapt their methods and technologies to handle new cyberattacks, mitigate risks, and defend against the latest advanced persistent threats (APTs).
As the burden on security teams and demand for qualified cybersecurity personnel increase, many organizations also have to navigate challenges like the need to balance resources with budgetary constraints, rising rates of burnout and turnover among SecOps staff, and a global shortage in experienced cybersecurity professionals.
Other common hurdles to maintaining effective SecOps include:
- The complexity of modern IT systems and the difficulty of integrating multiple different tools, systems, and technologies
- An ever-expanding attack surface as new technologies like cloud computing and Internet of Things (IoT) devices become more widespread
- High volumes of false positives leading to alert overload, resource inefficiency, employee overwhelm, and a greater chance of missing or overlooking actual threats
What is the future of SecOps?
In the coming years, security operations in most industries are likely to continue to be shaped by several key trends and evolving or emerging technologies.
To keep pace with the sheer volume of cyber threats security teams face every day, SecOps will likely become driven increasingly by the use of advanced AI technologies like machine learning, neural networks, and natural language processing to automate manual tasks, improve the efficiency of threat detection and response measures, and increase the accuracy and success rate of cyber defenses.
SecOps teams will also have to evolve to understand and deal with emerging cybersecurity threats ranging from stricter regulatory compliance requirements and vulnerabilities in 5G networks to the use of deepfakes, social engineering, and quantum computing encryption-solving tools by cybercriminals.
In addition, as many organizations shift to remote or hybrid work environments, SecOps teams will have to become more flexible, nimble, and scalable in safeguarding remote endpoint devices and communications, enabling secure data and file sharing, and empowering greater collaboration without compromising security.
Where can I get help with SecOps?
Trend Vision One™ Security Operations (SecOps) is a centralized AI-powered SecOps solution that lets your security team predict threats more accurately, respond to attacks faster, and safeguard your entire IT infrastructure from data breaches, unauthorized access attempts, and cyberattacks.
SecOps combines a unified extended detection and response (XDR) platform with agentic security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) capabilities and agentic security information and event management (SIEM) system that thinks in language instead of logs. This gives your organization greater insights into and control of your security data, so you can keep your digital assets safe from bad actors, automate your threat detection and response procedures, and build a truly next-generation security operations center (SOC).
Fernando Cardoso is the Vice President of Product Management at Trend Micro, focusing on the ever-evolving world of AI and cloud. His career began as a Network and Sales Engineer, where he honed his skills in datacenters, cloud, DevOps, and cybersecurity—areas that continue to fuel his passion.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's)
What does SecOps mean?
SecOps (or security operations) refers to all the ways an organization’s cybersecurity and IT teams work together to defend IT systems from cyberattacks.
What is the difference between SOC and SecOps?
SecOps is a cybersecurity approach that combines security and IT operations. A security operations center (SOC) is the centralized team or facility where the SecOps team operates.
What is the difference between SecOps and DevSecOps?
SecOps is focused on integrating cybersecurity into daily IT operations. DevSecOps expands that focus to include the entire software development lifecycle.
What does SOC stand for?
SOC stands for security operations center. A security operations center is a centralized unit that deals with all of an organization’s security and cybersecurity systems.
What does a security operations center (SOC) do?
A security operations center (SOC) coordinates and carries out cybersecurity operations. This includes monitoring for, detecting, and responding to cyber threats.
What is the role of security operations?
Security operations (or SecOps) is responsible for managing and carrying out all the practices and procedures involved in safeguarding an organization from cyberattacks.
Is incident response part of security operations?
Yes, detecting and responding to cybersecurity incidents like data breaches or cyberattacks is a core part of security operations (SecOps).
What does SecOps do?
SecOps protects IT systems and digital assets by proactively detecting, identifying, preventing, and responding to cyberattacks, hacks, and other cyber threats.
What are the benefits of SecOps?
The benefits of SecOps include greater collaboration between IT and security teams, enhanced threat detection and response, and a more robust security posture.
What are the key phases in a SecOps incident response workflow?
The key phases in a SecOps incident response are assessment of the incident; containment of the damage; eradication of the threat; and learning and recovery.