SOCs don’t need to be expensive: Real security for SMEs

“Everyone tells you it’s not if, it’s when. Great. Very helpful. So what am I supposed to do about it with three people and a budget that’s already stretched?” asked an IT technician, venting their frustration anonymously online.

Cyber security is important. The bad guys are out to get you and everyone else, not just big enterprises. Yet good security has never been harder for medium and small businesses, disproportionately on the frontline because they are easier targets and have fewer resources to fight back. Sixty percent of SMEs have already experienced cyber attacks at least once. 

As devices, data and identities decentralise and sprawl, effective security requires a unified command-and-control hub: an SOC, or security operations centre, that draws information from IT systems and enables security experts to keep watch 24/7.

But SOCs are expensive. Our frustrated technician continued: “I looked into getting a proper SOC. The quotes came back, and I nearly fell off my chair. That’s a bank’s budget.”

Marchant Laauwen, Managed Detection Lead at Orange Cyberdefense, agrees, which is why the company launched Dynamic SOC for SMEs across Africa.

“It’s a fact. Without SOC-level security, you face incredible risks. Attackers are also on a budget and are motivated to get the best ROI so their preferred target has weak defences. They dramatically scale those attempts with automation and AI. No business is immune, but those with SOCs have an enormous advantage by introducing as many obstacles as possible for attackers and presenting themselves as a complex target. Thus motivating them to move to a weaker target and have more success going after companies that can’t afford an SOC. Well, that couldn’t afford an SOC. That’s different now.”

The difference is Dynamic SOC, a security operations centre that draws on the knowledge of supporting thousands of customers and threat intelligence generated by IT services giant Orange’s 18 worldwide enterprise SOCs, CSIRT and threat research teams. Dynamic SOC provides enterprise-grade SOC capabilities to small and mid-market businesses at an accessible, predictable price.

Companies with approximately 25 endpoints and up (workstations, virtual machines, servers) pay an incredibly affordable fee per endpoint, with a separate enterprise-tier service for customers requiring a more bespoke solution.

Such prices are very affordable, enough to give pause. Good security warns about things that are too good to be true. How does Dynamic SOC deliver a service that seems unattainable for smaller organisations?

“We scale Dynamic SOC as a SaaS platform. Customers install agents on their devices, and the rest happens through Dynamic SOC. We have dedicated staff who monitor alerts, analyse threats and apply updates. We invested heavily into our automation with years of experience and handled 6.2 million incidents last year, keeping the human interaction only where it is needed. We use Orange’s global intelligence gathering and purple team testing to continually improve Dynamic SOC, while keeping the average cost per asset low because we support thousands of businesses across Europe and Africa,” says Laauwen.

Good security isn’t passive, and Dynamic SOC strengthens a company’s detect-and-response:

• Using threat intelligence to be proactive against cyber criminals.
• Automation to quickly deal with known and global threats.
• Leading EDR and XDR technology to contain and remediate threats.
• 24/7 monitoring of critical alerts.
• Security portal and mobile app provide real-time alerts, dashboards, audit trail of incidents and tickets.

Dynamic SOC has a proven track record having launched six years ago in France and now protecting over 3 million endpoints. Built on a modular platform, it enables customers to adopt the capabilities they need and scale as their requirements evolve. Available modules include EDR, XDR, mobile security and patch management, with e-mail security launching soon. All modules are supported by the same analyst, reports and portal avoiding unnecessary day-to-day operational complexity. Now Africa’s SMEs can enjoy the same advantage of enterprise-grade SOC protection at incredibly affordable rates.

“Cyber security has an unintentional elitism problem,” says Laauwen. “It’s complex and continually evolving, which increases costs and excludes many organisations. Dynamic SOC changes that. We’re very excited about it because this is exactly what African businesses need to stay safe.”