NOCs vs. SOCs: Network & Security Operations Centers Compared

Business is digital. And when it comes to critical IT operations, 2 teams are highly critical:

• The Network Operations Center, shortened to NOC and pronounced “knock”.
• The Security Operations Center aka SOC, pronounced “sock”.

Despite similar names and some overlapping responsibilities, both serve distinct and important roles in managing and protecting organizational networks.

This article explores NOCs vs SOCs, their key differences, how a business will benefit from both of them, and how each operations center protects your business needs and the network.

Network & security operations centers: goals and responsibilities

NOCs and SOCs share two common goals:

1. To ensure the continuous availability of services, applications, and data over your networks (private, public, hybrid, multi-cloud, etc.) and minimize downtime.
2. To prevent, detect, and recover from service, application, and data failures caused by network problems, performance issues, and cyberattacks.

Although they have similar objectives, NOCs, and SOCs achieve these goals by monitoring different IT operational areas, with some overlap:

What NOCs manage

A Network Operations Center focuses on network installation, network maintenance, network performance, and availability. Its job is to ensure that network access, servers, apps, and data are always available and that they meet or exceed organizational needs and Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

NOCs primarily focus on service and application delivery, operation, maintenance, and prevention/recovery from operational and natural disasters: such as floods, earthquakes, fires, or service outages. 

The classic NOC is a large, dedicated room looking out over or containing racks of network infrastructure hardware. They frequently feature a video wall that monitors various network health parameters and alerts NOC operators when network issues occur. 

NOCs can be staffed either:

• Internally, with your own staff. 
• By a cloud service provider (CSP), managed service provider (MSP), or other third-party providers. 

(Related reading: network operations center (NOC) complete guide.)

(Image source)

What SOCs manage

If you are looking to refine or implement a security operations center, there are five common SOC models you can choose:

• In-house SOC
• Co-managed SOC
• Dedicated SOC
• Virtual SOC
  
• Outsourced SOC

No matter which model you choose, a Security Operations Center focuses on all things security: 

• Threat detection
• Security solutions: installation, maintenance, monitoring, and analysis
• Incident response
• Forensics

SOCs ensure availability and protect your network by creating and continually improving the security architecture and infrastructure protecting your IT resources. They guard your network against human-engineered threats such as malware, viruses, hackers, ransomware, and other cyberattacks.

Like the NOC, a SOC is a centralized location where your IT security team works 24/7/365 to protect your IT resources. The SOC team can be internal, virtual or outsourced. Wherever the SOC is located, there is likely at least one person serving as the SOC Manager or Director. 

(Related reading: security operations center (SOC) complete guide.)

Challenges faced by modern NOCs and SOCs

There are quite a few challenges that NOCs and SOCs face. They include: 

• Shortage of skills. NOCs and SOCs need to manage complex network infrastructures, that have a variety of devices and technologies. The number of devices is also increasing day by day. Searching for and retaining professionals who are experts in this can be challenging. 
• Compliance. Adhering to compliance frameworks and regulatory standards, as many industries and solutions providers must, increases the complexity of regular operations. 
• Cybersecurity. NOCs and SOCs both need to stay updated and adapt regularly in order to deal with evolving cyber-attacks. 
• Data overload. Network and security devices generate a huge load of data. Dealing with that requires detailed analysis. 

Along with these challenges, driven by remote work and cloud adoption, the dissolving parameter has increased the change of attacks beyond traditional boundaries, thus complicating network monitoring.

To handle this, NOCs and SOCs need to constantly monitor distributed users and devices, eventually increasing the complexity of threat detection. 

NOC vs SOC: What’s the difference?

We previously stated that the responsibilities of NOCs & SOCs have overlapping areas. Now, let’s look closer at many of the responsibilities NOCs and SOCs fill to satisfy business needs.

This table shows which responsibilities are overlapping, which duties are NOC-only, and which are SOC-only:

(See how Cal Poly scaled their SOC for university-wide visibility and ongoing security training and optimization.)

Do you need both NOCs & SOCs?

For smaller organizations and SMBs, a NOC is always required (if only informally), but an SOC is optional. In those organizations, the NOC-SOC Venn diagram may look like this:

These organizations have little-to-no budget for separate operation centers. Meaning the people who staff the NOC, out of necessity, also perform all the SOC duties. There isn’t any choice. 

As organizations scale up and become bigger in both their revenue (multibillion-dollar enterprises versus a sub-$500 million SMB) and their scope (number of internal users and customers), it becomes more critical to split NOC and SOC responsibilities. With growth, the jobs and responsibilities that could previously be handled solely by a NOC now need a separate function to handle security. 

It’s not a binary choice whether any enterprise needs a NOC or a SOC for business and network protection. All businesses need the services provided by NOCs and SOCs to ensure service levels, provide continuous availability, and guard against threats. 

There are many ways you can protect your IT services and assets: 

• In some organizations, these goals are covered solely by a NOC that handles both NOC and SOC functionality.
• Large enterprises employ separate NOC and SOC divisions to handle each need.
• Others outsource NOC & SOC functioning to MSPs, third-party providers or cloud providers.

It doesn’t matter how you organize your network and security. Only that you have the correct processes, infrastructure, tools, and personnel in place to meet those needs, as outlined here. 

NOCs and SOCs are valuable organizational tools that you can employ to structure and protect IT business services. Use and deploy them in the ways that make the best sense for your enterprise. 

Splunk supports SOCs & NOCs

Helping organizations worldwide build modern SOCs for the future, Splunk enables enterprise resilience with observability-driven, security-focused products and services. Already a Splunk user? Explore these self-service locations: 

• Splunk Lantern, where you can self-serve your way to achieving business use cases with Splunk products.

• Splunk Docs, where you’ll find all the technical specs for our products.

• Splunk Training & Certification, where you can take a variety of courses or follow learning paths towards Splunk expertise.

• Splunk Community, where you can ask questions and find answers to your questions.

With Splunk, your network and security operations professionals can become true NOC and SOC stars: