What is a Security Operations Centre (SOC)? How 24/7 monitoring protects your business.
What is a Security Operations Centre (SOC), and why does it matter for Australian organisations? Learn how 24/7 monitoring helps detect threats early, respond faster, and reduce cyber risk.
Crime never sleeps. According to ACSC, Australian organisations face cybercrime at a rate of around one incident every six minutes, with hundreds of reports made each day and multiple serious attacks requiring active response. So, given the volume of attacks, how can you keep your head above water, let alone remediate the impact?
A SOC (security operations centre) is the operational heart of cyber security. It’s responsible for continuously detecting, investigating, and responding to threats, so that any incidents are dealt with quickly and effectively. Made up of people, processes, and technology, a SOC manages cyber security threats across your systems, networks, cloud services, and endpoints – 24/7.
Can you afford a SOC?
In reality, the question is, can you afford not to have SOC services? Let’s look at the cost of risk when you don’t use a security operations centre in Australia.
In its Annual Cyber Threat Report 2024-2025, ASD says that the average self-reported cost of cybercrime (per report) for Australian businesses was up 50% overall ($80,850). The cost to our small businesses has increased by 14% to $56,600; medium businesses are up 55% to $97,200; and large businesses have experienced a staggering 219% increase, with average losses of $202,700.
That’s a lot of financial loss to survive.
Could you set up and run your own SOC?
Yes, you could. But what’s telling is how few organisations (just 9%) choose to build and operate their own SOC.
To start with, running a SOC requires you to attract and retain enough skilled full‑time staff to provide 24/7 coverage. This is at a time when there are ongoing shortages of experienced SOC analysts. Any staff you do attract are at risk of burnout and attrition due to ongoing pressure. The costs of tooling, SIEM, and engineering are significant, and regulatory and response expectations are increasing.
The requirements for building a SOC from scratch are high, which is why hybrid and SOC-as-a-Service through your cyber security partner are far more popular (and affordable) alternatives.
What is the primary goal of a cyber security operations centre?
A SOC’s primary role is to turn your security data and alerts into action.
Rather than just generating endless notifications, a SOC analyses events to determine what matters, how serious it is, and what needs to be done to contain and remediate risk. SOC functions are delivered through a combination of security analysts, threat intelligence, and platforms such as SIEM, endpoint detection, and automation tooling.
What does this actually look like on an everyday basis?
Non-stop monitoring of logs, alerts and telemetry across your IT environments
Threat detection using SIEM and detection engineering to identify suspicious or malicious activity
Triaging and investigating incidents, validating alerts and assessing impact
Response and remediation support, coordinating containment and recovery actions
Ongoing reporting for your operational teams, executives and governance bodies
Continuous improvement, including refining detection rules as threats and environments change
In terms of delivery goals, a SOC helps you to:
Reduce the time to detect and respond to threats
Maintain continuous visibility across complex and hybrid environments
Improve compliance and audit readiness
Support informed decision‑making at operational and executive levels
Without a security operation centre, you can find your security alerts remain siloed, unprioritised, or unresolved – leaving you dangerously exposed even if you’ve made a significant investment in security tools.
What makes Baidam’s SOC special?
Baidam’s Security Operations Centre, known as the Gundan Security Operations Centre, is Australia’s first Indigenous co‑designed, Indigenous‑operated SOC. It was purpose-built using First Nations cultural principles rather than retrofitting culture into a conventional SOC model.
Our SOC was gifted the name “Gundan” - meaning shield in the local Yagara/Jundai language - by Dr Sandra Delaney. The name reinforces its purpose: protection of people, environments and communities, not just networks and systems.
Different by design
At the core of our SOC is an Indigenous co-design methodology built on three principles: Knowledge, Adaptiveness and Awareness. These principles shape everything from the physical SOC layout and seating plans to daily operations, training, and incident response workflows. We’ve created a learning circle model where our junior analysts work alongside senior “knowledge holders” to accelerate skills transfer and build resilience.
Technically, Baidam’s SOC is designed around enablement rather than dependency.
Instead of operating a proprietary SIEM, we deploy Microsoft Sentinel directly into our customers’ environments, applying detection engineering and “security as code” practices.
The outcome? Our customers retain ownership, visibility, and maturity over time - while still benefiting from 24/7 SOC coverage, incident response, and threat intelligence.
Watch, monitor, act – with Baidam
Baidam’s SOC combines sovereign operations, cultural design, workforce depth, and modern detection. All engineered into a unique, world-first model that delivers strong security outcomes while building long-term capability - for our customers, communities, and the broader Australian cyber ecosystem.