A _Security Operations Center_ (SOC) is a team of cyber security professionals that monitors the network and its systems to detect malicious cyber security events. Some of the main areas of interest for a SOC are:

- [[vulnerabilites|Vulnerabilties]]: Whenever a system vulnerability (weakness) is discovered, it is essential to fix it by installing a proper update or patch. When a fix is not available, the necessary measures should be taken to prevent an attacker from exploiting it. Although remediating vulnerabilities is of vital interest to a SOC, it is not necessarily assigned to them.
- [[policy-violations|Policy violations]]: We can think of a security as a set of rules required for the protection of the network and systems. For example, it might be a policy violation if users start uploading confidential company data to an online storage service.
- [[unauthorized-activy|Unauthorized activity]]: Consider the case where a user's login name and password are stolen, and the attacker uses them to log into the network. A SOC needs to detect such an event and block it as soon as possible before further damage is done.
- [[network-intrusions|Network intrusions]]: No matter how good your security, there is always a chance for an intrusion. An intrusion can occur when a user clicks on a malicious link or when an attacker exploits a public server. Either way, when an intrusion occurs, we must detect it as soon as possible to prevent further damage.