Determining the Value of SOC Automation with our ROI Calculator Tool

Physical Security Operations Centers are one of the most critical elements needed for
business continuity, especially post-pandemic. These vital units – also known as GSOCs,
Fusion Centers, Alarm Centers, or Command and Control Centers – play a vital role in
a wide range of operations, fulfilling crucial needs including:

  • Protecting data centers from sabotage
  • Controlling access to secure areas of critical infrastructure
  • Preventing theft of property or IP on a corporate campus
  • Responding to natural disasters or pandemics
  • Ensuring compliance

Challenges Facing SOC Personnel

  1. SOCs are staffed by skilled physical security teams who work around the clock identifying, analyzing, and mitigating threats facing their organizations. These teams are faced with many challenges.
  2. SOC staff is burdened with managing responses to thousands of security alarms per day across all sites. With thousands of endpoint devices per site and no shared intelligence or data correlation between these devices, 80-90% of the alarms generated are false/nuisance alarms. This situation is made worse by the presence of numerous static device configurations with no orchestration between them.
  3. Another significant problem for SOCs is false alarms. This is a chronic issue, costing organizations between $50,000 – $250,000 each quarter[1] in wasted physical security resources. Across the United States, false alarms cost a staggering $3.2B per year. The financial toll is only the beginning. Beyond that, false alarms also cause mental fatigue for SOC operators and officers.

Overall, SOC staff are overwhelmed by massive volumes of information, false alarms, nuisance alarms, and the need to maintain systems and device health. While all of this can take a toll on personnel, it also distracts them from critical risk remediation tasks.

Many organizations do not have enough security personnel to thoroughly review the volume of important daily security requests and alarms generated by their disconnected systems. The result is often a growing alarm backlog, operator fatigue, and high personnel turnover.

SOC Management Challenges

  • Inability to Measure KPIs
  • Need For Automaton
  • Alert Fatigue
  • Dispersed Tools
  • Alert Fatigue
  • Lack of Centralized Incident Handling
  • Inadequate Skilled Resources

The Cost-Benefit of SOC Automation

Automating physical security operations in the SOC can significantly improve the work experience for your personnel, as well as overall security outcomes. It can also contribute to the bottom line.

With average salaries ranging from $50/hour for a SOC Analyst to $65/hour for a Security Manager, personnel costs are the most costly portion of the security investment. Further, even with skilled operators, training time is needed to bring new hires up to speed on the correct response for each situation. There is also a time cost associated with defining and mandating these responses at the organizational level.

Finally, there is a tremendous operating cost associated with running and maintaining SOC tools and technology. Unexpected downtimes, technical team costs, emergency repairs, tracking repair work orders across different system integrators, and tracking repair SLAs are all manual tasks that are extremely time-consuming. Through improved integration, optimization, and automation, SOCs can save both time and money.

Vector Flow Provides the ROI

Vector Flow’s AI-Enabled SOC Automation Platform leverages Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) deep learning algorithms to process and evaluate your own data and automate your SOC processes. Based on customer and industry results, our ROI Calculator estimates a typical 60% reduction in SOC Operator response time and associated costs for a mid-size enterprise with 65 buildings and 16 SOC operators (running 24 x 7 x 365), with an estimate of 1,000 alarms/day received.

With Physical Security SOC Automation, you will see:

SOC automation results in a reduced effort that can be realized as cost savings or increased SOC capacity for other duties including improving SOC service quality. The Full-Time-Equivalents (FTE) metric quantifies how the processing capacity of the SOC team has expanded with automation.

Using the ROI calculator, you can assess the benefits specific to your SOC team. The Vector Flow SOC Automation Suite can bring quick value and demonstrate ROI within only a few months. It comes with easy out-of-the-box connectors to swiftly and easily automate all your security processes. Save time and money, all while increasing productivity and accuracy of your SOC.