By Xavier Gruau, CTO Squad Cybersolutions
SOCs have established themselves as the heart of cybersecurity. However, many of them are overwhelmed by the volume of alerts. The challenge is no longer to detect more, but to see better.
Faced with this saturation, the future of SOCs depends on three inseparable levers: CTEM, AI, and automation.
In theory, the Security Operations Center (SOC) is the company's shield, but in practice, it often becomes its weak point.
Every day, teams have to deal with thousands of alerts.
As a result, most of their time is spent sorting, not analyzing.
This phenomenon, known asalert fatigue, drastically reduces teams' responsiveness and their ability to identify weak signals.
Technology is beginning to provide a solution through the advent of AI and automation, which are helping to improve the situation.
However, as long as the SOC focuses on downstream detection, it will continue to be overwhelmed by alerts.
We need to move from an operationally reactive defense to a strategically preventive one.
This is precisely the role of CTEM (Continuous Threat Exposure Management).
Its objective is simple: to transform cybersecurity into a continuous process that measures and reduces risk exposure.
Instead of waiting for a threat to trigger an alert, CTEM identifies, validates, and prioritizes vulnerabilities or misconfigurations before they can be exploited.
Backed by a VOC (Vulnerability Operating Center), this model complements the SOC by proactively relieving some of the operational pressure by continuously monitoring exposure surfaces, tracking patches, and coordinating remediation with IT teams.
This dynamic approach automatically reduces alert background noise: fewer active vulnerabilities that are exploited as a priority by attackers means fewer events triggered, and therefore a SOC that is more focused on real threats.
The final pillar of this transformation is automation.
As environments become more complex (cloud, IoT, multiple identities, extended software chains), the speed at which attacks spread far exceeds the capacity for human intervention.
Automation, fueled by correlation, telemetry, and artificial intelligence, makes it possible to prioritize and enrich alerts before they reach analysts. However, it could generate dangerous side effects. The challenge is therefore not to automate more, but to automate better, combiningthe contextual expertise of analysts withthe power of machine learning to create a SOC augmented.
In conclusion, tomorrow's SOC will not be louder, it will be more targeted by reducing exposure before it becomes exploitable.
Its objective will no longer be to detect what is happening but to prevent what could happen, thus transforming itself into an exhibition control center.
