Welcome to our comprehensive guide on building a 24/7 Security Operations Center (SOC) using free and open-source technologies. In the digital age, protecting your organization’s information assets has never been more important. Cyber threats are constantly evolving, and organizations of all sizes and industries are vulnerable to attacks.

Security teams are getting restless. Before founding Tines, I spent 15 years in the SOC leading teams charged with protecting organizations from ever-evolving threats. Over that time, the challenge facing SOC analysts became harder, not easier: workloads are increasing, but teams aren’t growing alongside them. SOC analysts are burning out as a result of tedious and repetitive tasks.

“Purpose-built does not scale.” That’s what IDC says in its latest research report “How Hyperautomation Is Used to Reduce Gaps and Inefficiencies in Network Cybersecurity.” What does that mean? It means that your monitoring point products, like legacy SOAR, just don’t cut it any longer. They can’t scale in today’s hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments without piling on more tools, further fueling tech stack sprawl.

In 2022, a German security researcher disclosed that he had gained remote control of over 25 electric vehicles. In doing so, he was able to access numerous onboard features of these vehicles such as querying the vehicle location, disabling security features, unlocking doors, and starting the engine. The security flaw that allowed this break was not with the vehicle’s system itself, but presented by an open source companion application.

Earlier this year, we introduced the LimaCharlie SecOps Cloud Platform (SCP). The SCP is a unified platform for modern cybersecurity operations. Similar to what the public cloud did for IT, the SCP offers security teams core cybersecurity capabilities and infrastructure: on-demand, pay-per-use, and API-first. In short, the SCP is a new paradigm for cybersecurity. It’s a game-changer for enterprise security teams and cybersecurity solutions builders.

It wasn’t long ago that we at Torq proclaimed “SOAR is dead!” And it didn’t take long for the industry to catch on. Leading analyst firm GigaOm in its recent GigaOm Radar report named Torq a leader and an outperformer in the security automation market, namely for our hyperautomation capabilities that legacy SOAR just can’t touch. And our competitors have also started jumping on the hyperautomation bandwagon since we shifted our focus to this model.

Do you aspire to become a standout in the SOC world? To excel, you must consistently cultivate both your technical hard skills and non-technical soft skills. No specific career path is the golden ticket; each individual’s journey to SOC stardom is a blend of conventional education and hands-on training, seasoned with vital real-world experience. A purpose-built SOC analyst home lab is one proven self-guided learning tool to sharpen your technical know-how.