Webinar: Next Gen Security Operations with Stellar Cyber and Safetech Innovations

Webinar: Next Gen Security Operations with Stellar Cyber and Safetech Innovations

Safetech Innovations recently organized a webinar dedicated to the concept of “Next Gen Security Operations”, exploring how the partnership with Stellar Cyber transforms the traditional architecture of a SOC (Security Operations Center) into a proactive entity, catalyzed by Artificial Intelligence.

The webinar had as a special guest Henk van der Heijden, Vice President, Strategic Accounts EMEA, Stellar Cyber, who, in the presentation “AI Powered Security Operations”, nuanced the changes that are taking place today at the SOC level. The presentation included a retrospective of the last 25 years, highlighting the shift from simple network monitoring (SOC 1.0) to today’s complex ecosystems. The basic principle has remained the same: the time it takes for a cybersecurity breach must be greater than the sum of the detection and response time. However, in an era where attackers are using AI to exploit vulnerabilities in real time, the SOC needs to evolve to version 4.0, where automation becomes the backbone.

Context and challenges of SecOps

Today’s SOCs are experiencing partial visibility, caused by the fragmentation of security tools. The main problem is not the lack of data, but the inability to correlate the massive volumes of alerts coming from disparate sources (EDR, NDR, Cloud, SIEM). Stellar Cyber solves this pain point by consolidating the entire attack surface into a single Open XDR platform.

“Today, the classic time-based security formula has become a race against time. We are no longer talking about days or weeks to respond to an attack, but seconds. If your detection and response time exceeds the time an attacker can compromise the system using AI tools, then protection is ineffective. That’s why we need a platform that doesn’t just give us data, but gives us time and quick detection,” says Henk van der Heijden.

Human-Augmented Autonomous SOC

The concept proposed by Stellar Cyber is a new generation SOC, automated, which does not involve eliminating people, but augmenting them with the help of modern technologies. By using AI, the platform takes over repetitive triage and correlation tasks, allowing the analyst to become a “threat hunter” and optimize defense instead of manually processing thousands of false positive alerts.

“We want to shift the analyst’s focus from investigations centered on individual alerts to investigations centered on related cases. An analyst shouldn’t waste hours trying to link a suspicious login to a port scan. Our Graph ML AI does this automatically, turning hundreds of noisy alerts into one clear incident, providing 360-degree visibility without blind spots,” says the Stellar Cyber representative.

Stellar Cyber focuses on providing complete visibility into the entire attack surface, being a platform agnostic that integrates with more than 600 security solutions already in place in customers’ infrastructure. This approach completely eliminates blind spots in the SOC, turning any telemetry stream into an actionable source of information, automatically processed by artificial intelligence.

The Human-Augmented Autonomous SOC concept proposed by Stellar Cyber redefines the way security operations work, combining the speed and analytics capability of artificial intelligence with human expertise. Instead of replacing analysts, the platform uses a human-in-the-loop model, in which AI automates the processes of detecting, triaging and correlating alerts, while humans remain responsible for critical decisions and incident validation.

Safetech Innovations’ perspective on SOCaaS

The second part of the webinar was held by Oana Anghel – STI CERT Manager and Cătălin Gherghiceanu – Presales Manager, and focused on the expertise of Safetech Innovations. Although the terminology may vary – Security Operations Center, Computer Security Incident Response Team – the purpose of this entity remains identical: cyber resilience. Safetech representatives explained that, in the current local context, STI CERT functions as a core of expertise that combines state-of-the-art technology with rigorous intervention processes.

The local market is facing an acute crisis of cybersecurity specialists, which causes many organizations to be exposed to attacks. Many organizations in Romania have difficulty maintaining an internal team capable of providing 24/7 monitoring, which makes the SOC-as-a-Service model, such as outsourcing to a partner like Safetech, extremely relevant. Local companies often use a fragmented mix of security technologies from various manufacturers, the context that requires a solution capable of “unifying” these tools to eliminate the “blind spots” specific to hybrid infrastructures (on-premises and cloud) found in Romania.

Safetech Innovations addresses this issue through the SOC-as-a-Service model, where processes are aligned to international standards, and the Stellar Cyber platform acts as a force multiplier. The major differentiator of Safetech lies in the multidisciplinary approach: from digital forensics investigations to legal compliance (NIS2).

“The reality is that we work with the client’s technologies and platforms, which are not always state-of-the-art, but we have the ability to consolidate these tools and integrate them into a unified approach. The ability to integrate telemetry from any source through Open XDR gives us the advantage of seeing the full context of an incident before it becomes a crisis for our customers. However, we cannot rely exclusively on technologies, because only the team can react to certain new or atypical situations, which implies the continuous training of both people and algorithms,” says Cătălin Gherghiceanu.