STME, the Middle East’s leading IT solutions provider and systems integrator, has recently announced the completion of a Security Operations Centre (SOC) for Marafiq. The Centre comprises of highly skilled team members following well-defined policies and procedures in operating security enforcement tools to manage threats and reduce security risks for Marafiq.

The SOC is designed to monitor, analyse, correlate then escalate intrusion events; develop appropriate responses: protect, detect and respond; conduct incident management and forensic investigation; maintain security community relationships and assist in crisis operations. STME Engineers are managing the security operations for the centre 24/7.

Tariq A Al-Walah, Supervisor, Information Security Department, said. “As Marafiq, we are eager to announce this new development which will greatly improve our internal capabilities and enhance our operations. We place great value in the over-all well-being of our customers. As such, we partner with security experts that are able to competently enrich the skillset of our resources, while ensuring world-class operations. We aim to significantly enhance the security maturity based on well-defined measurable metrics and service level agreements. We are very satisfied with the outcome of this project and we believe it will help reinforce our position as a leading utilities provider”

Ayman AlBayaa, CEO, STME, said:

“In order to address the unique needs of this project, we proposed a hybrid model that required our resources to collaborate closely with Marafiq in the move to build effective monitoring procedures and processes, develop the required structure and functions, implement proactive monitoring and intelligence technologies, and build a phased approach to ensure that Marafiq is secure while maturing the Marafiq internal security solutions. The proposed solution will allow scaling as the organization grows and enhance the visibility with a global view of threats potentially impacting Marafiq while taking into consideration best practices and standards such as ISO 27001 and ITIL.”

STME shared that they aim to empower Marafiq to build upon its strength and capabilities through the processes, experiences and knowledge transfer Marafiq’s resources during operations. The SOC that STME implemented was based on a solid world class methodology started with an assessment conducted by Symantec as an SOC consultant using capability maturity model to measure the gap and define work needs to be done to reach the final goal of operating a successful SOC. STME also facilitated the installation of IBM QRadar Security Intelligence, SIEM consolidates log events and network flow data from thousands of devices, endpoints and applications distributed throughout a network; Monitoring security operations across the business, responding to security events and optimizing monitoring rule sets and tools (tuning); managing security incidents, working as the centre of excellence for response and triage of issues, escalating to relevant stakeholders as defined within the security incident management process; Reviewing and protecting the enterprise from emerging threats, based on vendor alerts, intelligence received from partners and public alerts and reporting a risk exposure of the relevant business areas.