ir-4-14-security-operations-center

name	IR-4(14)_security-operations-center
description	Establish and maintain a security operations center.
category	configuration
version	5.2.0
author	cyberstrike-official
tags	["nist","sp800-53","rev5","ir-4-14","ir","enhancement"]
tech_stack	["any"]
cwe_ids	[]
chains_with	[]
prerequisites	["IR-4"]
severity_boost	{}

IR-4(14) Security Operations Center

Enhancement of: IR-4

High-Level Description

Family: Incident Response (IR) Framework: NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5

A security operations center (SOC) is the focal point for security operations and computer network defense for an organization. The purpose of the SOC is to defend and monitor an organization’s systems and networks (i.e., cyber infrastructure) on an ongoing basis. The SOC is also responsible for detecting, analyzing, and responding to cybersecurity incidents in a timely manner. The organization staffs the SOC with skilled technical and operational personnel (e.g., security analysts, incident response personnel, systems security engineers) and implements a combination of technical, management, and operational controls (including monitoring, scanning, and forensics tools) to monitor, fuse, correlate, analyze, and respond to threat and security-relevant event data from multiple sources. These sources include perimeter defenses, network devices (e.g., routers, switches), and endpoint agent data feeds. The SOC provides a holistic situational awareness capability to help organizations determine the security posture of the system and organization. A SOC capability can be obtained in a variety of ways. Larger organizations may implement a dedicated SOC while smaller organizations may employ third-party organizations to provide such a capability.

What to Check

• Verify IR-4(14) Security Operations Center is documented in SSP
• Confirm control is operating effectively
• Review evidence of continuous monitoring for IR-4(14)
• Verify enhancement builds upon base control IR-4

How to Test

Step 1: Review Documentation

Examine the System Security Plan (SSP) and related artifacts for IR-4(14) implementation details. Verify the organization has documented how this control is satisfied.

Step 2: Validate Implementation

# For cloud environments, use cloud-audit-mcp tools
# For on-premises, review system configurations directly

# Example: Check if account management policies exist
grep -r "account.management\|access.control" /etc/security/ 2>/dev/null

Step 3: Test Operating Effectiveness

Verify the control is actively functioning, not just documented. Check logs, configurations, and operational evidence.

Tools

Tool	Purpose