SOC analyst: what they do and when your company needs this specialist

A company may have a firewall, endpoint protection, identity systems, cloud tools, and various security controls and still struggle to detect an incident in time. As the infrastructure grows, the number of events that need to be analyzed to distinguish normal activity from potentially malicious behaviors also increases.

This work is part of the operations of a Security Operations Center (SOC). Within this function, the SOC analyst participates in monitoring, investigating, and classifying signals from different technological components to determine which require a response.

The need for this capability usually increases when the infrastructure generates more alerts than a general IT team can investigate thoroughly. It also arises when systems are critical, there is continuous operation, or an organization needs to reduce the time between the start of malicious activity and its detection.

Incorporating a SOC analyst should respond to that level of exposure and complexity. For some companies, it will be necessary to have internal specialists; others may rely on external services or build a hybrid model that combines specialized monitoring with internal business knowledge.

What a SOC analyst does within security operations

A SOC analyst works with information from endpoints, identities, networks, servers, applications, cloud infrastructure, and security tools. Their role involves investigating signals and determining whether they correspond to legitimate activity, a false positive, or behavior that requires a response.

NIST describes the work of Defensive Cybersecurity as the analysis of information collected through various defensive tools to mitigate risks, while Incident Response encompasses the investigation, analysis, and response to cybersecurity incidents. These two capabilities are closely related to the daily work of a SOC.

The analyst needs to combine technical information with context. A login from a new location may be completely legitimate. The same event takes on another relevance if it appears alongside multiple authentication attempts, privilege escalation, or anomalous access to sensitive information.

From an alert to a security incident

Security tools can generate alerts based on rules, indicators, anomalies, or detected behaviors. An alert represents a signal that needs interpretation; its existence alone does not prove that an attack is occurring.

The SOC analyst performs the initial triage, gathers additional information, and determines severity. They may review the affected user, endpoint, IP address, executed processes, connections, changes made, and other related events.

When the investigation confirms potentially malicious activity, the case can be escalated and incident response procedures activated. NIST precisely establishes that a response capability should include preparation, detection and analysis, containment, eradication, and recovery.

This transition can be represented as:

Event → alert → triage → investigation → incident → response.

The value of the SOC lies in both detecting threats and reducing the noise generated by events that ultimately do not require intervention.

Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 represent different levels of analysis

Some SOCs organize their analysts by levels. The exact structure varies between organizations, and not all teams need to use this model.

Tier 1 typically handles monitoring and initial triage. Cases that require more depth may move to Tier 2, where a more detailed investigation is conducted, and certain response actions may be initiated. Tier 3 is usually associated with advanced investigations, threat hunting, threat analysis, and support for complex incidents.

A small company may combine these functions among a few people. A larger-scale operation may separate them to better manage volume, specialization, and coverage.

SIEM, EDR, and XDR need a capability that interprets their signals

A significant part of SOC operations depends on tools capable of collecting telemetry and detecting relevant behaviors.

A SIEM can centralize logs from different sources, normalize events, correlate information, and generate alerts. NIST precisely describes this type of architecture: sensors and systems generate events that reach the SIEM, where they can be analyzed to identify suspicious situations and potential incidents.

EDR focuses on detection and response capabilities for endpoints, while XDR can expand correlation across different security domains depending on the platform used. SOAR adds automation for certain workflows and actions.

These technologies reduce part of the manual work, but the organization still needs to define which signals are relevant, how they are investigated, and what actions correspond when a potential incident arises.

The Cybersecurity Specialists can participate in configuring these capabilities and in the operation necessary to turn the available telemetry into useful detections and investigations.

More alerts do not necessarily mean better detection

An organization can increase the sensitivity of its tools and end up generating hundreds or thousands of additional alerts without proportionally improving its security.

When the volume exceeds the analysis capacity, investigation queues appear, and important signals may get mixed with low-relevance events. The result is a reactive operation where the team spends too much time dismissing false positives.

The maturity of the SOC involves progressively improving the quality of detections, incorporating context, and prioritizing what represents the greatest risk to the organization.

When does a company need SOC capability?

There is no specific number of employees or devices at which an organization needs a SOC analyst. The decision depends on the combination of attack surface, system criticality, telemetry volume, and current capacity to investigate incidents.

Some signals indicate that security operations need greater specialization:

The volume of alerts exceeds the capacity of the IT team: there are pending events or investigations are conducted superficially.

The infrastructure needs continuous protection: critical applications, services, or processes operate outside of normal hours.

The technological surface has grown: endpoints, identities, SaaS applications, cloud infrastructure, and networks generate multiple sources of telemetry.

Incidents are detected too late: the organization discovers malicious activity after it has had an impact.

There is SIEM, EDR, or XDR, but a lack of analysis capability: investment has been made in tools without sizing who will operate their alerts.

There are regulatory or contractual requirements: certain environments require stricter monitoring, logging, and response controls.

The response depends on a few people: absences or overload can leave incidents without a sufficiently rapid investigation.

These conditions indicate a need for SOC capability, although they do not automatically determine that the company must build an internal Security Operations Center.

Internal SOC, external service, or hybrid model

Once the need for specialized monitoring has been identified, the next decision is to determine how to provide that capability.

An internal SOC offers greater control over people, processes, and technology. Analysts can develop deep knowledge of the infrastructure and understand more quickly what behaviors are normal within each system. The model also requires investment in specialists, tools, processes, leadership, and coverage.

An external service can provide specialized monitoring without building the entire operation internally. This alternative can be especially relevant when the company needs to expand coverage or does not yet have sufficient scale to maintain multiple shifts of analysts.

The hybrid model combines both approaches. A provider can take on part of the monitoring and triage, while the internal team maintains ownership over architecture, business context, critical decisions, and incident coordination.

The choice also depends on how much context the analyst needs to correctly interpret the signals. The more specific the infrastructure or business, the more important documentation, escalation procedures, and collaboration between internal and external specialists become.

The cloud infrastructure expands the sources the SOC must monitor

The migration to the cloud changes part of the available telemetry. In addition to traditional endpoints and networks, identities, APIs, workloads, containers, managed services, and various logs provided by vendors appear.

This forces the integration of new sources into detection processes.

The Cloud Engineers can collaborate with security to ensure that the infrastructure generates the necessary telemetry and that controls are properly integrated with the architecture.

The SOC analyst needs to understand that context to investigate an alert. A change in permissions on a cloud identity may be more relevant than an isolated network connection if it provides access to critical resources.

Identity has become an essential source of context

A significant part of investigations needs to reconstruct which identity performed an action, from which device, and with what privileges.

Therefore, authentication logs, permission changes, MFA, and access to applications can be as important as network telemetry.

The IT Infrastructure and security teams need to coordinate these sources so that the SOC can relate events from different components and reconstruct a sequence when suspicious activity appears.

MITRE ATT&CK helps analyze attacker behaviors

A SOC needs more than lists of known indicators. It must also understand the behaviors that may appear during the different stages of an attack.

MITRE ATT&CK provides a knowledge base on tactics and techniques used by adversaries and a common language to describe them. MITRE also proposes ATT&CK as a reference for evaluating SOC capabilities and developing, testing, and improving detection analytics.

This allows coverage to be analyzed from a different perspective. Instead of only asking how many rules the SIEM has, it can be evaluated which relevant behaviors for the organization have detection mechanisms.

Detection engineering improves alert quality

As the operation matures, part of the work shifts from reacting to alerts to designing better detections.

Detection engineering uses knowledge about threats, available telemetry, and system behavior to build analytics capable of identifying relevant activities with a reasonable level of accuracy.

The results of previous investigations can feed this process. If an incident demonstrates that a certain sequence of events is important, the team can develop or improve a detection to identify it earlier in the future.

This feedback allows the SOC to evolve from operational experience.

AI is changing part of the SOC analyst's work

Security teams manage large amounts of information, so there are clear opportunities to apply automation and artificial intelligence in tasks such as alert enrichment, correlation, search, and summary preparation.

This can reduce time spent on certain repetitive activities and provide initial context for an investigation. It can also help an analyst navigate large volumes of telemetry more quickly.

The impact is already reaching the organization of teams. In a NICE webinar in March 2026, data from SANS indicated that 74% of surveyed cybersecurity teams were modifying the size or structure of roles due to the impact of AI, with SOC/Security Analyst among the most affected positions.

The incorporation of artificial intelligence into security operations must be accompanied by controls and validation. An automatically generated explanation can speed up triage, but a decision about isolation, blocking, or escalation can have operational consequences that require additional context.

The evolution of the profile thus points towards a combination of human analysis and automation, especially when the volume of signals makes it unfeasible to investigate each event manually from scratch.

What to evaluate when hiring a SOC analyst

The right profile depends on the environment that needs protection. A company with primarily cloud infrastructure may value different knowledge than an organization with data centers, corporate networks, and legacy systems.

Among the capabilities to evaluate are:

SIEM and log analysis: ability to investigate events from multiple sources.

EDR/XDR: understanding of endpoint telemetry and investigation processes.

Networks and infrastructure: knowledge of protocols, traffic, systems, and enterprise architecture.

Identity and cloud: ability to interpret authentications, permissions, and cloud service events.

Incident response: experience determining severity, escalating, and documenting incidents.

MITRE ATT&CK: understanding of tactics and techniques to contextualize observed behaviors.

Communication: ability to document findings and explain risks to other technical teams and stakeholders.

Certifications can complement this evaluation, but practical work requires interpreting incomplete information, building hypotheses, and relating events from different systems.

A candidate who can explain how they would investigate an alert, what information they would seek, and under what conditions they would escalate the case can provide a more useful signal than simply memorizing concepts or tools.

The SOC analyst is part of a broader response capability

Detecting an incident only generates value when the organization can respond.

The SOC needs procedures that define how to escalate situations, who can make decisions, and which teams are involved when the incident affects critical systems. NIST emphasizes that incident response requires coordination among different organizational functions and must