How Are NOCs Designed and Organized?
There is no single answer or standard blueprint about how a NOC should be configured or how the people working there are organized. A smaller organization’s NOC might be a single office or small conference type room with a couple of workstations for technicians to monitor the network and troubleshoot problems.
Larger groups, especially those that are using their NOC to monitor an entire data center, might instead build out huge control centers with large central monitors or even projection screens showing overall network health. They have workstations scattered all around for technicians who are responsible for individual subsets of network operations. Those individual workstations normally also have multiple monitors themselves, so the entire facility does start to resemble something like you would see at NASA during a space launch.
And like the blueprint for the room, there is no single way to organize NOC workers. However, there is a little bit more consistency in terms of the organization of human IT staff. Jobs are almost always structured into a tight hierarchical group which are designated and ranked according to their “level.”
What Does a NOC Do?
The primary responsibility of a NOC is to monitor the health of a network and troubleshoot any problems. However, there are a lot of individual tasks that almost all NOCs and their staffers regularly accomplish. Here are a few of the most common responsibilities entrusted to a NOC and its staff:
Patch Management: Computers are never static for long. It doesn’t matter if you are talking about desktops, laptops, or servers, there are always patches that need to be applied. Some patches are critical, like those that eliminate security vulnerabilities, while others simply improve performance or their interface in some way. And it’s not just regular computers that need patching. Network hardware also needs to be regularly updated. These days, even sensors and tiny IoT devices require regular patching.
Policy Enforcement: A network is more than just the hardware and software that drives it. At its heart, it’s a collection of rules that both human users and the devices that operate on it must follow. Setting those rules, optimizing them for network performance, and ensuring that everyone and everything is properly following along is a never-ending job for NOCs.
Firewall Management: Keeping firewalls maintained is a big part of what most NOCs do. This includes both physical appliances and software-based firewalls. Managing firewalls can entail a lot of different things, from opening and closing ports to configuring them to allow or restrict new applications.
Another crucial function of NOCs is to provide disaster recovery services, where they ensure that critical data is backed up regularly to off-site storage or a separate location to safeguard against hardware or network failure. Such continuity of operations planning is essential for organizations to ensure that they can continue functioning in case of a disaster or outage.
Antivirus protection is another significant aspect of NOCs. While advanced threats are increasingly bypassing antivirus software, a patched and up-to-date antivirus program can still prevent a majority of internet threats from attacking networks and users. Ensuring that antivirus protection is kept up-to-date on all systems is a critical task that NOCs perform.
Network reporting is also a necessary task that NOCs perform. IT professionals in NOCs not only monitor their network but also observe trends, identify trouble spots, and pinpoint areas where new hardware may be required to compensate for poor performance or enable future network growth. NOC staff must file reports of these observations with the CIO or other company officials and may also be required to produce them on demand or in response to a network-related question.
It is essential to note that NOCs and SOCs can work together, and they often do. For example, sometimes the NOC detects unusual network activity and asks the SOC to determine if a threat might be the cause. Previously, NOCs and SOCs were grouped together into a single facility with overlapping responsibilities, but due to the complexity of most networks today and the extremely dangerous threat landscape, having separate facilities and staff has become a more effective approach.
Internal NOCs were created to tackle the complexity of modern network operations. Larger organizations found that centralizing their IT resources in one location and monitoring their network from there helped to combat network sprawl, allowing them to continue operations. However, as networks grew larger, internal NOCs began to feel the strain.
Especially for non-IT companies, maintaining an internal NOC is an increasingly expensive and labor-intensive endeavor that does not directly contribute to their bottom line. The mission of a company might be to sell bicycles, bananas, or any number of other things. The mission is not to maintain a sprawling network at a multi-million dollar facility.
As a result, the concept of a NOC-as-a-service was born and has become increasingly popular. The idea is to outsource everything that a NOC does to a company that specializes in doing just that. The service provider monitors and troubleshoots all network operations through the cloud for their client in return for a monthly or yearly fee.
In conclusion, a network operations center is a critical component of any organization’s IT infrastructure, providing a centralized location where IT professionals can troubleshoot, monitor, and optimize enterprise networks. While there is no one blueprint for configuring a NOC or organizing the people who work there, the general idea is to have a room or centralized facility equipped with all of the necessary technology required to support network operations. From patch management, policy enforcement, firewall management, security software management, and antivirus protection to backing up data and network reporting, NOCs are responsible for nearly everything involving the network that is being protected. The decision to maintain an internal NOC or to use a NOC-as-a-service depends on an organization’s needs, but both options provide a valuable service that helps ensure the optimal functioning of an organization’s IT infrastructure.
