Unifying the SOC and the NOC for Stronger Cyber Resilience

Traditionally, Security Operations Centers (SOCs) and Network Operations Centers (NOCs) have operated as distinct entities, each with a specialized focus. SOCs are focused on protecting the organization from cybersecurity threats, while NOCs are responsible for ensuring the continuous availability and performance of the organization’s IT infrastructure.

However, the increasing complexity of IT environments and the evolving nature of modern cyber threats are driving a strong push towards their convergence. The business case for this convergence is compelling: the global average breach cost reached $4.88 million in 2024, with the United States experiencing the highest costs globally at $9.36 million per breach. These costs aren't just theoretical - they reflect the real financial impact of delayed detection and fragmented response capabilities that plague organizations operating separate SOC and NOC functions.

Both the NOC and SOC exist to support the business. Their shared mission is to minimize disruptions and ensure that the organization can continue its operations effectively and securely. Downtime, whether due to a network outage or a cyberattack, directly impacts productivity, revenue, and reputation.

As SOC and NOC teams increasingly work towards shared objectives, the distinction between network and security issues has blurred: A seeming "network performance issue" could easily be a symptom of a cyberattack, or conversely, a security incident might stem from a misconfigured network device that the NOC oversees.

Without strong collaboration and unified tools, these intertwined issues can lead to delayed responses, increased damage, and a fundamentally incomplete understanding of the risk landscape.

The Challenge of Disconnected Views

SOC teams typically rely on log-based security tools, endpoint detection systems, and threat intelligence feeds to understand their environment. Meanwhile, NOC teams operate from network performance metrics, infrastructure monitoring data, and availability dashboards.

Both teams are looking at the same infrastructure, but through completely different viewpoints. Fragmented and mismatched understandings of a single digital environment across internal teams jeopardizes outcomes.

Consider what happened during the Microsoft Midnight Blizzard attack: the attack began in November 2023 but wasn't discovered until January 12, 2024, a detection time of approximately two months. During this extended period, attackers successfully moved laterally within Microsoft's systems and exfiltrated secrets from corporate email systems. This demonstrates how delayed correlation between network anomalies and security events can extend attacker dwell time from what should be minutes or hours into months of undetected access.

When SOC and NOC teams lack a unified view, the consequences can be detrimental.

• Extended downtime and business impact: Data breaches with lifecycles of more than 200 days cost an average of $5.46 million, compared to $4.07 million for breaches contained in under 200 days, a 34% increase in costs due to delayed detection and response. When SOC and NOC teams operate in isolation, critical correlations that could accelerate detection are missed, extending these costly breach lifecycles.
• Blind spots: Without a unified view, subtle threats can easily masquerade as mere performance glitches, leaving your organization vulnerable to undetected risks.
• Operational inefficiency: Duplicated efforts and constant context-switching can strain resources, stifling productivity and slowing down critical response times.
• Erosion of trust: The absence of a single source of truth can lead to blame games between teams, eroding internal trust and hindering effective communication.

The Economic Reality of Parallel Investments

Beyond the operational challenges, a siloed approach is a drain on an organization’s budget, in which organizations find themselves maintaining duplicate capabilities across security and operations teams—each requiring separate licensing, training, and maintenance.

The financial impact extends beyond initial procurement costs. Organizations are paying for overlapping data collection capabilities, redundant storage infrastructure, and parallel analytics engines that examine the same network traffic in different ways.

In 2024, it took an average of 258 total days to identify and contain a data breach - nearly nine months where attackers had free rein in compromised environments. Organizations maintaining separate detection capabilities are essentially paying twice for slower results.

Add in the ongoing expenses of maintaining separate vendor relationships, training specialized staff on multiple platforms, and scaling each system independently, and the total cost of ownership becomes substantially higher than that of a unified approach— all while paying for less visibility, rather than more.

The Path to SOC and NOC Collaboration

Unifying SOC and NOC operations is more than a technological upgrade – it’s a strategic shift in how organizations approach cyber resilience.

Establish a Single Source of Truth

The path toward greater integration begins with establishing a centralized source of truth. A single, shared platform eliminates the issue of having two different sets of insights, a problem that often plagues SOC and NOC teams. Instead, every team member –from the SOC analyst to the NOC engineer– should operate from the exact same information baseline, giving both teams the same factual data to analyze.

Ensure Comprehensive Network Visibility

Both the SOC and NOC teams need complete visibility into every facet of the network: an up-to-date asset inventory across the entire hybrid infrastructure, insight into the complete flow of network traffic patterns and communications, and an understanding of what those communications actually entail. When an incident arises, this shared "ground truth" removes ambiguity and helps pinpoint the actual root cause – whether it's a network performance issue, a security incident, or an application misconfiguration.

Implement Coordinated Response Protocols

The true test of SOC-NOC collaboration comes during a critical incident. In these moments, every second counts, and the traditional "throw it over the wall" approach between teams becomes a dangerous liability.

The stakes become clear during actual incidents. According to industry reports, it takes an average of 212 days to detect a data breach, during which threat actors can conduct extensive reconnaissance, lateral movement, and data staging. However, organizations with extensive use of security AI and automation identified and contained breaches 80 days faster and saw cost savings of nearly $1.9 million compared to organizations without these capabilities. When SOC and NOC teams share unified network visibility, they can correlate security events with performance anomalies in real-time, dramatically compressing these detection windows from months to minutes.

By providing a shared platform for visibility, analysis, and response, SOC and NOC teams can operate as a more cohesive unit, working towards the common goal of protecting and optimizing the organization's digital assets.

Choosing a Unified Platform for SOC and NOC Teams

In a world where SOC and NOC teams are struggling, a unified solution, designed for shared leverage across both SOC and NOC functions, offers a powerful path to building organizational capacity and significantly mitigating the risk of cyber disruptions. A common source for baseline reporting and advanced analytics fosters a more cohesive operational environment, streamlining workflows, enhancing productivity by eliminating redundant efforts, and reducing overall operational costs. Ultimately, organizations obtain a more agile and resilient security posture – one that stops hacker-driven chaos before it starts.

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