With some jobs you can become stuck in a loop of repetitive and boring tasks, whilst looking forward to close of play, before facing the dread of having to come back to do it all again tomorrow. Working as a SOC analyst within the 40fi DFND team is a far cry from this.

We know that working in a SOC can be tough, right? The pressures of knowing we take multiple informed decisions daily on the information we gather during event and incident investigations and strive to be right every time. Being wrong just once could result in a potential adversary or threat actor breaching the network we are looking to protect. All in the face of dealing with a constant flow of alerts generated from multiple systems that feed into your SIEM, client requests, manager ‘fastballs’, keeping abreast of the latest threat intelligence landscape and technology developments, regulatory obligations, plus a whole host of other sidetracking queries that come from working in a tech start-up.

With a good attitude, an eye for detail, a natural analytical mindset and desire to ‘do the right thing’ (plus coffee, lots of coffee), you will find that there will never be two days the same working in the 40fi SOC team. We actively encourage and support our analysts to move away from the ‘alert, next’ mentality, to proactively identify root-cause and develop use cases, SIEM rules and policies to reduce the threat landscape, minimizing the risk to your organization.

At the same time, we are utilising automation as much as possible to deal with monotonous and time-consuming tasks that lead to SOC fatigue, allowing our analysts to focus primarily on those cases that require further analysis.

So yes, it can be challenging at times. But it can also be extremely rewarding and satisfying when you know you’re working with like-minded people, who will celebrate their wins together, with the same drive and determination to get the job done to the best of their abilities.