Operationalizing CTEM within the SOC: A Proactive Approach to Threat Detection and Response

With either an in-house or an outsourced approach, organizations invest in a security operations center (SOC) to perform threat detection, investigation, and response. SOCs may also leverage threat hunting to identify threats earlier and proactively reduce risk, but this human-intensive process requires significant tooling and investment in human resources.

In addition to security operations, system or application patching is an accepted practice for most organizations and has recently given rise to the concept of Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)—a risk-based approach that prioritizes and mitigates security exposures by leveraging enhanced visibility and understanding of an organization’s attack surface.

By strategically mapping CTEM concepts to augment existing SOC processes, organizations can optimize their existing cybersecurity investments in people, processes, and technology to achieve a proactive approach, enabling a robust security posture that significantly reduces the overall cost and impact of cyber incidents.