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Armature Systems Resources
June 05, 2025
How to Build a SOC: A Strategic Guide for Security Leaders
But building a SOC requires more than just stacking tools and hiring analysts. It’s a long-term operational commitment, one that demands careful alignment across people, processes, and technology. For some organizations, it’s the right move. For others, outsourcing to a Managed Detection and Response (MDR) provider may offer greater agility and efficiency.
This guide breaks down what it really takes to build a SOC, the steps involved, and when it might make more sense to partner with a provider.
Table of Contents
What Is a Security Operations Center (SOC)?
A Security Operations Center (SOC) is a dedicated function that continuously monitors your organization’s information systems, detecting and responding to threats in real time. It’s the nerve center of your security operations.
An effective SOC integrates:
How to Build a SOC: What Goes into a SOC
1. Assess Your Security Needs and Risk Profile
Start with a clear understanding of your business goals, risk exposure, and compliance needs. Define the scope of your SOC based on:
- Data sensitivity
- Regulatory environment
- Internal vs external threat models
- Current detection and response capabilities
Use this input to align stakeholders and set realistic goals for your SOC strategy.
2. Define SOC Roles and Team Structure
Establish a team that aligns with your SOC’s mission. Common roles include:
- Tier 1 Analysts: First responders triaging alerts
- Tier 2/3 Analysts: Deep-dive investigators and responders
- SOC Manager: Oversees operations and liaises with executives
- Security Engineers: Tool management and automation
- Threat Intelligence Analysts: Add context to alerts
Hiring is only half the battle retention, ongoing training, and managing alert fatigue are just as critical.
3. Build the Right Technology Stack
Key technologies include:
- SIEM: Aggregates logs and surfaces security events
- SOAR: Automates processes and orchestrates response
- EDR/XDR: Endpoint and extended detection and response
- Threat Intelligence Platforms
- Log Management and Cloud Monitoring Tools
- Case Management Systems
When evaluating tools, consider more than just features. Look for:
- Ease of integration: Can the tool connect with your existing systems?
- Cost transparency: Understand licensing models, log-based pricing (charged per GB ingested) can scale quickly, while node-based pricing (per device or agent) offers more predictability.
- Vendor support and SLAs: Look for guaranteed response times, upgrade commitments, and coverage hours.
- Signal fidelity: Prioritize tools that reduce noise and deliver high confidence alerts.
- Data retention trade-offs: Some solutions charge premiums for longer data retention. Balance your compliance needs with cost, especially if you’re subject to industry regulations like HIPAA, GDPR, or PCI-DSS that require extended log retention. Failing to meet these standards can lead to costly fines or gaps in forensic investigations.
4. Develop Use Cases and Playbooks
Don’t build a SOC without knowing what you’re detecting. Begin with:
- Privilege abuse and escalation
- Anomalous login behavior
- Suspicious DNS or data exfiltration
- Endpoint tampering
Map each use case to detection logic, enrichment steps, and response playbooks. Iterate often to adapt to evolving threats.
Use cases should align with your organization’s unique risk profile, whether you’re securing sensitive financial data, critical infrastructure, or customer-facing applications. This ensures your SOC investments are not just tactical, but strategically tied to your most valuable assets.
Frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK help you identify common adversary techniques and map your defenses accordingly. Bringing in MITRE early can help organize your thinking around what threats are most likely and how adversaries typically operate in your environment.
To further prioritize, review historical incidents, consult industry benchmarks, or conduct tabletop exercises to uncover likely threat paths based on your sector and asset profile. This ensures your playbooks and response workflows are mapped to realistic scenarios, not theoretical ones.
5. Establish Repeatable Processes and Training Programs
To ensure speed and consistency during incidents, formalize:
- Escalation workflows
- Investigation procedures
- Decision trees
- Documentation standards
Invest in training to help SOC team members sharpen their investigative skills and stay ahead of emerging threats.
6. Prepare and Harden Your Environment
- Network Segmentation: Contain potential breaches
- Access Controls: Enforce least privilege
- Standardized Logging: Timestamped, normalized, and retained
- Infrastructure Readiness: Ensure capacity for log volume, alerting, and analysis
Foundational hygiene amplifies the value of your tools.
7. Enable 24/7 Monitoring and Response
Cyberattacks don’t follow a 9-to-5 schedule. Whether you build a follow-the-sun model or use external help, you’ll need:
- Around-the-clock alert triage
- Real-time escalation
- On-call coverage for major incidents
Time-to-detect (MTTD) and time-to-respond (MTTR) are core metrics to track and improve.
8. Continuously Maintain and Evolve Your SOC
A SOC is never “done”. Ongoing improvements should include:
- Red teaming and purple teaming
- Use case refinement
- Patch and vulnerability management
- Technology upgrades
- Tracking emerging threats and attack patterns
Make iteration part of the process.
Common Challenges When Building a SOC
When you’re facing the question of how to how to build a SOC, it’s important to remember that building from scratch comes with operational and strategic hurdles:
- Cybersecurity Talent Gap: There are over 4.76 million unfilled roles worldwide (ISC2, 2024)
- Tool Overload: Managing multiple platforms increases complexity
- Alert Fatigue: Up to 40% of alerts are false positives
- High Cost: A Ponemon study states that the average SOC cost $2.86M annually
This is why building a SOC requires long-term planning not just funding and tooling.
When Outsourcing Makes More Sense
Sometimes, the smarter path isn’t building, it’s partnering.
For growing teams without 24/7 coverage or the bandwidth to hire a full SOC staff, Managed Detection and Response (MDR) offers:
- Faster time to value
- Reduced internal overhead
- Access to trained analysts and proven workflows
- Active remediation—not just alerts
Use our SOC Cost Calculator to evaluate what building a SOC would look like compared to outsourcing.
Build with Purpose
Whether you build in-house or outsource, your SOC strategy should reflect your business priorities, resource constraints, and risk profile.
For some, a fully staffed SOC is a strategic investment. For others, an MDR partnership delivers stronger outcomes, faster.
Still deciding which direction makes sense? Try our calculator or connect with our team for a 30-minute strategy session.
