Unusual Admin Logins, Data Exfiltration: The 2 AM SOC Gap

Cyber News - Erez Dasa highlights a critical gap in organizational security: the lack of real-time monitoring and response during off-hours. Dasa poses scenarios where an anomalous administrator login from an unusual country, followed by a new mailbox rule creation, or an employee exfiltrating an abnormal volume of files from SharePoint in the middle of the night, often goes undetected. The core issue, according to Dasa, is that in most organizations, “no one is seeing this in real-time.”

This blind spot extends to brute-force attempts on VPNs or connections from unknown devices. Without a 24/7 Security Operations Center (SOC), the ability to determine if these are legitimate events or actual cyber incidents is severely hampered. Cyber News - Erez Dasa emphasizes that while not every alert signifies a cyber event, every significant cyber event begins with a small indicator that someone should have observed.

The implication for defenders is clear: relying solely on business-hours monitoring leaves organizations vulnerable to sophisticated, often stealthy, attacks designed to exploit these detection windows. Attackers understand these operational gaps and frequently schedule their activities to coincide with low staffing periods, maximizing their dwell time and impact before detection.