Securing your IT Infrastructure
In many of the client engagements where we are responsible for the remote monitoring of the IT infrastructure, inevitably the security question pops up. Today, securing the IT infrastructure is the top priority of CIOs. In a growing number of cases, we are now finding ourselves proposing an almost parallel solution, designed specifically to secure the enterprise’s IT infrastructure. That includes a security-specific tool set and security-focused monitoring and reporting mechanisms. In many cases, apart from the NOC we use to monitor the IT infrastructure, we also offer the capabilities of a richly functional Security Operations Center.
Of course, many of the demands from NOCs and SOCs are similar in theme. For instance, in each case, you want to keep an extremely close watch on the network environment to identify threats. However, you don’t want the apparatus to be overwhelmed with alerts. Intelligently “curating” the alerts that need to be acted on is a prized capability in NOCs as well as SOCs. To the extent that, in each case, the focus should not be quite as much on generating alerts, but rather on enabling meaningful and timely action. However, it’s important to make the point that this is a separate discipline from infrastructure management, even given the areas of overlap. It needs to be given the attention it deserves for the desired impact.