Top 3 Skills You Need to Start in SOC
By Olaf Hartong
An Inquisitive Mind
The need to understand is a vital skill for working any job in security. Without desiring to comprehend the why, the how, the when (and so on), you’ll struggle to make proper judgement calls. Investigating these factors doesn’t always require a full technical approach. Thankfully, there are a lot of awesome people sharing their useful and accessible research online.
There are many forms of creativity. There are endless ways of finding a different angle or reframing context to tell a compelling story. By being creative in your approach, you’ll often end up with results you might not have expected upfront but end up providing great value.
The Ability to Take a Step Back (Or Get Help)
While investigating an incident, it’s common to go down a rabbit hole and get stuck on something, somewhere. The ability to pull back and rationalize what you are looking at, what you are looking for, and how that all fits into the bigger picture will give you new avenues of approach or provide you with the contextual means to know when to ask for help.
If you cannot find the information yourself, never be afraid to seek support or let someone share their knowledge with you. Nobody knows everything, and being part of and encouraging a culture of open sharing will benefit everyone.
Technical Infrastructure Understanding
Having (and continuously building) a deeper understanding of how operating systems work and how enterprise networks are built will benefit you greatly in your day-to-day. This understanding of what is normal for the OS, as well as why legacy systems and certain implementations exist (usually due to all kinds of business or cost reasons), will make sure you can properly analyze and respond to events.
Additionally, you will have the confidence in either making the proper assessment or in your ability to explain your thought process to someone else when asking for support.