NOC and SOC: What They Are, How They Differ, and Why You Need Both

The goal of a Network Operations Center (NOC) and a Security Operations Center (SOC) is to ensure that the corporate network meets the needs of the business.

However, they do so in different ways. The NOC focuses on meeting service level agreements (SLAs) and protecting against natural disruptions, while the SOC works to identify and block cyber threats to the network. Learn more about the differences between the two and why they are necessary for your company.

Network Operations Centers (NOCs) and Security Operations Centers (SOCs) have become essential in the IT world, and for good reason. Both solutions are powerful answers to how to deliver the best monitoring service with limited resources. However, to many people they are the same thing. 

For an IT professional, understanding the similarities and differences between the two is vital to making informed IT decisions for your company or your clients. This blog gives you a clear picture of NOCs and SOCs, which are closely related, but not so similar.

What is a Network Operations Center (NOC)?

The NOC (Network Operations Center) is the team within an organization responsible for ensuring that the corporate network infrastructure is capable of meeting the needs of the business. 

Every organization uses the network for certain purposes, and the NOC optimizes and troubleshoots to ensure that it is capable of meeting the needs of the business. It is seen as working to prevent extended downtime or network failures.

What is a Security Operations Center (SOC)?

An organization's SOC (Security Operations Center) is responsible for protecting it from cyber threats. SOC analysts are responsible for hardening corporate assets to prevent attacks and performing incident detection and response in the event of a security incident.  

An enterprise SOC can be internal or provided by a third party under a SOC as a Service model.

Main differences between NOC and SOC

Although the NOC and SOC are two teams within an organization with very similar functions, there are some significant differences between them, including the following:

1.  Objectives of the NOC and SOC

At a high level, the NOC and SOC have the same primary goal: ensuring that the corporate network can meet the needs of the business. However, the details of these goals differ between the two.

An NOC focuses on ensuring that the network is able to meet SLAs (Service Level Agreements) during normal operations and cope with natural disruptions such as service outages, natural disasters, etc. 

The SOC, on the other hand, works to protect the network and business operations against interference from cyber threat actors.

2. Dangers to avoid by the NOC and SOC

Both the NOC and SOC work to protect the enterprise network from disruption. However, they are fighting different adversaries.

The NOC primarily focuses on preventing network interference caused by natural or non-man-made events. This includes power outages, internet outages, natural disasters, etc. 

SOC analysts, on the other hand, protect against man-made disruptions. Their role is to identify, classify, and respond to cyberattacks that can disrupt operations or cause damage to the business.

3. Necessary skills for those working in NOC and SOC monitoring

NOC and SOC analysts require many of the same skills. In both cases, they need to be able to monitor network operation and identify and address issues that are causing network performance degradation or outages. 

However, NOC and SOC analysts apply their knowledge differently and focus on different areas.

A NOC analyst will use their network monitoring skills primarily to diagnose and fix “natural” issues within your infrastructure. Additionally, NOC analysts’ skills will also focus more on optimizing network infrastructure and endpoints than their SOC counterparts.

On the other hand, SOC analysts are tasked with protecting the organization against human agents and human-caused threats. This requires the ability to understand how a cyberattack chain works and remediate infections that are intentionally designed by a human to be malicious and evade detection. 

Rather than network and endpoint optimization, SOC analysts’ skills will shift more toward hardening and ensuring the resilience and security of enterprise IT assets.

Which is better: a NOC or a SOC?

A NOC vs a SOC is not a fight you want to have because neither is better or worse than the other and an organization needs both to keep the business running smoothly.

The NOC is responsible for ensuring that the corporate infrastructure is capable of maintaining business operations, while the SOC is responsible for protecting the organization against cyber threats that could disrupt those operations. 

The roles of the NOC and SOC are complementary, as both focus on protecting against different potential risks to network performance and business productivity.

An organization will face both natural and man-made events that can cause network and business disruptions. Choosing between a NOC and a SOC leaves an organization vulnerable to one or the other.

Ensure network performance and security with Btrack India private Limited

While these two teams may have different primary goals and perform their tasks in different ways, they share the need for deep visibility and centralized control over the corporate network infrastructure.

Security  Event Manager (SEM) can act as your own SOC, sending alerts on suspicious behavior and allowing you to focus more of your time and resources on other critical projects, while with Network Performance Monitor (NPM) you can create a single-page NOC view of critical statistics that can fit on a TV screen or mobile device.