SOC (Agropromcifra)

Agropromcipra, created in 2023 as an information security service provider and integrator for the agricultural industry, plans to launch its own SOC (Security Operation Center) in 2024 to provide services based on it. This was told on November 23, 2023, answering TAdviser questions on Moscow Hacking Week, General Director of Agropromcipra Alexander Molozhavsky.

The founders of Agropromcipra are the United Grain Company, Rosagroleasing and Rosselkhozbank. The creation of a center for countering cyber threats is one of the tasks of the formation of this company. The center will be focused, first of all, on the structures of the Ministry of Agriculture, which has a rather extensive structure - more than 200 subordinate points, explained the general director of Agropromcithra. But in the future, the company is ready to provide services in the foreign market.

For the Ministry of Agriculture, an industry SOC is being created on the basis of Agropromcipra "(photo: Ministry of Agriculture)"

Traditionally, creating a full-fledged SOC takes a couple of years. The company expects to set up basic services in the first half of 2024 and start piloting, and get the first results of SOC work by summer. And as of November 2023, Agropromcipra is in the process of forming competencies and the volume of work.

There are already a large number of integrators and providers of information security services on the market, but the agro-industrial industry is specific, and not everyone works with it, Alexander Molozhavsky explained in a conversation with TAdviser the need to create an industry information security center. And Agropromcipra contains information security and IT specialists who know the agro-industrial industry from the inside. This is more efficient than using external SOCs.

As part of the roadmap for the creation and development of the center for countering cyber threats, Agropromcipra is considering the introduction of Positive Technologies products, in particular, MaxPatrol O2, whose task is to automatically, with minimal human participation, identify and prevent hacker attacks before unacceptable damage is caused to business.

This approach, according to Agropromcipra, will make it possible to minimally use the center's specialists in routine operations and give them the opportunity to engage in more interesting tasks, which is especially important due to the shortage of personnel. In addition, the use of this tool will reduce operating costs for maintaining incident monitoring systems, the company expects.

Key competencies for the SOC agricultural industry have already been found, the necessary specialists have been hired for them, and then, as part of the introduction of information security products into SOC, the team will expand, including through training from the vendor.

We rely on top-level management when deep, strong knowledge is not required for all team members. It is necessary to understand in general the strategy of the direction of movement on cybersecurity, for this key people are enough. And then replicate this experience in customizing solutions, events, and so on, - said Alexander Molozhavsky in a conversation with TAdviser.