IR-4(14): Security Operations Center

IR-4(14) requires you to establish and maintain a Security Operations Center (SOC) that continuously monitors, triages, investigates, and coordinates incident response for your systems. To operationalize it, define the SOC’s scope and authority, staff it (or contract it), integrate monitoring and case management, and retain evidence that the SOC runs as designed and drives incident response outcomes. (NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5)

Key takeaways:

• A SOC is an operational capability, not a document; auditors will look for proof of continuous monitoring, triage, and response coordination.
• “Maintain” means governance, staffing model, tooling integration, and recurring operational rhythms with retained evidence.
• If you outsource, you still own outcomes; contract terms and oversight artifacts become core compliance evidence.

The ir-4(14): security operations center requirement is short, but it drives a large operational footprint: people, process, technology, and governance. NIST’s text is explicit that you must both establish and maintain a SOC, which implies an enduring function that can detect and respond to incidents as part of your incident response capability. (NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 OSCAL JSON)

For a Compliance Officer, CCO, or GRC lead, the fastest path to implementation is to treat the SOC as a scoped service with measurable obligations: defined coverage (systems, identity, network, endpoints, cloud), defined operating model (in-house, outsourced, hybrid), defined interfaces to incident response (who declares an incident, who owns containment, who handles comms), and defined evidence (tickets, alerts, reports, shift logs, metrics). Your main risk is “paper compliance” where policies exist but you cannot demonstrate active monitoring, consistent triage, and repeatable escalation.

This page gives requirement-level implementation guidance you can hand to security operations leadership, procurement, and internal audit, then use to build an assessment-ready evidence package aligned to NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5. (NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5)

Regulatory text

Requirement (IR-4(14)): “Establish and maintain a security operations center.” (NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 OSCAL JSON)

Operator meaning: You need a standing SOC capability that performs ongoing security monitoring and analysis, and that coordinates incident handling activities as incidents emerge. “Establish” is the build: scope, staffing model, processes, tooling, and integrations. “Maintain” is the run: sustained coverage, continuous improvement, and retained proof that the SOC is operating.

Plain-English interpretation (what the control expects)

A SOC is the operational engine that turns security telemetry into action. For IR-4(14), an assessor will typically expect you to show:

• Continuous monitoring and alerting across your defined environment.
• Triage and investigation workflows that convert alerts into cases and documented outcomes.
• Escalation paths into incident response so suspected incidents become managed incidents under your IR program.
• Operational continuity (coverage model, on-call, handoffs) so detection and response do not depend on one person being available.
• Governance and improvement (reviews, tuning, metrics) so the SOC remains effective as your environment changes.

The text does not prescribe a “24/7 SOC” or a specific tool stack. It does require a credible, maintained function you can demonstrate with artifacts. (NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5)

Who it applies to (entity and operational context)

IR-4(14) commonly applies where you are implementing NIST SP 800-53 controls, including:

• Federal information systems and programs assessed against NIST SP 800-53. (NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5)
• Contractor systems handling federal data, where NIST SP 800-53 is flowed down contractually or used as the governing control baseline. (NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5)

Operationally, you should assume the requirement applies to:

• Production environments that handle sensitive or regulated data.
• Core identity systems (IdP, privileged access).
• Network and endpoint fleets.
• Cloud control planes and workloads.
• Key third-party connections that meaningfully affect your security posture (managed service providers, hosting, EDR/SIEM/SOAR providers).

What you actually need to do (step-by-step)

1) Assign ownership and decision rights

• Name a SOC owner (role title is fine) accountable for SOC operations and evidence.
• Define incident declaration authority: who can declare an incident from SOC findings and start the IR workflow.
• Establish RACI across SOC, IR lead, IT Ops, Cloud Ops, and Legal/Privacy for containment actions and communications.

Practical tip: If the SOC cannot get systems owners to act, it will fail in practice. Document escalation authority early.

2) Define SOC scope and service model

Write a one-page SOC service definition that answers:

• What environments are in scope (on-prem, cloud accounts/subscriptions, SaaS)?
• What telemetry is required (auth logs, endpoint telemetry, network, DNS, email, cloud audit logs)?
• What is the coverage model (business hours with on-call, follow-the-sun MSSP, hybrid)?
• What events the SOC must handle (malware, account takeover, data exfil indicators, policy violations, third-party alerts).

3) Build the SOC operating procedures (runbooks)

Create runbooks that are “ticket-ready”:

• Alert intake and enrichment steps
• Triage criteria and severity definitions
• Investigation workflow (what to check, what tools to use)
• Escalation thresholds into incident response
• Containment request process (and approval gates if needed)
• Evidence handling and chain-of-custody expectations for logs and forensic artifacts

Keep them short. Auditors prefer procedures that match actual tickets.

4) Implement the tooling and integrations needed to operate

You do not need a specific vendor product to meet IR-4(14). You do need an integrated workflow that produces auditable outputs:

• Central log collection/analysis (often SIEM or equivalent)
• Case management (ticketing or SOAR case records)
• Alert sources connected (EDR, identity, cloud logs, email security, vulnerability signals as relevant)
• Secure storage for investigation artifacts

If you cannot show alert-to-case-to-outcome traceability, you will struggle to prove “maintain.”

5) Staff the SOC (or contract it) and document coverage

• Define roles: analyst, lead, incident commander interface, engineer for detections/tuning.
• Document shift coverage, on-call expectations, and handoff procedure.
• If using a third party SOC/MSSP, document your internal roles for oversight and incident ownership.

Outsourcing reality: An MSSP can run monitoring, but you still need internal decision-makers for containment, business risk decisions, and regulatory notifications.

6) Operational rhythms: prove “maintain”

Set recurring activities and retain outputs:

• Detection tuning reviews (false positives, missed detections)
• Access reviews for SOC tools and log sources
• Tabletop or practical exercises that include SOC-to-IR escalation
• Lessons learned from incidents and near-misses

7) Map IR-4(14) to evidence artifacts (assessment readiness)

Operationalize the recommended best practice: map IR-4(14) to a control owner, implementation procedure, and recurring evidence artifacts. This is the fastest way to avoid the most common gap: “we do SOC work, but we can’t prove it.” (NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 OSCAL JSON)

How Daydream fits naturally: Daydream becomes useful when you need a clean control-to-evidence map that stays current, assigns ownership, and produces an auditor-ready evidence checklist without chasing screenshots across teams.

Required evidence and artifacts to retain

Retain artifacts that show the SOC exists, operates, and connects to incident response:

Governance

• SOC charter or service description (scope, authority, hours, escalation)
• RACI matrix between SOC and IR stakeholders
• SOC KPI definitions and reporting cadence

Operations

• Sample alert queue exports or screenshots (date-stamped)
• Case/ticket records showing triage, investigation notes, and closure reason
• Escalation examples: SOC finding → incident record → containment actions
• Shift handoff notes or on-call logs (as applicable)

Technical configuration

• Log source inventory (what systems send logs, ownership, retention expectations)
• Tool access lists and role-based permissions for SOC platforms
• Detection catalog (high-level list of active detections and owners)

Third party oversight (if outsourced)

• Contract/SOW with defined services, SLAs, and incident escalation obligations
• Monthly service reports from provider
• Joint incident postmortems or review minutes

Common exam/audit questions and hangups

Expect these questions, and prepare crisp answers with evidence pointers:

1. “Show me your SOC.”
   They mean: demonstrate real work products (cases, alerts, reports), not an org chart.

2. “What’s in scope, and how do you know you’re collecting logs?”
   Have a log source inventory and a process to onboard new systems.

3. “How does the SOC trigger incident response?”
   Be able to trace at least one example from detection to incident workflow.

4. “Is the SOC staffed adequately?”
   Avoid debating headcount; show coverage model, on-call process, and backlog management artifacts.

5. “If this is outsourced, what do you do internally?”
   Show oversight, escalation, and decision records. Outsourcing does not remove accountability.

Frequent implementation mistakes (and how to avoid them)

Mistake	Why it fails	Fix
SOC exists “in name only” (policy/slideware)	No operational evidence	Retain a standing evidence set: cases, reports, tuning notes
No clear escalation into IR	Alerts die in tickets	Define incident declaration criteria and an IR bridge process
Telemetry gaps (cloud/identity not logged)	SOC cannot detect meaningful incidents	Maintain a log source inventory and onboarding workflow
Outsourced SOC with weak contract terms	Provider can’t act or won’t notify fast	Add explicit escalation obligations and reporting requirements
No operational maintenance	Detections rot as systems change	Schedule tuning, reviews, and lessons learned with retained outputs

Enforcement context and risk implications

No public enforcement cases were provided in the supplied source catalog for this requirement. Practically, the risk is straightforward: if you cannot detect and respond to incidents promptly, impacts compound. From a compliance standpoint, the most common assessed gap is missing evidence that the SOC is actually operating and integrated with incident response. (NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5)

Practical 30/60/90-day execution plan

First 30 days (stand up the compliance spine)

• Assign SOC control owner and document decision rights (RACI, escalation authority).
• Publish the SOC service definition (scope, coverage model, interfaces to IR).
• Build the IR-4(14) control-to-evidence map: what you will show an auditor each cycle. (NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 OSCAL JSON)
• Identify top telemetry gaps and create an onboarding backlog.

Days 31–60 (make it real and repeatable)

• Implement or stabilize case management with required fields (severity, disposition, root cause category, escalation flag).
• Write and pilot core runbooks (account compromise, malware, suspicious admin activity, cloud control plane alerts).
• Start recurring SOC reporting to stakeholders (operations summary plus risks and blockers).
• If outsourced, finalize SOW language and establish monthly governance cadence.

Days 61–90 (prove “maintain” with outcomes)

• Run an end-to-end exercise: alert → investigation → incident → containment → lessons learned, and retain the full artifact trail.
• Tune detections based on false positives and environmental changes; record decisions.
• Establish a steady-state evidence collection process (monthly package) for audit readiness.
• Implement quality checks: random case reviews for documentation completeness and escalation correctness.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does IR-4(14) require a 24/7 SOC?

The text does not specify hours; it requires you to establish and maintain a SOC. Define a coverage model that matches your risk and document how you handle after-hours escalation. (NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 OSCAL JSON)

Can we meet IR-4(14) with an outsourced SOC/MSSP?

Yes, if the outsourced service plus your internal oversight forms a maintained SOC capability. Your evidence must include the contract scope, escalation paths, and proof that alerts become cases and incidents when needed. (NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5)

What’s the minimum evidence auditors accept for “maintain”?

Provide a SOC charter/service definition plus operational records: recent cases, alert summaries, escalation examples, and recurring review outputs. The goal is to show sustained operation, not a one-time setup. (NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5)

How do we define SOC scope without boiling the ocean?

Start with systems that would drive the largest impact if compromised: identity, endpoints, core networks, and critical cloud accounts. Document exclusions explicitly and track them as risk acceptances or backlog items.

We have SIEM alerts but no formal incident response link. Is that compliant?

It is a common gap. Make the SOC-to-IR handoff explicit with criteria for incident declaration and a workflow that ties investigations to incident records and containment actions. (NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5)

How should a GRC team operationalize IR-4(14) without running the SOC?

Own the control mapping, evidence schedule, and assessment readiness checks. Partner with SOC leadership on runbooks and reporting, then use a system like Daydream to keep ownership, procedures, and recurring evidence artifacts aligned over time. (NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 OSCAL JSON)