MTN Business empowers South African CISOs by sponsoring informative retreat
As part of its commitment to growing South Africa’s ICT sector, MTN Business, partnering with Securicom, recently sponsored a retreat for South African Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs).
This retreat was focused on delving into the realities of Security Operations Centres (SOCs) and was a tremendous opportunity for industry peers to discuss their experiences and share insights into bridging the gap between expectations and reality.
Discussions focused on unpacking key cybersecurity terms such as SIEM, EDR, XDR, MDR, SOAR, and SOC-as-a-Service.
CISOs discussed these terms in depth, highlighting the value they bring to businesses and the best ways to leverage these technologies to protect their businesses’ most important data.
The discussion highlighted that an SOC is not simply an impressive IT room filled with screens and monitoring tools; it is also a team of highly qualified individuals and a collection of critical processes that keep their businesses secure.
Lessons learned
CISOs who attended the retreat then shared their experiences when setting up their SOCs and emphasized the challenges of deploying monitoring agents to forward logs to the organisation’s SIEM systems.
Several CISOs highlighted the importance of SIEM and SOAR solutions that can automate playbooks and other processes.
They said this is critical when operating an efficient, powerful SOC.
CISOs also spoke about the importance on validating existing cybersecurity controls regularly.
Failing to do this could cause the following:
- False positives
- Increased noise
- Alert fatigue
By negating these issues, CISOs can ensure their SOCs run efficiently and are used to their full potential.
In-house vs outsourced SOC
CISOs at the retreat also debated the best way to run an SOC – as some preferred maintaining an in-house SOC, while others preferred to outsource the function.
These discussions uncovered important insights from those who held each viewpoint, and left all in attendance with a better understanding of both approaches.
A few CISOs were also sceptical about how much value an SOC actually provides, while many others argued it is an indispensable part of their IT security strategy.
These debates were critical to the learning experience, as they exposed each CISO to viewpoints they hadn’t previously considered.
As a result, CISOs left this important retreat with valuable insights, best practices, and a new understanding of key cybersecurity topics.
Click here to learn more about MTN Business’s cybersecurity solutions.
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