Career Scope as a SOC Professional

What is SOC? What are the skills required for SOC? What would be the career path for a SOC Analyst? What are the certifications available for SOC? If you are struggling with such questions, you are in the right place to clear out all your doubts. This blog is all about the career scope as a SOC Professional. Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

What is a Security Operations Center (SOC)?
Career path of a SOC Analyst
SOC Analyst Skills
Responsibilities of SOC Analyst
Roles of SOC Professionals
SOC Analysts certifications and training
SOC Analyst Salary

What is a Security Operations Center (SOC)?

Security Operations Center (SOC) is the leading role in security teams that protect, identify, analyze, and respond to cyber-attacks. The role of a SOC Analyst includes monitoring and protecting the organization’s assets along with personnel data, brand integrity, intellectual property, and operation systems. SOC Analysts are considered a team that reports cyber threats to other departments and executes instant security defense solutions to protect the organization’s assets.

Career path of a SOC Analyst

The career path of a SOC Analyst includes three tiers:

• Tier 1: SOC Analysts are the first responders and incident triage specialists who monitor, manage, and configure the security tools daily. Examine the most recent SIEM signals to determine their importance and relevance.

The Tier 1 SOC Analyst determines the nature of an attack, prioritizes, and examines the attacks in the network. They direct the insights to the Tier 2 SOC Analyst for detailed examination.

• Tier 2: SOC Analysts address the real-time security incidents identified by the Tier 1 Analysts. They use threat intelligence such as Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) to target compromised systems. They execute analysis on configurations and processes. Performs in-depth threat intelligence analysis to identify the attack and its impact on data and systems.

The Tier 2 SOC Analysts are also termed Incident Responders; they investigate identified issues and threats and develop an incident response to remediate the impact of threats in an organization. Also, they implement a recovery strategy to overcome the attack.

• Tier 3: Tier 3 SOC Analysts have more experience than Tier 1 and Tier 2. They deal with critical cyber incidents. SOC Analysts examine data security, threat intelligence, and alerts. Perform penetration testing and vulnerability assessments to analyze and identify threats that have infiltrated the network and unknown vulnerabilities.

SOC Analyst Skills

The key skills required for SOC Analyst are as follows:

• Ethical Hacking : Able to detect and report cyber threats and vulnerabilities to safeguard organizations from attacks. SOC Analysts should perform pen tests for networks, systems, and web applications to identify vulnerabilities.
• Network Defense: Able to maintain secure network traffic, which includes monitoring, identifying, and analyzing possible threats.
• Computer Forensic: Able to perform computer forensic techniques to prevent cyber-attacks, including collecting, analyzing, and reporting data security evidence.
• Incident Response: Able to provide practical response suggestions that prevent future security threats.
• Reverse Engineering: Able to understand software programs’ performance and operation features at a higher level.

Responsibilities of SOC Analyst

SOC Analysts typically operate 24/7 to provide threat and vulnerability analysis, manage and evaluate security incidents, and analyze security logs for various network and security devices. They not only provide an incident response to the team but also investigate, document, and report security incidents and emerging cyber threats. The following are the essential job responsibilities of SOC Analysts:

• Network traffic and log analysis
• Investigate tracking and threat resolution
• Malware analysis and forensic
• IDS analysis and monitoring
• Operating Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
• Insider threat and Advanced Persistent Threats (APT)
• Developing an incident response plan
• Implementing and optimizing Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR)
• Designing security alert notifications
• Understanding the intrusions attempts and false alarms
• Preparing signatures for signature-based detections
• Providing training for other SOC Analysts and Security Engineers

Roles of SOC Professionals

The key roles of SOC professionals are:

• Security Analyst: Security Analysts are responsible for the investigation and detection of security threats. They implement security measures and recovery plans.
• Security Architect / Engineer: Security Engineers are responsible for maintaining and updating the systems and tools, that can be hardware or software. They are also responsible for documentation required by other team members, such as protocols.
• SOC Manager: SOC Managers are responsible for planning, maintaining, and managing the SOC team in implementing cybersecurity strategies. They provide technical guidance and supervise the SOC team. Managers direct and enforce the incident response plans for major security threats. The SOC Managers need to report to the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)
• CISO: Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) develops the security strategies, operations, and policies based on the latest cyber security trends to maintain secure business operations. Works closely with  the CEO, providing reports to management on security issues.

SOC Analysts certifications and training

A Bachelor’s degree in IT or Computer science engineering and practical experience in IT and networking professions are the prerequisites for SOC Analysts. Also, the following recognized certifications are required for a qualified SOC Analyst:

EC- Council Certified SOC Analyst (CSA) certification includes a three-day training program that provides entry and intermediate-level activities for Tier 1 and Tier 2 SOC Analysts.

TRAINING CALENDAR of Upcoming Batches For SOC Analyst

EC- Council Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) certification includes training on attack tools and vectors used by the hackers and penetration testers for malware analysis.

EC-Council Certified Hacking Forensic Investigator (CHFI) certification provides skills to detect hacking attacks, gather evidence to report the crime, and analyze to prevent future attacks.

Cisco Certified CyberOps Associate (CCA) certification provides practical knowledge of real-world tasks performed by SOC teams.
CompTIA Security+ certification provides training on the complete security lifecycle for the modern IT environment.

SOC Analyst Salary

SOC Analyst is a great stepping stone into a cybersecurity career with a highly reputed job role. The SOC Analyst’s average salary in India is around ₹ 5,00,000 per annum (Resource: Glassdoor), while in the United States, it is around $81,121 per annum.

SOC Expert Combo Training with InfosecTrain

InfosecTrain is a well-known provider of training and consultancy services in IT security and cybersecurity. It offers a SOC Expert Combo training program that includes two levels: SOC Analyst and SOC Specialist. The program aims to provide advanced SOC skills required to identify, analyze, and respond to cybersecurity incidents and threats. It covers all the core concepts of SOC techniques such as incident response, digital forensics, SIEM, and threat intelligence solutions. If you want to join the course, check out and enroll now.

AUTHOR
Emaliya Keerthana
Content Writer

“ Emaliya Keerthana working as a Content Writer at InfosecTrain. She likes to explore the latest technology. She writes on emerging IT-related topics and is passionate about sharing her thoughts through blogs. “