The rising number of cyberattacks and the increasing costs of incidents are making cybersecurity a critical element of business continuity and resilience. Regulations such as NIS2, uKSC and DORA now require organisations not only to implement security measures, but also to continuously monitor their IT environments, detect threats and respond rapidly to incidents. Security Operations Center (SOC) serves as a round-the-clock cybersecurity monitoring hub that shortens threat detection time, limits the impact of attacks and supports building cyber resilience.
Cybersecurity is no longer a topic that concerns only IT managers. The reason is simple – organisations today are more dependent on technology than ever before. IT systems handle sales, production, logistics, customer service and internal communication. Their unavailability quickly translates into tangible financial and reputational losses.
We are all witnessing the growing scale of threats in cyberspace. According to NASK, the number of security incidents handled by CERT Polska rose by 152% year-on-year in 2025, reaching 260,800 from 103,400 a year earlier. At the same time, cybercrime is becoming increasingly profitable. Sophos reports that the median ransom paid to ransomware groups jumped from $400,000 in 2023 to $2 million a year later. Added to this are the costs of operational downtime, system restoration, incident handling and loss of customer and partner trust. As a result, cybersecurity is becoming not just an IT protection area, but a foundation for business continuity and stability.
Regulatory pressure accelerates the need for SOC
In April 2026, Poland’s Act on the National Cybersecurity System (uKSC) came into force, transposing the EU NIS2 directive into Polish law. It imposes a series of organisational and technical obligations on thousands of enterprises in 18 key sectors. Since January 2025, the DORA regulation has also been in effect, introducing uniform digital resilience requirements for financial institutions, covering ICT risk management, operational resilience testing and oversight of technology service providers.
Both legal acts mean that organisations must not only deploy security controls, but also continuously monitor their IT environments, identify threats and be ready for rapid response. More and more organisations realise that the question is no longer whether an attack will happen, but when. The key capability therefore becomes the ability to detect incidents quickly and limit their consequences.
What a SOC does and why time matters most
This is why building a Security Operations Center (SOC) is becoming the gold standard. A SOC is a team of specialists and tools responsible for around-the-clock monitoring of IT system security. It can be compared to a surveillance centre that watches networks, servers, computers and applications instead of rooms. Its job is to detect suspicious activity, analyse threats and coordinate incident response. For many organisations, the critical question today is not whether an attack will happen, but how quickly it can be detected. Cybercriminals often remain inside the environment for many days before being noticed.
– In practice, the difference between an organisation with a mature SOC and one without one often comes down to time. We cannot guarantee that an attack will never happen. But we can significantly shorten the time needed to detect it and react. That time later determines the scale of business and reputational losses. Through constant monitoring and advanced tools, a SOC helps limit the impact of incidents, reduce the risk of downtime and better protect the organisation’s data – said Hubert Liberadzki, Head of Enterprise Security at OChK.
Modern SOCs use systems that analyse millions of events from various IT infrastructure components, enabling them to quickly catch events that may indicate an attack. Threat hunting – actively searching for traces of threats that could have evaded automated security mechanisms – is playing an increasingly important role. This way, the SOC not only reacts to incidents but also helps identify risk before it leads to real damage.
Although the need for such capabilities seems obvious today, building them in-house remains a major challenge. An effective SOC requires not only the right technologies but, above all, a team of specialists responsible for monitoring, threat analysis, incident response and security process development. Such a team must operate 24/7 and constantly update its knowledge.
SOC as a Service: the pragmatic answer to talent shortages
This is why the SOC as a Service model is gaining popularity. It allows organisations to use a team of experts, proven processes and advanced technologies without having to build all the competencies internally. An additional benefit is access to experience gained while handling many organisations and various threat scenarios, which translates into faster detection of new attack techniques and more effective incident response.
– The biggest challenge today is not buying security tools, but having access to specialist competencies. Maintaining an in-house SOC means building a team of analysts, incident response specialists, security engineers and threat hunting experts. This is a costly and time-consuming process, especially given the shortage of specialists on the market. The SOC as a Service model allows organisations to leverage mature processes, advanced technologies and the experience of a team that handles multiple environments and different types of threats every day. For many companies, this is the fastest and most cost-effective path to a high level of cyber resilience – added Hubert Liberadzki.
The growing number of cyberattacks, new regulatory obligations and a chronic shortage of specialists mean that organisations can no longer treat cybersecurity as just an additional layer of protection. It is increasingly becoming an element that ensures business continuity and reduces operational risk. In this context, the Security Operations Center is no longer a solution reserved for the largest organisations. It is becoming one of the basic tools for building cyber resilience – the ability to detect threats, respond to incidents and maintain business continuity even in the face of ever more sophisticated cyberattacks.
Źródło: wnp.pl, Fot. madartzgraphics / Pixabay
