Security Operation Center as a Service Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021 - 2026)

The security operation center (SOC) as a service market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15.7% over the forecast period from 2021 - 2026. The number of data breaches are increasing through the course of the period, which is increasingly focusing on the cybersecurity process, driving the security operation center as a service market during the forecasted period. According to Cybint, in 2019, 95% of the breaches were recorded from the government, retail, and technology sectors.

Key Highlights

• Cyberattacks are increasing rapidly across emerging economies, in terms of volume and complexity, where incident response units are pushing their limit, in terms of time, skill, and resources, to obtain actionable measures at the right time to avoid such incidents. At the same time, organizations are encountering an unparalleled number of security threats and risks with increasing employees, customers, and partners, thereby embracing new trends and innovations through digital transformation. According to IBM, the average cost of a data breach in 2020 accounted for USD 67.7 million, across all industry verticals.
• With the recent outbreak of COVID 19, the SOC-as-a-service market is expected to witness significant growth due to increasing cyber crimes and data breaches across the globe. According to Kaspersky, Cybercriminals exploited public fear of rising coronavirus cases through malware and phishing emails in the disguise of content coming from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US and World Health Organisation (WHO). Moreover, Kaspersky has detected 93 coronavirus-related malware in Bangladesh, 53 in the Philippines, 40 in China, 23 in Vietnam, 22 in India, and 20 in Malaysia.
• Through the implementation of an intelligent SOC and an effective security service management framework, enterprises can make foundational changes in the way they manage and address threats and risks in their business environments. This approach is providing them with a complete, end-to-end view of security risks, thereby improving the response in a way that better protects the organization's data. Also, these solutions have enabled improved adherence to audit and compliance requirements easily, with proactive policy enforcement and audit & compliance reports.
• Most of the enterprises implement SOC as part of their incident detection and response (IDR) program. There are several implementation models of SOC, including in-house models, co-managed models, and fully managed models. The Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) are positioning themselves as SOC-as-a-Service vendors to fully manage the security operations needed for an enterprise for keeping up with the ever-evolving cyber threats. These companies employ threat researchers (data scientists) that curate security data necessary to protect the organization against cyber threats.
• Many vendors are developing and expanding their SOC solutions in the market. For instance, in February 2020, Inspira Enterprise announced the commencement of its next-generation global security operations center (G-SOC) facility in Mumbai, India. The company may utilize the facility to provide 24×7 managed security services to enterprises across verticals with a centralized security monitoring system, enabling customers to detect and respond to any cybersecurity incident.

Key Market Trends

BFSI is Expected to have Significant Growth

• BFSI is one of the favourite targets for cybercriminals for cyber threats and data breaches. The most prevalent challenges faced by this sector are a threat, due to deployment and operational challenges, frauds due to third party transactions, targets by advanced persistent threat groups, and state-sponsored attacks. With constant monitoring by SOC tools and quickly delivering SOC intelligence, these threats can be minimized or eliminated.
• The number of cyberattacks targeted toward the BFSI sector has been increasing in the last few years. For instance, in 2019, Capital One Bank has faced a data breach where 140,000 social security numbers and 80,000 linked bank account numbers were exposed in the US. Besides, approximately 1 million Canadian social insurance numbers were leaked. Various governments are taking significant measures to curtail the cyberthreat in the BFSI sector. Many vendors, such as Cyligant Inc., are offering specific SOC solutions to the BFSI sector.
• In August 2019, a data breach of 1.3 million debit and credit cardholders belonging to Indian Banks was detected by a Singapore based cyber-security company- Group-IB. The revelation has put to risk the sensitive details that have been leaked and put up for sale on the dark web, with each card accounted for USD 100, taking the total valuation of the data to USD 130 million. The 2019 Asia Pacific CISO Benchmark Study by Cisco found that one in three Indian companies is facing substantial financial losses due to security breaches.
• Thus, SOC, as a service solution in the BFSI sector, plays an essential role in preventing these data breaches. For instance, in January 2019, IBM collaborated with EY to launch SOC in India that is equipped with advanced threat detection capabilities and IBM QRadar platform specially designed for a financial services organization.
• Many vendors are also offering specific SOC solutions to the BFSI sector. For instance, an affordable suite of subscription-based services is offered by Cygilant's SOCVue services, in order to deliver increased security visibility and guidance, effectively reducing cyber risks, thereby, to meet compliance requirements placed on financial services institutions.

North America is Expected to have Significant Market Share

• Hackers are continuing to innovate their cyberattacks to become increasingly more evasive and damaging. According to Identity Theft Resource Center, in 2020, the number of data breaches in the United States came in at a total of 1001 cases. Further, In 2020, a major cyberattack by a group backed by a foreign government penetrated thousands of organizations globally, including multiple parts of the United States federal government, leading to a series of data breaches.
• IoT has added a layer of complexity to the security operations center (SOC) team. Already challenged by the ever-changing cybersecurity landscape, SOC staff now has to understand the subtleties of cyberattacks that play on the hyperconnectivity afforded by the use of enterprise IoT. A recent study, which examined the modern SOC challenges, found that alert fatigue and false positives served as their largest sources of pain.
• According to Cisco, among the countries that will have the highest average of per capita devices and connections by 2023 is the United States with 13.6. Also, according to IPlytics, 37,595 IoT patent applications have been filed in the United States to date, making it the world's second-largest processor of IoT patent applications after China. Such trends are expected to act as major drivers for growth in the market.
• In March 2020, Optiv Security, a security solutions integrator delivering end-to-end cybersecurity solutions, emphasized its continued investment in securing Canadian enterprises and government entities with the opening of its Mississauga-based security operations center. The center combines a diverse team of cybersecurity experts, including SOC engineers, developers, and threat analysts, to provide local, real-time, 24/7 threat monitoring and remediation resources for Canadian clients.
• The North American region is expected to dominate the market, owing to many prominent SOCaaS vendors across the region, such as SecureWorks Inc., Atos SE, BAE Systems PLC, FireEye Inc., etc. Cybersecurity will remain the focus area for the SOCs.

Competitive Landscape

The security operation center as a service market is fragmented as the vendors are extending the partner ecosystem with capabilities in integration to enhance their service offerings. The market is witnessing various mergers and acquisitions, and the companies are partnering with multiple enterprises to strengthen the security operations of enterprises with continuous monitoring and early threat detection.

• June 2021 - METCloud partnered with Cygilant Inc. to develop best cyber surveillance technologies. This new partnership will improve overall security capabilities to METCloud clients with the integration of LogPoint, SentinelOne and Qualys. This allows swift threat detection, response and mediation while gaining better understanding of a company’s threat risk and priorities when fixing vulnerabilities. The robust suite of services will be provided through a UK-based Security Operations Centre (SOC) that provides users dedicated 24×7 support.
• June 2021 - Secureworks Inc. announced a new addition to its Global Partner Program – the Secureworks Technology Alliance Partner program that extends the Taegis ecosystem and data integrations to accelerate threat detection for all Taegis customers. Secureworks Technology Alliance Partners are now able to add their own Taegis integrations, creating powerful, integrated security solutions.
• April 2021 - AT&T Cybersecurity Inc. has launched a managed endpoint security solution through its alliance with SentinelOne. AT&T Managed Endpoint Security with SentinelOne correlates the detection of endpoint threats through a single software agent that consolidates Antivirus, Endpoint Protection, Endpoint Detection and Response, and IoT security functions. The new solution provides comprehensive endpoint protection against ransomware and other cyberattacks, while also detecting highly advanced threats within an enterprise network or cloud environment.
• November 2020 - Alert Logic announced its integration with AWS Network Firewall, a new managed service that makes it easy to deploy essential network protections for Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (Amazon VPCs) on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Support for AWS Network Firewall provides customers another point of threat visibility into their IT environments to stop high profile and frequent web application attacks.

Additional Benefits:

• The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
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