In Security Operations Centres (SOCs) security practitioners work using a range of tools to detect and mitigate malicious computer-network activity. Sonification, in which data is represented as sound, is said to have potential as an approach to addressing some of the unique challenges faced by SOCs. For example, sonification has been shown to enable peripheral monitoring of processes, which could aid practitioners multitasking in busy SOCs. The perspectives of security practitioners on incorporating sonification into their actual working environments have not yet been examined, however. The aim of this paper therefore is to address this gap by exploring attitudes to using sonification in SOCs. We report on the results of a study consisting of an online survey (N=20) and interviews (N=21) with security practitioners working in a range of different SOCs. Our contribution is a refined appreciation of the contexts in which sonification could aid in SOC working practice, and an understanding of the areas in which sonification may not be beneficial or may even be problematic.We also analyse the critical requirements for the design of sonification systems and their integration into the SOC setting. Our findings clarify insights into the potential benefits and challenges of introducing sonification to support work in this vital security-monitoring environment.
Security researchers have been trying to understand functioning of a security operation center (SOC) and how security analysts perform their job. This effort is motivated by the fact that security monitoring and analysis is not just a technical problem. Researchers must take into consideration the human and organizational factors for their research ideas to succeed. Much work towards this direction has been through interviews of security analysts in SOCs. Interviews, however useful, will not be always possible as analysts work in a high-stress and time constrained environment. Thus the understanding of operational challenges through interviews is quite shallow. There is also an issue of trust that limits the amount of information an analyst shares with an interviewing researcher. In our work, we take an anthropological approach to address this problem. Students with Computer Science background get trained in anthropological methods by an anthropologist and are embedded as security analysts in operation centers. Embedded students perform the same job as an analyst and see the operational world from the view point of an analyst. Through reflection on the observations made by the students we gain a holistic perspective of the challenges in operation centers. In this paper we report preliminary results on the ongoing fieldwork at two corporate and a University SOC.