What roles exist in a SOC?

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A SOC is only as strong as the team behind it. Each member plays a critical role in detecting, analyzing, and responding to threats—whether it's the SOC manager overseeing operations, security analysts handling incidents, or threat hunters proactively identifying risks.

These scenarios help you understand the roles within a SOC and how they contribute to an effective, coordinated defense against cyber threats. Each scenario is designed to give a closer look at the decision-making process in real-world situations. Try to apply best practices in managing the responsibilities of each role to strengthen your SOC strategy.

Inside the SOC: Understand key roles

Your organization's SOC has detected suspicious activity. Each SOC role must take action to contain the threat and protect the organization. Get to know each of the personas and then explore a common challenge that they face.

Security engineer

Challenge: How do you make security strong enough to protect against attacks but easy enough for people to use them?

• Why? Impact: Prevent attacks by building strong defenses
• How? Problem-solving: Architect solutions that actually work
• When? Planning: Building security into systems from the start

Steps to identify hidden threats and detect potential attack patterns:

1. Vulnerability management: Test first to avoid breaking critical systems. Testing patches in a staging environment ensures that the fix won't cause disruptions in other critical areas of your infrastructure, maintaining stability while closing vulnerabilities.
2. Automation and monitoring: Update detection rules and strengthen firewalls. Taking a balanced approach strengthens overall defenses. By improving both detection capabilities and firewalls, you reduce the attack surface and improve response times.
3. Long-term fixes: Conduct a full security review and implement updated best practices. A thorough review and adherence to best practices ensures that vulnerabilities are addressed comprehensively, preventing similar issues in the future.

A strong defense prevents future breaches. As a security engineer, rushing fixes without testing or neglecting broader security gaps can cause outages and leave vulnerabilities open.

Threat hunter

A threat hunter proactively searches for hidden threats.

Challenge: How do you tell the difference between normal network activity and a sneaky attacker trying to hide their tracks?

• Why? Impact: Find problems before attackers become active
• How? Investigation: Ask questions and follow data clues
• When? Hunting: Constantly searching for suspicious activity

Steps to identify hidden threats and detect potential attack patterns:

1. Detection: Run live queries first to detect ongoing threats. Live queries provide real-time insight, allowing you to catch active threats that may not be apparent in historical logs.
2. Lateral movement: Search for unusual sign in attempts, privilege escalations, and abnormal behavior. Active investigation into unusual activities helps identify if the threat has spread, allowing you to act before further damage is done.
3. Proactive defense: Share findings with security analysts and engineers. Collaborating with others in the SOC ensures a well-rounded response, helping you prevent the threat from returning and protecting the organization from similar risks in the future.

As a threat hunter, uncovering hidden threats prevents follow-up attacks. Ignoring deep investigations can leave vulnerabilities exposed and allow recurring breaches.

Security analyst

A security analyst watches for and responds to threats.

Challenge: When an attack is detected, do you immediately isolate the system or first dive into the logs to understand what happened?

• Why? Impact: Stop attacks before they cause damage
• How? Creativity: Look for patterns and clues others might miss
• When? Iterating: Testing and refining responses to new threats

Steps to identify the scope of the attack and take immediate containment actions:

1. Investigation: Analyze logs first to understand the extent before isolating. This helps ensure that you're isolating only the affected systems, avoiding unnecessary disruptions while identifying the full scope of the attack.
2. Containment: Block the account but monitor for lateral movement. Taking immediate action while staying vigilant allows you to contain the threat while also observing if it spreads elsewhere within the network.
3. Reporting: Provide a structured report with timestamps, actions taken, and next steps. A comprehensive report ensures that all actions are tracked and understood, helping with both current recovery and future investigations.

As a security analyst, acting quickly, gathering details, and documenting the incident thoroughly helps limit damage. Failing to do so can allow attackers to escalate or steal more data.

Other SOC roles

While security analysts, threat hunters, and security engineers are critical to the immediate response and defense against threats, other key roles help SOCs function effectively and adapt to evolving security challenges. These roles bring specialized expertise to different aspects of incident response, from coordination and management to post-incident analysis, helping the organization stay secure in the long term.

SOC role	Description
Director of incident response	Typically found in very large organizations, this role is responsible for coordinating detection, analysis, containment, and recovery. They also manage communication with stakeholders.
SOC manager	This role oversees the SOC. Duties include supervising personnel, running operations, training new employees, and managing the finances.
Forensic analyst	In larger organizations, these members analyze breaches to identify root causes, system vulnerabilities, policy violations, and attack patterns to prevent future incidents.
SOC analyst	This role monitors security alerts, investigates incidents, and escalates findings. They use security tools to detect and respond to threats in real-time.
Incident response specialist	These team members handle and mitigate security incidents, containing threats, recovering systems, and documenting events for future improvements.

A day in the life of a SOC analyst

Interested in what a SOC analyst does? For a behind-the-scenes look, check out this video of at a day in the life of a SOC analyst, including key challenges like overhunting and the detection funnel. Learn how analysts optimize detection and focus their efforts effectively.