How Leading CISOs Manage Their SOCs to Avoid Alert Overload and Ensure No Genuine Incidents are Overlooked

Security Operations Centre (SOC) teams often find themselves overwhelmed by alerts, despite significant investments in security tools. False positives accumulate, stealthy threats evade detection, and critical incidents can become obscured in the noise. Leading Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) have recognised that the solution does not lie in simply adding more tools to SOC workflows. Instead, they focus on providing analysts with the speed and visibility necessary to identify genuine attacks before they inflict damage. This approach is transforming SOCs into effective threat-stopping machines.

A crucial first step in this transformation is implementing Live, Interactive Threat Analysis. Traditional static scans and delayed reports are inadequate for keeping pace with modern, evasive malware. Interactive sandboxes, such as ANY.RUN, enable analysts to detonate suspicious files, URLs, and QR codes in a secure, isolated environment while interacting with the samples in real time. CISOs advocate for the use of interactive sandboxes because they allow analysts to click links, open files, and simulate real user actions to uncover hidden payloads that conventional scanners might miss. This method provides immediate visibility into execution flow, dropped files, network connections, and related tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). Consequently, teams can extract Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) swiftly, allowing for faster responses and the ability to block similar threats before they proliferate.