A Security Operations Center (SOC) is a team of IT security professionals that monitors, detects, analyzes, and responds to cyber threats around the clock. The SOC team is responsible for monitoring and protecting an organizations assets, including intellectual property, personnel data, business systems, and brand integrity. SOC teams implement an organizations overall cybersecurity strategy and act as the central point of collaboration in coordinated efforts to monitor, assess, and defend against cyberattacks. SOC teams gather information from various resources, including CTI threat feeds to log files from systems all around the enterprise. They carefully monitor a companys assets, from on-premise servers in data centers to cloud resources. SOC teams must constantly stay one step ahead of attackers and face challenges such as finding malicious activity inside the network, which is often like finding a needle in a haystack. The primary mission of the SOC is security monitoring and alerting. SOC teams use various tools such as Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems, intrusion detection systems, intrusion prevention systems, and threat intel to collect and analyze data to identify suspicious activity and improve the organizations security. A well-run SOC is the nerve center of an effective enterprise cybersecurity program. SOC teams perform various functions such as inventory of all assets and technology, routine maintenance and preparedness, continuous monitoring, threat detection, threat intelligence, log management, incident response, recovery and remediation, root cause investigations, security refinement, and compliance management. A SOC is made up of people, processes, and tools responsible for defending an organization from cyberattacks.