Faster Detection, Smarter SOCs: The Operational Advantage of SANS Training

This blog is the third and final entry in a three-part series highlighting key findings from the IDC White Paper, Sponsored by SANS Institute, The Business Value of SANS (Doc #EUR153291525, June 2025). While the first two blogs explored training’s role in talent retention and financial return, this final piece focuses on the operational dimension: how SANS training equips teams to detect threats faster, respond with precision, and reduce the overall impact of incidents at scale.

In cyber defense, the gap between detection and containment is where risk multiplies. The efficiency of a security operations center (SOC) determines how wide that gap becomes, and whether an incident is contained quickly or allowed to escalate. Verizon’s 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report found that while detection times are improving, the median breach still goes unnoticed for 24 days, leaving more than enough time for attackers to escalate their foothold and inflict damage.

Closing that gap is what often separates resilient organizations from vulnerable ones. IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report quantified the difference: organizations that identified breaches faster reduced costs by 23% on average. Yet many SOCs still remain hampered by alert fatigue, repetitive false positives, manual workflows, and other challenges that undermine detection and response when every second matters.

This reality has heightened the need for organizations to prioritize SOC efficiency. The difference between a contained event and a costly breach often comes down to minutes, not days—and that difference rests on people: analysts who know what to look for, engineers who can close gaps quickly, and teams that share a common playbook when the pressure is highest.

New research from the SANS-sponsored IDC white paper The Business Value of SANS validates what many CISOs already know: the right investments in cybersecurity training can materially change a SOC’s detection and response capabilities. Organizations with SANS-trained staff are identifying threats sooner, remediating them faster, and reducing overall incident volume to turn operational readiness into a measurable business advantage.

Reducing Dwell Time with Faster Detection

The most expensive moments in a cyber incident are the ones that security teams don’t see. The longer attackers remain undetected, the more time they have to escalate privileges, move laterally, and compound the damage. That’s why speed has become a defining factor in modern defense. IDC’s research found that organizations with SANS-trained teams identified threats 4.2 times faster than their peers, cutting average detection from nearly six hours to just 1.4. They also improved response times by 51.6% and remediation by 43.8%. One utilities provider in the study benchmarked its team to detect within one minute, respond in ten, and remediate within an hour – and consistently met those targets once its staff had been trained.

Those numbers matter because they reshape the trajectory of an incident. At a time when ransomware operators are capable of encrypting systems at machine speed, compressing detection from nearly six hours to just over one can make the difference between a limited disruption and a headline-making breach. For CISOs, that kind of performance isn’t just a security outcome. It’s a direct limit on business interruption, a guardrail against regulatory exposure, and proof to customers and boards that risk is actively being contained.

Greater Precision Equates to Fewer Incidents

Speed isn’t the only driver of detection and response efficiency. It’s also about operating with precision to reduce the number of incidents that need to be managed in the first place. IDC’s findings showed that organizations with SANS-trained staff reported an 8.8% reduction in total cybersecurity incidents, a sign that the training also improved analyst accuracy and judgment. By sharpening investigation skills and reducing false positives, SANS-trained teams cut through noise and kept smaller issues from escalating into costly breaches.

This precision paid dividends in day-to-day productivity. Security teams in the study delivered 24% more productive time, while compliance staff improved efficiency by 20%. That additional bandwidth enabled teams to engage earlier in projects, strengthen security architectures, and prevent misconfigurations from turning into future incidents. Leaders interviewed by IDC described their trained employees as catalysts—the ones who standardized workflows, mentored peers, and created alignment across teams. These changes reduced noise, sharpened focus, and left organizations with fewer critical issues escalating to full-scale events.

Translating Efficiency into Value

Every hour saved by enhanced detection and response shows up on the balance sheet. IDC calculated that organizations with SANS-trained staff avoided an average of $893,700 (eq: €777,519 or £661,338) annually in external vendor costs and $990,600 (eq: €861,822 or £733,044) in fraud-related losses. Combined, that’s nearly $1.9 million (eq: €1.65 million or £1.4 million) per year in costs never incurred because teams had the confidence and skills to contain issues before they required expensive outside help or spiraled into irremediable damage.

Across the study, organizations realized $3.57 million (eq: €3.1 million or £2.64 million) in average annual business value from SANS training, with each trained employee contributing $52,700 per year (eq: €45,849 or £38,998). The return was striking: a 427% ROI over three years (source: IDC Business Value Snapshot, sponsored by SANS Institute, The Business Value of SANS, #EUR153345525, June 2025), with payback in under 12 months. However, study participants emphasized that the impact went beyond financial savings. More efficient teams strengthened credibility with enterprise leadership, improved audit outcomes, and gave business stakeholders the assurance that incidents would be handled swiftly and effectively. That level of credibility is what allows CISOs to stand in front of boards not only with risk metrics, but with proof that the organization’s security program drives operational and financial efficiency. And in an environment where the speed of response increasingly defines resilience, those outcomes are what set top-performing organizations apart.

A Unified Case for SANS Training

Over the course of this blog series, we’ve looked at the impact of SANS training through three different lenses:

• In Blog No. 1 (The Talent Retention Effect Inside SANS Training), we examined the people dimension, showing how training helps organizations retain their best talent and build cohesive, resilient teams.
• In Blog No. 2 (The ROI Case for SANS: How Cybersecurity Training Pays for Itself), we focused on the financial case, demonstrating how training transforms from a discretionary expense into an investment that pays for itself.
• In this Blog No. 3, we explored the operational outcomes, where faster detection, sharper decision-making, and reduced incident volume directly limit business impact.

Together, these insights tell a single story: security training is far more than a “nice-to-have" tactical resource. It is a business-critical imperative to survival. As threats grow more sophisticated and scrutiny on budgets intensifies, the organizations that succeed will be those that treat training as a core enabler of resilience.

Download the IDC White Paper, sponsored by SANS Institute, The Business Value of SANS (Doc #EUR153291525, June 2025) to learn how leading enterprises are equipping their teams to defend at speed and with confidence.