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Security Operations

Security operations encompasses the day-to-day actions, policies, and procedures an organization uses to mitigate risk and uphold the CIA Triad of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. This coverage extends to the structure of a formal security program and the collaborative SecOps methodology.

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About this video

Security operations is the active, day-to-day practice of protecting an organization — the collection of procedures, decisions, and actions taken to reduce risk and maintain the CIA Triad of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Rather than existing as a static set of rules, security operations is a continuous function that evolves alongside the threats and needs of the business it serves. Every meaningful output of a security program ultimately comes down to operational execution: the steps taken to keep systems, data, and people secure. A security program is the formal structure that makes those operations possible. It encompasses the policies and procedures that define acceptable behavior and response, the technologies deployed to enforce and monitor them, the personnel responsible for carrying out security functions, and the budget that sustains all of it. Together, these elements form the foundation from which an organization conducts its security work. SecOps is a methodology that extends beyond traditional security operations by emphasizing cross-functional collaboration. Inspired by the DevOps model, SecOps recognizes that security decisions affect everyone in an organization, and that implementing controls without input from other departments can create friction, resistance, and gaps in protection. By involving stakeholders across the business in security planning and execution, organizations can roll out security measures that are both effective and practical — turning the broader workforce into a reinforcing layer of defense rather than an obstacle to progress.

What you'll learn

What's covered

Security Operations

Aligned to

ISC2 CISSP
1.6 Develop, document, and implement security policy, standards, procedures, and guidelines
NIST CSF
GV.PO-01 Policy for managing cybersecurity risks is established based on organizational context, cybersecurity strategy, and priorities and is communicated and enforced
NIST 800-53
PM-1 Information Security Program Plan
CompTIA Security+
5.1 Summarize elements of effective security governance.
CompTIA CySA+
1.5 Explain the importance of efficiency and process improvement in security operations.
CompTIA SecurityX
4.5 Explain the use of automation, orchestration, and threat intelligence in security operations.

Key terms

CIA Triad
The three core principles of information security: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.
Security Policy
A formal document that defines an organization's security goals, rules, and responsibilities.
Risk Management
The ongoing process of identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks to an acceptable level.
Security Operations
The day-to-day actions, procedures, and functions carried out to keep an organization safe and secure.
Security Program
An organized set of policies, processes, people, and controls managed holistically to protect an organization's cybersecurity domain.
SecOps
A collaborative security methodology derived from the DevOps model that integrates security teams with the rest of the organization to implement security operations in a way that supports all business functions.

Topics

Security Operations Secops Cia Triad Security Program Cybersecurity Risk Management Devops

Transcript

What Security Operations Means

Everything that we really do within a security program needs to render down into action — that is, we need to take steps to mitigate risk for the organisation that we work for. That is security operations. We're going to define what security operations looks like, then we're going to get into a security program, and finish things off by talking about SecOps and what SecOps is.

One thing I always like to do is break down these words into separate components. So for instance, we have security, which means free from danger or threat. Then we also have operations, which is an active process or function. So really, security operations, when we break it down this way, really means that day-to-day stuff that we're doing, the procedures that we're following, and what we're doing to actually keep the company safe and secure — that safety net that we're laying out for the company. The key really to this is those actions that we're taking to create security.

We of course have the CIA triad — confidentiality, integrity and availability — as our model for security, what we're trying to achieve when it comes to security. So I like to think of this as anything that we're doing to propel our security efforts forward. That is the operational side of this.

The Security Program

One way we implement security operations is by rolling out a security program. A security program is going to be all those policies and procedures, the technologies that we implement; we're going to have people that are going to be assigned towards security; and we're also going to have a budget that's going to be able to facilitate all of this action. That's what a security program is: it's all of this together that allows us to carry out security operations.

SecOps as a Methodology

Now there is this term SecOps, which is just security operations put together, so really it's just the same thing — or is it? I actually like to think of SecOps as going one step beyond that. SecOps comes from kind of a spin-off of the DevOps idea. It's a methodology, it's a way of thinking, and it's a way of thinking of collaboration, of getting multiple people involved into coming up with solutions.

What I mean by that is maybe we have a security department that's in charge of carrying out security. They make policies and procedures and they roll it out to keep the company secure. But without everyone else — and we're going to call it everyone else operations, everyone else who's carrying out their day-to-day functions of the business in this case right here — so we have everybody else, and what happens is everything that security is implementing affects everyone else. This could cause some problems, because we're making changes that could cause some conflict for the operations side of things, make it a little more difficult for them to do their job.

So the idea behind SecOps is that we are working together as a team: that security department and all the other departments within the company are working together to make sure that we're rolling out security functions, security operations, in a way that allows everybody to thrive and everybody to advance forward, and protect the company and all of its employees.

One of the reasons for this is that if you don't include all the employees of the company in what you're rolling out, if you're not giving consideration to what they want and how they operate, and making sure that you are working with them in rolling these out, what happens is they become a barrier to security and you can't move forward with it. So by including them in the decisions and in the processes, and educating them and bringing them along in the journey, we can actually press security forward together. That's the idea of SecOps — it's kind of a methodology that goes behind this security operations.

So really what we're mainly going to be focusing on throughout this course is those security operations, but what we want to do as we're rolling this out is be thinking about that SecOps idea: how are we going to include others in on this process to make it functional, make our security program functional?

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