Stop pushing security analysis reporting to the back burner

As a CISO or IT security manager, you know the feeling. When the week begins, you are committed to carefully monitoring your SOC’s crucial metrics; carefully combing reports and records for ways to increase efficiency; and finally finding time to teach junior team members your processes for generating reports and other repetitive tasks that too often still fall on your lap.

But seemingly every Monday those goals fall by the wayside, particularly as your security alert queue begins to expand and you get sidetracked completing staff schedules, generating shift turnover reports and creating trouble tickets. You are probably finding that more of your day is being spent manually investigating each alert, not to mention jumping between multiple security tools to retrieve data and sending out email notifications.

As a result, some of the crucial reports you want compiled—including some you are supposed to deliver to management on a weekly basis—get pushed to the back burner. Even if these reports get done, you probably don’t have enough time to review them. This is a problem on several levels because:

• Without time to record the right metrics, generate reports and evaluate the data, you lack insight into how efficiently your SOC is operating and can’t identify areas for improvement.

• If you don’t have time to devote to reporting and analysis, you probably don’t have time to get to all of the tasks that require your specific level of expertise either.

• If you lack the bandwidth to capture and standardize processes, getting junior staffers and new hires comfortable with those techniques is extremely challenging.

That final issue is especially troubling because it ensures that your cycle of pushing security reporting and analysis to the side will continue.

Now, think about what your week would look like if you could gather metrics and run reports automatically, leaving you more time to review and make operational adjustments based on the data.

Consider how much more proactive and creative you would be in your attack mitigation efforts with the ability to automatically respond to high-volume, low-complexity alerts instead of reviewing each manually. And think about how much more productive your SOC would be as a whole with junior staffers who could remove some of the administrative burden from your shoulders.

Monday morning would be a lot brighter.