Elevating SOC Efficiency: A 2025 Guide for Banking Leaders in UAE

Running a security operations center (SOC) can be complex and hectic under the best of circumstances. Analysts are overwhelmed by alerts and juggling dozens of tools. They’re struggling with a shortage of skilled analysts while contending with leadership increasing pressure to reduce mean time to detect (MTTD), mean time to respond (MTTR), potential dwell time, and budget.

In the United Arab Emirates, financial services (FinServ) faces a complex cybersecurity landscape shaped by rigorous national cybersecurity strategies, including the UAE Central Bank, NESA Cybersecurity Framework, and SFSA/ADGM Cyber Risk Regulations.

• UAE Central Bank: Threat intelligence sharing, real-time detection, and regulatory reporting
• NESA Cybersecurity Framework: AI-driven threat analytics, threat hunting, and security automation
• DFSA/ADGM Cyber Risk Regulations: Automated compliance reporting, proactive threat detection

These regulations significantly impact staffing requirements, increase the need for robust documentation and reporting, mandate specific technology tools, and impose process constraints to ensure compliance and resilience against emerging cyber threats.

These factors are all obstacles to efficient operations. Once you complete your workflow documentation, processes, escalation paths, standardize responses, and get past all the bureaucracy, there is still a question of visibility, as well as manual processes.