Cybersecurity compliance for financial services
IMPROVING CYBERSECURITY & COMPLIANCE for FINANCIAL SERVICES THROUGH SOC-AS-A-SERVICE
Regional & Community Banks and Trust companies must maintain an optimal cybersecurity posture and meet compliance obligations. A cybersecurity best practice is to establish a security operations center (SOC) that aggregates telemetry from various systems and allows analysts to comb through data to find anomalies and indicators of compromise, and to identify potential threats. A SOC is also a linchpin for reporting to meet a variety of compliance regimes, such as FFIEC and PCI DSS. But establishing a SOC is anything but easy. It requires costly infrastructure like a security information and event management system (SIEM) software, along with the necessary security analyst headcount to provide 24x7 monitoring.
A recent change in the technology landscape is the emergence of “SOC-as-a-service” offerings providing managed detection and response (MDR) to monitor for cyber threats. Technology industry analyst Gartner recently estimated that by 2024, 25% of organizations will be using MDR services, up from less than 5% today.
SOC-as-a-service offerings do not eliminate the need to have skilled IT security staff on hand, but the approach allows financial institutions to maximize the talent that they have. A regional or community bank would be challenged to hire, train and retain the eight to 12 analysts needed to provide 24x7 monitoring, much less pay the $225-$250K cost of an experienced SOC analyst in the mid-Atlantic region. The SOC-as-a-service can hunt for threats around the clock and alert when something significant is occurring. It supercharges your existing IT staff, allowing them to focus on other priorities.
SOC-as-a-service can up your cybersecurity game by not only monitoring for threats, but also generating reports needed to satisfy compliance requirements such as FFIEC and PCI DSS. This work allows IT teams to focus on accelerating projects that help the top and bottom line.
Community banks and trusts are challenged to figure out where to invest to accelerate their business. This means projects to increase customer volume, reduce costs, as well as manage cybersecurity risk and meet compliance obligations. SOC-as-a-service allows you to improve security and compliance while also being able to strategically redeploy headcount to accelerate projects that improve the business outcomes. Schedule time with Frontier Technologies to discuss how you can leverage Arctic Wolf’s SOC-as-a-service to help improve your cybersecurity posture. First United Bank and Trust deployed Arctic Wolf’s SOC-as-a-service in late 2015 and has leveraged the service to progressively improve its security posture and cybersecurity maturity.