What’s the Difference Between SecOps and Standard IT Teams?

Many organizations are now modernizing and adapting their organizational charts (org charts) to address their company and customers’ changing needs. One of the most significant evolutions many businesses will implement is switching to SecOps teams rather than independent IT and security teams. 

Considering the rapid rise in criminal cyberattacks, it’s no longer effective or efficient to have separate IT operations and security teams. Due to fundamentally different priorities that can cause conflicting efforts and require toolsets, diving these efforts can cause friction and reduced security postures that leave an organization vulnerable.  

Leadership and the org chart design must provide a tone and structure that brings IT and security together with shared priorities and accountability, maintaining productivity and security across the entire enterprise. 

The Old IT

Just a couple of decades ago, before cyberattacks became a ubiquitous threat, the network edge was fairly easy to define and secure. Today, the use of Wi-Fi and the sheer volume of endpoints using a single corporate network make cybersecurity incredibly challenging. Then, the addition of apps, SaaS, and the cloud, complicated the work of IT teams even further. 

As a result, security teams began to form inside organizations to take the burden off traditional IT operations so they could focus on keeping internal systems and platforms running. While creating separate security teams might have added more resources and a focus on security itself, the divided approach often created silos and walls instead of a collaborative environment.

Introducing SecOps 

While the concept of SecOps isn’t new, many organizations haven’t made the switch to unify security and IT operations efforts in a way that ensures shared priorities and focus on bringing a holistic approach to security and productivity. To build an effective SecOps team, an organization must provide conditions for collaboration between security and operations and integrate the people, processes, and technology tools they use to keep critical systems and data secure. 

Organizational change is never easy, and building an effective SecOps team relies heavily on the successful integration of individual employees. Techtarget.com calls attention to this fact, stating that “SecOps may be a cultural change for some organizations that require larger issues to be addressed before goals can be achieved. In this situation, objectives may include redefining job roles and priorities, outlining business risks associated with security incidents, and agreeing on core business functions.”

After the organization has buy-in and alignment from the employees and leadership of the SecOps team, the attention can go towards deploying a unified toolset in support of goals and objectives. 

The Software to Match

A unified and focused SecOps team is only as good as its toolkit. Deploying a top-of-the-line cloud-based endpoint protection platform (EPP), with endpoint detection and response (EDR), will give your SecOps team what they need to threat hunt and respond to incidents that affect the network. 

Threat hunting is a perfect example of why you need a unified SecOps team. In and of itself, EDR software does not hunt threats. But with data and analytics fueled by EDR, a stream of information can be analyzed by humans on the team to determine if there is evidence of intrusion. At that point, cloud-based incident response technology is activated to respond to the issue and get systems back to an ideal operating state. 

A United Front Against Cyberattacks 

Individual hackers and criminal organizations invest in resources to grow their teams and innovating attack vectors to take advantage or organizational weakness in cyber defenses. While many businesses have put resources toward new security technology, organizational thinking must evolve as well. 

Modern SecOps teams need alignment to support the organization’s purpose and must have shared goals, objectives, and accountability for results. By integrating IT systems management with security efforts, the tech side of your business will function more cohesively, creating a united front against costly cyberattacks.