Boosting Holistic Cybersecurity Awareness with Outsourced Wide-Scope CyberSOC: A Generalization from a Spanish Public Organization Study

Abstract

Public sector organizations are facing an escalating challenge with the increasing volume and complexity of cyberattacks, which disrupt essential public services and jeopardize citizen data and privacy. Effective cybersecurity management has become an urgent necessity. To combat these threats comprehensively, the active involvement of all functional areas is crucial, necessitating a heightened holistic cybersecurity awareness among tactical and operational teams responsible for implementing security measures. Public entities face various challenges in maintaining this awareness, including difficulties in building a skilled cybersecurity workforce, coordinating mixed internal and external teams, and adapting to the outsourcing trend, which includes cybersecurity operations centers (CyberSOCs). Our research began with an extensive literature analysis to expand our insights derived from previous works, followed by a Spanish case study in collaboration with a digitization-focused public organization. The study revealed common features shared by public organizations globally. Collaborating with this public entity, we developed strategies tailored to its characteristics and transferrable to other public organizations. As a result, we propose the “Wide-Scope CyberSOC” as an innovative outsourced solution to enhance holistic awareness among the cross-functional cybersecurity team and facilitate comprehensive cybersecurity adoption within public organizations. We have also documented essential requirements for public entities when contracting Wide-Scope CyberSOC services to ensure alignment with their specific needs, accompanied by a management framework for seamless operation.