What is a Network Operations Center (NOC)?

A Network Operations Center (NOC) is the team within an organization tasked with ensuring that the corporate IT network infrastructure meets business needs. This includes verifying that systems meet service level agreements (SLAs) and can sustain business operations.

How NOCs Maximize Availability

The goal of the NOC is to maximize the availability of an organization’s LAN/WAN/WLAN and Internet connectivity. They can accomplish this in a few ways, including:

• Continuous Monitoring: 24/7 network monitoring and incident response reduces the probability and impact of a potential outage or other performance issues.
• Resilient Infrastructure: Creating resilient, redundant systems reduces the risk of a single point of failure (SPOF) negatively affecting availability or performance.
• Strategic Planning: Forward-thinking strategic planning and investment helps to ensure that an organization’s IT infrastructure will be able to meet current and future business needs.

NOC Roles and Responsibilities

A NOC is typically divided into a tiered system in which Level 1 technicians address the simplest and most common issues. Anything that they can’t address personally is passed up the chain to more skilled technicians at higher levels. Typically, this process is managed via a ticketing system that tracks a request or issue throughout its lifecycle.

The overall responsibility of the NOC is to ensure that the organization’s IT network infrastructure is meeting SLAs and, ideally, exceeding them. To accomplish this, the NOC performs various tasks, including:

• Network Monitoring: A NOC will perform round-the-clock monitoring of the organization’s network infrastructure to identify and correct outages and other potential issues.
• Incident Response: If the NOC detects an issue with the performance of network infrastructure, it will perform incident response to correct the problem and restore normal operations.
• System Management: The NOC is responsible for deploying, managing, and retiring an organization’s servers and network devices.
• Network Security Management: The NOC may be responsible for managing the organization’s firewalls, intrusion prevention systems (IPS), and other network security systems.
• Collaboration System Management: Corporate communication and collaboration systems such as email, telephony, and video conferencing fall under the NOC’s purview.
• Patch Management: Patch management includes identifying vulnerable systems and applying available patches and updates to correct these issues.
• Disaster Preparation: A NOC will have Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) processes in place — such as managing system and data backups — to ensure that the network can recover from a disruptive event.
• SLA Maintenance: The NOC will have SLAs in place regarding network availability and performance and is responsible for following through on these responsibilities.
• Third-Party Management: The NOC may have vendor, freelancer, and contractor relationships that it needs to manage,

NOC Best Practices

Some NOC best practices include:

• Solution Integration: Using a variety of point solutions decreases efficiency and increases NOC analysts’ workload. An integrated real-time network monitoring and management architecture provides more cohesive visibility and streamlines processes.
• Automation: Complex network infrastructures are difficult to monitor and manage via manual processes. Leveraging automation and AI helps NOC analysts to more rapidly perform common tasks and identify and address potential issues.
• Clear Processes and Protocols: A NOC should have clear processes and protocols in place to manage various tasks. This can help to expedite common tasks and reduce the probability of errors during incident management and response.
• Training and Knowledge Development: Corporate IT environments are evolving at a rapid pace, and NOC personnel need to keep up with these changes. NOC analysts should be offered regular training to ensure that they have the skills required to do their jobs.
• Choose the Right Tools: NOC analysts have numerous, complex responsibilities. Having the right tools will enable them to fulfill their roles more efficiently and effectively.
• Partner When Needed: An organization may lack the resources in-house to operate a full-service NOC. Partnering with third-party providers can help to fill skills gaps and ensure that the NOC can meet SLAs.

The Differences Between the NOC and the SOC

The NOC and the Security Operations Center (SOC) are both responsible for ensuring that the organization’s IT environment can meet the needs of the business. However, while certain tools, skills, and responsibilities may overlap — and an organization may have a combined NOC/SOC — their areas of focus are different.

The purpose of the NOC is to ensure that the network is available and that performance meets defined SLAs. In general, it deals with managing IT systems and preventing issues due to system failures, errors, etc.

The SOC, on the other hand, is focused on protecting against cyber threats to the business. It combats malware and human actors rather than attempting to manage naturally occurring disruptions to an organization’s IT operations.

It is common that the NOC be responsible for monitoring and maintaining network security solutions such as firewalls, but will collaborate with the SOC for advanced threat protection policies and NetSec incidents.

Ensuring Network Performance with Check Point Services

Check Point offers the tools and support that corporate NOCs need to succeed. Learn more about Check Point’s Check Point Global Service offerings, including Horizon Managed Prevention and Response (MDR/MPR).