Deploying Google SecOps for Digital Transformation

Did you know that 56% of organisations only learn about security breaches from outsiders? That’s because legacy Security Operations (Legacy SecOps) can’t keep up. The number shows how important it is to have strong security measures. Organisations increasingly use cloud-based security solutions to protect themselves and secure their digital transformation initiatives. One such solution is Google SecOps (part of Google Cloud).

Google Security Operations’ powerful SecOps platform, combined with Google’s expertise in hyper-scale infrastructure, enables security teams to discover threats in real time. The article also discusses how to implement it using Devoteam’s Google SecOps Jumpstart Accelerator.

1. What is SecOps?

Goals of SecOps

SecOps aims to create a more secure and resilient environment by unifying security efforts and streamlining operations. It focuses on:

• Threat Detection and Prevention: Employing various security tools and techniques to identify and prevent potential threats before they can compromise systems or data.
• Incident Response: Establishing procedures and workflows for handling security incidents, including investigation, containment, remediation, and recovery.
• Security Monitoring: Continuous monitoring of systems and networks for suspicious activities, utilising security information and event management (SIEM) systems to aggregate and analyse security logs.
• Vulnerability Management: Proactively identifying and addressing security vulnerabilities in systems and applications to reduce the attack surface.
• Threat Intelligence: Leveraging threat intelligence feeds and analysis to understand the latest threats and adapt security measures accordingly.

SecOps seeks to bridge the gap between IT operations and security, fostering collaboration and integration to strengthen an organisation’s security posture.

Challenges of SecOps: Legacy SecOps can’t keep up

Security Operations are often difficult, and many organisations fail to achieve their desired security outcomes in threat detection, investigation, and response (TDIR). The challenge today? Legacy SecOps solutions struggle to keep pace with evolving threats, both in terms of magnitude as well as in sophistication, often lacking comprehensive data and attacker insights.

We can group the main challenges as follows:

• Lack of data and context: Organisations often lack the necessary data and context to detect and understand the increasing levels of threat activity within their networks.
• Limited attacker insight: Without a detailed understanding of the specific threats targeting their organisation and the tactics used by attackers, organisations struggle to identify real threats.
• Manual processes and talent shortage: Current SecOps processes are often manual, which, combined with a shortage of skilled professionals, leaves teams understaffed and overworked.
• Lack of scalability: even with all the available logs sources the volume of data required to monitor effectively our infrastructure keeps increasing, legacy tools don’t provide the scalability necessary to follow.

These challenges have real consequences. According to the 2023 Mandiant M-Trends report, 63% of organisations that experienced security incidents were unaware they had been breached and were only notified by a third party.

---

2. Understanding Google SecOps

Why Google for cybersecurity? The Google Cloud SecOps Philosophy 

All big cloud providers offer security solutions. So does Google Cloud with Google SecOps. Many people don’t think of Google as a security company, but they keep more people safe online than anyone else. They have a substantial security foundation, protecting billions of devices and users online through services like Gmail, YouTube and Chrome. 

Some examples of Google’s strength in Cybersecurity: 

• Phishing is a common tactic used by threat actors to orchestrate cyberattacks. Gmail blocks over 100 million phishing attempts every day. 
• Another significant cybersecurity threat is malware. Google Chrome safe browsing scans billions of files daily, identifies malware and risky sites, and protects over 5 billion devices daily. 
• Last year, Google blocked the world’s largest DDOS attack. Cloud Armor Enterprise defends media websites from such attacks.

There are three key pillars of Google’s security approach:

• Trust Nothing: Implement a zero-trust model, assuming no implicit trust within the network.
• Detect Everything: Employ comprehensive monitoring and data collection to ensure visibility into all security events.
• Know What Google Knows: Leverage Google’s vast threat intelligence and security expertise.

Google SecOps Key Features and Capabilities 

1. Built on Google Cloud Infrastructure to process lots of data

Google SecOps uses Google’s cloud infrastructure. This allows it to process lots of security data, perform complex calculations, and store data for a long time. This robust infrastructure ensures that security events are thoroughly analysed and contextualised for comprehensive threat detection and investigation.

2. Threat Intelligence with Google SecOps

The platform uses Google’s extensive threat intelligence database to analyse and flag potentially malicious activities in real-time. This proactive approach uses private IOCs from Google’s incident response activities to identify and stop threats before they cause damage.  

In addition, Google SecOps offers comprehensive threat detection. It analyses large volumes of data with 12 months of active retention to identify threats at all levels. Its proactive threat Intelligence, which includes intelligence from Google, Mandiant, and VirusTotal, helps to discover and address threats efficiently. 

3. Google SecOps uses AI for Automation

Google SecOps uses artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance security tasks like investigations, threat hunting, and reporting. This leads to greater efficiency in security operations.

To achieve this, Google built SecLM. SecLM is a large language model specifically trained on cybersecurity data, which enhances Gemini’s capabilities in Google’s security solutions.

Google built Gemini’s security features with Google’s SecLM API, which combines various techniques. These techniques include security-tuned foundation models, multi-step reasoning, extensions, and grounding databases. The grounding databases help to respond more accurately to security-specific user prompts than general-purpose generative AI models. It is extensible and incorporates intelligence from Mandiant, VirusTotal, and Google, seamlessly bringing critical and up-to-date security information and context to users.

SecLM is engineered to ensure the nuance of the interaction takes into account the right data sources, business logic, and data retrieval. In addition, it is grounded so that it continues to address the use case with the precision expected of security practitioners from detection to response.

SecLM empowers analysts with features like case summarisation, structured search, malware analysis, and natural language rule creation, streamlining security operations and threat hunting: 

• Case & Search Summarisation: Summarises complex security events and investigations, providing analysts with concise insights.
• Natural Language Search: Allows analysts to query security data using natural language, simplifying the search process.
• Contextual Investigation Assistance: Offers relevant information and guidance to analysts during investigations
• Malware Analysis: Analyses suspicious files to determine if they are malicious and provide insights into their behaviour.
• Natural Language Detection Rule Creation: Enables analysts to create detection rules using natural language, simplifying rule development.
• Natural Language Playbook Building: Facilitates the creation of automated response playbooks through natural language instructions.

4. Rapid Investigation & Analyst workflow 

• Rapid Investigation: Get a complete view of your security environment and leverage AI for faster investigation (Read more about GenAI in Cybersecurity).
• Streamlined Analyst Workflow: Unify research data and simplify analyst tasks to improve efficiency.

5. Automated & collaborative responses

• Automated Response: Create playbooks to automate repetitive tasks and accelerate response times.
• Collaborative Response: Combine security automation with collaboration tools to enable rapid response to threats.

Benefits of Google SecOps for Digital Transformation

1. Enhanced Security 

• Proactive Threat Detection: Google SecOps uses threat intelligence and AI to detect and prevent security threats in real-time. This reduces the risk of cyberattacks and protects essential data.  
• Reduced Risk of Breaches and Data Loss: By strengthening security controls, organisations can reduce the risk of data breaches and associated financial and reputational damage.
• Improved Compliance: Google SecOps helps businesses follow industry security standards and regulations. 

2. Increased Efficiency and Agility

• Streamlined Security Operations: Google SecOps provides a single threat detection and response platform.  
• Automated Incident Response: This reduces the time needed to fix security threats.  
• Faster Remediation: Organisations can quickly address security gaps, reducing the chance of attacks. 

3. Cost Optimisation

• Reduced Overhead: Automation reduces the need for manual security tasks, freeing up resources.  
• Optimised Resource Utilisation: Organisations can tailor their security resources to their needs. It avoids overspending on unnecessary cloud infrastructure.  
• Lower Total Cost of Ownership: Google SecOps reduces manual efforts. It so contributes to a lower total cost of ownership for security management.

---

3. Devoteam’s Expertise in Google SecOps

Devoteam is a leading Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) that specialises in Google Cloud security solutions. With deep expertise in Google SecOps, Devoteam offers services to help organisations use the platform effectively.  

Implement Google SecOps faster with Jumpstart

Google SecOps Jumpstart Accelerator helps organisations implement Google SecOps faster and tailor the implementation to their specific requirements. It provides standardised processes to implement Google SecOps in your environment. Devoteam offers basic and comprehensive implementations tailored to your specific requirements.

---

4. How to run Google SecOps with Managed Security Services

Devoteam CyberSOC offers services built upon Google’s SecOps platform. Devoteam offers a layered Service Approach that allows organisations to choose the services that best align with their needs and budget. The services are built on 4 key pillars: monitoring, incident response, threat intelligence, and vulnerability management. 

Devoteam’s CyberSOC leverages a tiered team structure with 

• Level 1 analysts handling initial monitoring and triage, 
• Level 2 engineers conducting in-depth investigations and playbook creation, and 
• Level 3 experts providing incident response and forensic analysis.

The 4 Key Pillars of Devoteam’s Managed Security Services

• Monitoring: Devoteam provides 24/7 monitoring of your infrastructure, checks security events, and escalates incidents for rapid response.  
• Incident Response: Devoteam investigates security incidents, develops playbooks, and performs forensic analysis to understand the root cause and fix problems.  
• Threat Intelligence: Devoteam uses Google’s threat intelligence platform to provide threat detection and mitigation services. This includes monitoring for brand misuse and managing digital risk.  
• Vulnerability Management: Devoteam conducts vulnerability assessments and helps organisations fix security vulnerabilities.

Benefits of Choosing Devoteam as Your Partner

• Modular Service: Devoteam offers flexible services tailored to your needs and budget.  
• Google SecOps Expertise: You get access to Devoteam’s knowledge and experience in Google Cloud SecOps.  
• 24/7 Coverage: Continuous monitoring and support from Devoteam’s security experts.
• Transparent Operations: Devoteam operates transparently, ensuring full control of your Google Cloud SecOps deployment.

---

5. Servinform’s Success Story: A Real-World Example

Servinform is going through a digital transformation. The organisation had challenges with vulnerability management and incident response. They needed a solution to improve their security. Servinform chose Google SecOps and partnered with Devoteam, which improved its security operations, including better threat detection, faster response times, and cost savings. 

Google SecOps: the solution for secure digital transformations

Google Cloud SecOps helps organisations embrace digital transformation securely. It provides advanced security capabilities, automation, and intelligence to protect digital assets.  

Partnering with an MSSP like Devoteam helps you use Google SecOps effectively. Devoteam’s expertise and services help organisations improve their security and achieve their digital transformation goals.