Microsoft graduating to Virtual SOC

Mircrosoft’s senior director (global operations) for global security Michael Foynes talking to The Hindu in Gachibowli campus on Wednesday. (Right) The company’s global security operations centre.— Photos: Mohammed Yousuf

Tech giant Microsoft has initiated a four-pronged process of graduating from the GSOC (global security operations centre) model to a Virtual SOC that will be proactive in terms of ensuring security of its employees and protection of assets.

With mobile-first, cloud-first as the cornerstone, the change, however, is unlikely to impact the existence of the GSOC in Hyderabad as much as it would for the other such facility in Redmond, Washington.

“The two GSOCs will certainly change… a functional change, a physical re-design,” according to Michael Foynes, senior director (global operations) for Global Security.

With Microsoft planning to have a fusion centre for the VSOC, the Redmond GSOC will cease to exist in its current space.

The facility in Hyderabad will continue to operate as global communication centre.

“We are going to run all our communication into Hyderabad. That’s all of non-life safety traffic, routine communication,” he said, adding the fusion centre is likely to be established elsewhere.

New profiles

Interacting with presspersons here on Wednesday, Mr. Foynes said that as part of the switch, there would be need to look at new profiles of staff and skills sets.

As opposed to GSOC that was designed to be an alarm monitoring centre, reactive to events having a bearing on Microsoft operations and safety of its employees, the VSOC will be proactive with a heavy emphasis on intelligence.

The process of adopting VSOC, Mr. Foynes said, was initiated this January by decoupling all routine tasks from true life safety and critical activities over five to six months. As part of the next phase, the GSOC in the UK was closed in June.

Ahead of the proposed roll out – the fourth phase – in July 2017, a host of other issues are being addressed, from testing the concept, conducting workshops to looking at resourcing requirements.

Reduce costs

VSOC would help reduce costs, drive efficiency, become forward leaning and scale up at the speed of business, he said, without sharing specifics of the investments and likely savings.