How NOC/SOC Convergence Drives Efficiency and Cost Savings
Right now – in a network operations center (NOC) near you, the team is hard at work monitoring network performance and availability, performing routine maintenance, and responding to incidents. Meanwhile, in the adjoining security operations center (SOC), dedicated security professionals are continuously monitoring systems, networks, and applications for malicious activities and indicators of compromise (IoCs).
The walls that have separated the NOC and SOC for decades masked the common methods, tools, and data sources each team leveraged to meet their key objectives. NOC/SOC convergence is dissolving these barriers, while providing a host of benefits for today’s agile organizations.
The Case for Convergence
Forced collaboration is an increasingly common business strategy that can lead to disappointing results and ultimately, the re-establishment of operational silos. At the same time, progressive IT teams recognize that closer alignment between NOC and SOC fosters more effective collaboration. This is reinforced by the long list of benefits experienced by organizations merging their resources.
- Enhanced visibility
With captured packet data, enriched flow records, and metadata providing a common frame a reference, NOC/SOC convergence enhances cross-domain visibility by allowing teams to correlate security and network performance anomalies in real-time, with all team members gaining insight into hybrid and multi-cloud interdependencies and configuration issues. These benefits also apply to back-in-time visibility for comprehensive forensic investigations and definitive root cause analysis.
- Faster response times
Organizations leveraging packet capture reduce their incident analysis times by 44% while seeing their average mean time to repair (MTTR) drop by a similar margin. These benefits are accelerated by NOC/SOC convergence, as unified triage teams review alerts from both perspectives to improve prioritization and resource allocation.
- Cross training
With shared resources come shared responsibilities. This can be a benefit rather than a burden when the cohabitation of NOC and SOC personnel is accompanied by upskilling, mentoring, and training to promote cross-functional capabilities and versatility. Cross-training opportunities bolster employee qualifications while helping to address the ongoing skills gap.
- Reduced costs
Improved efficiency, shared infrastructure, and streamlined resource utilization add up to reduced costs, while freeing IT professionals to pursue more strategic initiatives. With the VIAVI State of the Network Study highlighting the SOC budget constraints experienced by most organizations, these fiscal improvements help security teams keep up with the expanding attack surfaces and compliance requirements.
Separate yet equal?
While the benefits are self-evident, the pursuit of NOC/SOC convergence is not without challenges. A successful melding of resources requires a similar blending of procedures, network monitoring platforms, and regulatory compliance workflows. Organizations in the early stages of NOC and SOC development may not have the wherewithal to make convergence practical. On the opposite end of the spectrum, complex operations with tools, practices, and practitioners that have evolved separately for decades can find the heavy lift of convergence outweighs the benefits.
Despite the synergies presented by common packet, enriched flow record, and threat intelligence resources forming a centralized NOC/SOC hub, cross-trained employees and versatile workflows are essential ingredients for any successful convergence. While the former requires dedication to training and retention, the latter can be achieved through customizable dashboards linked to a common solution.
NOC, SOC, and AI
AI is emerging as an important enabler of NOC/SOC convergence, helping teams extract faster, more actionable insight from increasingly complex network and security data. Advanced algorithms and machine learning can help identify meaningful anomalies, reduce alert noise, and support smarter prioritization of both service-impacting issues and potential threats. In doing so, AI helps minimize redundant effort and strengthen collaboration between network and security teams.
This shift is also shaping the vision of the “Dark NOC” where greater automation helps streamline network operations and optimize performance with less manual intervention. Although fully autonomous NOC and SOC workflows remain aspirational, AI is already making it easier to accelerate investigation, validate incidents, and support more coordinated response across teams.
VIAVI Observer is the Ideal NOC/SOC Platform
Businesses and IT teams searching for the right solution to enable a seamless NOC/SOC convergence are likely to find it in the VIAVI Observer Platform. With purpose-built appliances for packet capture, metadata, and enriched flow record generation, along with built-in threat intelligence, organizations gain high-fidelity visibility needed to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and support more natural collaboration through flexible workflows and customizable dashboards.
VIAVI Observer seamlessly integrates with your existing ecosystem, with threat intelligence powered by CrowdStrike providing background information on each Indicator of Compromise to the SOC, and the Rich API creating a gateway to automate workflows with SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response) systems. Patented machine learning algorithms light a path to the next generation of NetSecOps convergence.
