Growth Drivers | September 29, 2025

Keeping security operations centers relevant through changing times

By Dawn-Marie Vaughan, Global Security Offering Lead, DXC Technology

Security operations centers (SOCs) are the nerve centers of modern cybersecurity. They monitor networks, detect threats and respond to incidents in real time.

But as technology evolves and attackers become more sophisticated, SOCs must adapt quickly—or risk becoming outdated.
 

SOCs are under pressure

Organizations face rising pressure to modernize SOCs while managing shrinking budgets, a shortage of skilled talent, and a growing attack surface. 

Traditional models built on siloed tools and reactive monitoring struggle to keep up with increasingly advanced adversaries. 

At the same time, SOC teams are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of low-value alerts, making it harder to spot genuine threats. With many breaches still detected by outsiders rather than the SOC itself, confidence in traditional approaches is eroding. These challenges leave security programs viewed as a necessary cost of doing business rather than a driver of resilience and trust.

Evolving SOCs for today’s enterprise

For a business to succeed, data must be treated as a competitive differentiator. For SOCs, this means using analytics not just to report on past events, but to generate real-time insights that help organizations anticipate risks, respond faster and make smarter decisions. 

When security data is turned into intelligence, it becomes an enabler of business resilience and informed decision-making for leaders, shareholders, clients and customers. 

To do this, the SOC must evolve to support an organization’s broader business objectives. It must be fully integrated with the enterprise risk management function and broader security operations. This ensures that threats, vulnerabilities and security insights are connected to business priorities, giving leaders a clear view of the organization’s overall risk posture.

Six strategies for the modern SOC

Modernizing a security operations center is a gradual and evolutionary process. These six strategies provide a practical foundation for aligning security operations with business needs.

1. Align fragmented systems 

SOCs often rely on disconnected tools and processes, which makes it hard to see the full security picture. By integrating systems and automating governance, risk and compliance processes, SOCs gain enterprise-wide visibility, prioritize threats more effectively, and generate metrics that connect security to business outcomes. 

Many organizations follow guidance from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which emphasizes information classification, continuous monitoring, and system authorization. Automating these processes reduces bias, speeds decision-making and helps demonstrate how security directly supports business goals.

2. Gain situational awareness 

You can’t protect what you don’t understand. SOCs need a current map of assets, data and processes — and how they connect to external networks and partners. Combined with tailored threat intelligence, this context helps organizations prioritize defenses and address vulnerabilities. 

True situational awareness also considers sociotechnical factors such as culture and regulations, and it must be continuously refreshed as the organization and its threat landscape evolve.

3. Fuel intelligence-driven operations 

Traditional threat indicators often leave organizations reacting to alerts without understanding attacker intent or the business impact. By combining technical data with business, regional, and industry insights, SOCs can transform information into actionable intelligence. Sharing that intelligence internally and externally improves defenses and helps shorten the life cycle of new attack techniques.  

Indicators of compromise alone provide limited insight. SOCs must combine technical data with business, regional, and industry context to guide smarter investigations and response. This means enriching alerts, triaging with automation, and curating use cases for IOC analysis and deployment. 

Extending this intelligence outward, by sharing curated insights with trusted partners, further strengthens defenses and reduces attacker advantages.

4. Predict risks and proactively defend 

Using intelligence to anticipate threats shifts the SOC from reactive defense to active defense. This means identifying adversaries, modeling potential risks and continuously testing systems to stay ahead of attacks. Many organizations follow NIST guidance as a framework for this proactive approach. 

5. Use human and AI synergies 

AI should augment, not replace, human analysts. Automating routine detection and triage, frees SOC staff to focus on higher-value work. Modern SOCs can now operate at machine speed by using agentic AI technology that can detect, investigate and respond faster than traditional processes, eliminating bottlenecks caused by manual alert handing. These AI agents operate 24/7 without fatigue, continuously learning the environment, while humans focus on complex investigations that machines can’t handle. 

6. Deliver a future-proof architecture 

Modern SOCs must be designed to evolve with the business. This means adopting modular, open architectures that integrate across IT, OT, IoT and cloud environments. Automation and orchestration standardize routine processes, while reusable playbooks ensure consistent, repeatable responses. 

Following open standards and a hybrid operating model allows organizations to scale, adapt to new threats and incorporate future technologies without rebuilding the foundation. By building the SOC with flexibility, integration, and forward-looking principles, organizations ensure it remains resilient and relevant as both business and threat landscapes evolve. 

Go deeper
 

• Learn more about DXC’s agentic security operations center

• DXC and 7AI partner on AI-powered security operations service [DXC Newsroom]

• Putting zero trust to work [DXC Insights]