Episode 22 — Staff a SOC With Clear Roles, Skills, and Escalation Paths
This episode covers SOC staffing as an operating design problem, emphasizing exam-relevant concepts like role clarity, escalation discipline, and sustainable coverage rather than simply “adding headcount.” You will define common SOC roles and capabilities, including tiered analysts, incident responders, detection engineers, and content managers, then learn how responsibilities should shift as maturity increases. We explain how to build escalation paths that preserve evidence, avoid duplicate work, and route complex cases to the right expertise quickly, while still maintaining accountability and auditability. Practical scenarios include handling high-severity alerts during off-hours, avoiding burnout through realistic workload modeling, and designing training paths that reduce analyst churn and improve investigation quality. Troubleshooting guidance addresses gaps like missing coverage for specialized logs, unclear boundaries with IT operations, and an escalation ladder that is too slow when an attacker is moving laterally. Produced by BareMetalCyber.com, where you’ll find more cyber audio courses, books, and information to strengthen your educational path. Also, if you want to stay up to date with the latest news, visit DailyCyber.News for a newsletter you can use, and a daily podcast you can commute with.
