Part of the Cybersecurity Learning Path Guide — This article is one deep-dive in our complete learning paths series.

SOC Analyst Learning Path: From Zero to Hired

By HADESS Team | February 28, 2026 | Updated: February 28, 2026 | 12 min read

Table of Contents

• What a SOC Analyst Actually Does
• Prerequisites: What You Need Before You Start
• Phase 1: Foundations (Months 1-2)
• Phase 2: Core Security Skills (Months 3-4)
• Phase 3: SOC-Specific Training (Months 5-6)
• Phase 4: Certification and Job Prep (Months 7-8)
• Building Your Home Lab
• Certifications That Actually Matter
• The Resume and Interview Process
• Common Mistakes on the SOC Analyst Path
• Related Guides in This Series
• Take the Next Step
• Frequently Asked Questions

What a SOC Analyst Actually Does

A SOC analyst learning path should start with a clear picture of the destination. Too many people begin studying for a SOC role based on vague ideas from YouTube videos and Reddit threads, and then feel blindsided when the reality of the job hits them.

SOC analysts are the first responders of cybersecurity. You sit in a Security Operations Center — sometimes physical, sometimes virtual — and monitor an organization’s environment for threats. When an alert fires, you triage it. You decide whether it is a false positive, a misconfiguration, or an actual attack. If it is real, you investigate, document, and escalate.

The daily work breaks down roughly like this:

• Alert triage — 40-50% of your time. SIEM tools like Splunk, Elastic Security, or Microsoft Sentinel generate alerts. You review them, check the context, and make a call.
• Investigation — 20-30% of your time. When something looks real, you dig deeper. Pull logs, correlate events, check threat intelligence feeds, examine endpoint data.
• Documentation — 15-20% of your time. Every investigation gets documented in a ticketing system. Your write-ups need to be clear enough that someone else can pick up where you left off.
• Tuning and improvement — 5-10% of your time. You help reduce false positives by suggesting rule changes, updating runbooks, and improving detection logic.

The job is shift-based in most organizations. Twelve-hour shifts, rotating schedules, overnight work — this is normal, especially at Tier 1. It is not glamorous. But it is the fastest way into the security industry for people without prior experience, and it builds a skill foundation that transfers to nearly every other security role.

Prerequisites: What You Need Before You Start

You do not need a computer science degree. You do not need prior IT experience, although it helps significantly. Here is what you actually need:

Technical baseline. You should understand how computers work at a basic level — operating systems, file systems, processes, services. If someone says “check the Windows Event Logs for Event ID 4625,” you should at least know what Windows Event Logs are, even if you have never filtered them yourself.

Networking fundamentals. TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP/HTTPS, DHCP, ports and protocols. This is non-negotiable. You cannot analyze network traffic if you do not understand how networks function. The CompTIA Network+ study material covers this well even if you do not sit the exam.

Basic command line comfort. You should be able to navigate a terminal in both Windows (PowerShell or CMD) and Linux (Bash). You do not need to be a scripting expert, but you need to not freeze when someone asks you to run a command.

Reading comprehension and writing ability. This sounds obvious, but SOC work involves reading log data, threat intelligence reports, and vendor documentation constantly. Your investigation notes and escalation reports need to be clear and concise. This skill matters more than most people realize.

If you are genuinely starting from zero — no IT background at all — plan to spend an extra two months on fundamentals before starting the SOC-specific path below. The HADESS skills library can help you identify exactly where your gaps are.

Phase 1: Foundations (Months 1-2)

The first two months are about building the floor everything else stands on.

Week 1-2: Operating Systems

Install a Linux distribution (Ubuntu or CentOS) in a virtual machine. Learn basic file system navigation, permissions, process management, and package installation. On the Windows side, learn how services work, Task Manager internals, registry basics, and Event Viewer.

You are not trying to become a system administrator. You are trying to build enough familiarity that when you see a process name in a log, you know whether it is normal or suspicious.

Week 3-4: Networking

Study the OSI model, but focus on the layers that matter for SOC work: Layer 3 (IP), Layer 4 (TCP/UDP), and Layer 7 (HTTP, DNS, SMTP). Install Wireshark and capture traffic on your own network. Learn to read packet captures. Understand what a three-way handshake looks like, what DNS queries contain, and how HTTP requests are structured.

Week 5-6: Security Fundamentals

Learn the CIA triad, authentication vs authorization, basic cryptography concepts (hashing, encryption, certificates), and common attack categories (phishing, malware, brute force, privilege escalation). Professor Messer’s free Security+ course on YouTube is a solid resource here.

Week 7-8: Practice and Review

Set up a home lab with at least two virtual machines. Practice basic networking between them. Install a simple web server, generate traffic, and capture it. Review everything from the past six weeks and identify weak spots.

Phase 2: Core Security Skills (Months 3-4)

Now you start building the skills that are specific to security work.

SIEM fundamentals. This is the most important tool category for a SOC analyst. You need hands-on experience with at least one SIEM platform. Splunk offers a free tier. Elastic Security is open source. Microsoft Sentinel has a free trial through Azure. Pick one, ingest some log data, and learn to search, filter, create dashboards, and write basic queries.

Spend at least 20 hours practicing queries. The difference between a candidate who has “used Splunk” and one who can write a complex SPL query on the whiteboard is enormous.

Log analysis. Learn to read common log formats: Windows Event Logs (focus on Security and System logs), Linux syslogs, Apache/Nginx access logs, and firewall logs. Know the critical Event IDs: 4624 (successful logon), 4625 (failed logon), 4688 (process creation), 4720 (account creation), and 1102 (audit log cleared).

Threat intelligence basics. Understand what IOCs (Indicators of Compromise) are — IP addresses, domains, file hashes, URLs. Learn to use VirusTotal, AbuseIPDB, and Shodan. Know what MITRE ATT&CK is and how SOC teams use it to classify adversary behavior.

Email analysis. Phishing is still the number one attack vector. Learn to read email headers, analyze URLs, check domain registration dates, and submit suspicious attachments to sandbox environments. This is a skill you will use every single shift.

Use the HADESS career skills explorer to track your progress across these domains and see how they map to actual job requirements.

Phase 3: SOC-Specific Training (Months 5-6)

This phase is about simulating the actual job.

Incident response process. Learn the NIST incident response lifecycle: Preparation, Detection and Analysis, Containment Eradication and Recovery, Post-Incident Activity. You do not need to memorize a framework, but you need to understand the logic of how incidents are handled from detection through resolution.

Alert triage practice. Platforms like LetsDefend provide simulated SOC environments where you can triage alerts, investigate incidents, and write reports. Blue Team Labs Online and CyberDefenders also offer SOC-focused challenges. Spend at least 30 hours practicing triage workflows.

Endpoint detection. Learn what EDR tools do and how they surface data. Understand process trees, parent-child relationships, and how to spot suspicious behavior like PowerShell downloading files, cmd.exe spawned from Word, or services running from temp directories. Sysmon is free and excellent for learning this on your home lab.

Playbook and runbook familiarity. SOCs run on documented procedures. Find example runbooks online and practice following them. Understand what a good runbook contains: trigger conditions, investigation steps, escalation criteria, and containment actions.

Soft skills development. Write up every practice investigation as if you were submitting it to a manager. Practice explaining technical findings in plain language. SOC analysts who can communicate clearly advance faster than those who cannot, regardless of technical skill.

Phase 4: Certification and Job Prep (Months 7-8)

Certification selection. For a first SOC role, the most effective certifications are:

• CompTIA Security+ — the industry’s baseline security certification. Most SOC job postings list it as required or preferred. Studying for it reinforces your foundations.
• CompTIA CySA+ — specifically designed for SOC and analyst roles. Covers threat detection, analysis, and incident response. Stronger signal than Security+ for SOC positions.
• Splunk Core Certified User — if you have trained on Splunk, this cert proves it. Many SOCs run Splunk.

Do not chase more than two certifications before applying. One or two, combined with a demonstrable home lab and practice experience, beats a stack of five certs with no practical skills every time.

See our CompTIA certification pathway guide for detailed planning on these exams.

Resume building. Your resume should highlight: your home lab setup, the tools you have used (name them specifically), any practice investigations you have completed, and your certifications. If you have IT experience, connect it to security outcomes. “Managed Windows servers” becomes “Managed Windows Server 2019 environments, monitored Event Logs for security events, and implemented Group Policy hardening.”

Interview preparation. SOC interviews test both knowledge and temperament. Expect scenario-based questions: “Walk me through how you would investigate a phishing alert.” “You see 500 failed login attempts from one IP in 10 minutes — what do you do?” Practice answering these out loud. Written preparation is not enough; you need to be able to think and speak under pressure.

Application strategy. Apply to Tier 1 SOC analyst roles, security analyst positions, and IT security specialist roles. MSSPs (Managed Security Service Providers) hire more aggressively and at higher volumes than in-house SOC teams. They are excellent first jobs because the volume of incidents you handle accelerates your learning.

Building Your Home Lab

A SOC home lab does not need expensive hardware. You need:

• Virtualization platform — VirtualBox (free) or VMware Workstation Player (free for personal use)
• Windows VM — Use a Windows evaluation image from Microsoft
• Linux VM — Ubuntu Server or CentOS
• Sysmon — Install and configure on your Windows VM for detailed event logging
• Splunk Free or Elastic Security — Ingest logs from your VMs
• Atomic Red Team — An open-source library of detection tests mapped to MITRE ATT&CK. Run them and practice detecting the results in your SIEM
• A vulnerable web application — DVWA or Juice Shop, for generating attack traffic

Document your lab setup. Take screenshots. Write about what you built and what you learned. This becomes resume material and interview talking points.

Certifications That Actually Matter

The certification industry wants you to believe you need a dozen certs. You do not. For the SOC path specifically:

Additional certifications become valuable after you have job experience to back them up. A GCIH without experience is a piece of paper. A GCIH backed by a year of incident handling tells a different story.

The Resume and Interview Process

What hiring managers look for in entry-level SOC candidates:

1. Evidence of hands-on practice, not just coursework completion 2. Familiarity with at least one SIEM platform 3. Ability to articulate an investigation process 4. Understanding of common attack vectors 5. Clear written and verbal communication 6. Willingness to work shifts, including nights and weekends

What they do not care about:

1. Which university you attended (or whether you attended one) 2. How many certifications you hold beyond one or two relevant ones 3. Whether you know every tool in the security ecosystem 4. Your CTF ranking (unless the role is explicitly threat-hunting focused)

Apply broadly. Expect rejection. The first SOC job is the hardest to get. After 6-12 months of experience, the market opens up significantly.

Common Mistakes on the SOC Analyst Path

Skipping networking fundamentals. Every SOC investigation touches network data. If you cannot read a packet capture or explain how DNS resolution works, you will struggle in the role.

Spending too long in “study mode.” After 6-8 months of focused preparation, you are ready to apply. Waiting until you feel “completely ready” means waiting forever. You will learn far more in your first month on the job than in your sixth month of self-study.

Ignoring soft skills. The SOC analysts who get promoted fastest are the ones who write clear reports, communicate well during incidents, and collaborate effectively with their team. Technical skills get you hired; communication skills get you promoted.

Avoiding the MSSP path. Some people avoid MSSPs because of their reputation for burnout and high turnover. These are valid concerns, but MSSPs provide unmatched exposure to different environments, tools, and attack patterns. Twelve months at an MSSP can give you the equivalent of three to four years of experience at a single in-house SOC.

Not documenting your learning. Build a portfolio as you go. Write blog posts, create a GitHub repo of your lab configs, or maintain a simple document of investigations you have completed. When interview time comes, you want concrete things to point to.

Related Guides in This Series

• Penetration Tester Roadmap 2026
• CompTIA Certification Pathway: A+ to CASP+
• Cybersecurity Study Plan: 6-Month Schedule

Take the Next Step

Map your current skills to SOC analyst job requirements and identify your exact gaps with the HADESS Career Skills Explorer.

Build the specific technical skills you need with hands-on modules in the HADESS Skills Library.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to become a SOC analyst with no experience?

A. Most people who follow a structured learning path and study consistently (15-20 hours per week) can be job-ready in 6-8 months. Some people with strong IT backgrounds can do it in 3-4 months. The timeline depends on your starting point and how much time you can dedicate each week.

Do I need a degree to become a SOC analyst?

A. No. Many SOC analysts do not have a four-year degree. Employers care about demonstrated skills, certifications (Security+ or CySA+), and practical experience. A degree can help get past automated resume filters, but it is not a requirement at most organizations.

What salary can I expect as an entry-level SOC analyst?

A. Entry-level SOC analyst salaries in the US typically range from $50,000 to $75,000, depending on location, company size, and whether you are at an MSSP or in-house team. Major metro areas and MSSP roles tend to pay at the higher end. Remote positions have expanded the range.

Should I start with Security+ or CySA+?

A. Start with Security+. It covers the foundational concepts you need and is recognized universally as the baseline security certification. CySA+ builds on that foundation with SOC-specific skills. Taking CySA+ without the Security+ knowledge base makes the material harder to absorb.

Is the SOC analyst role a good long-term career?

A. The SOC analyst role itself is typically a stepping stone rather than a long-term destination. Most SOC analysts move into incident response, threat intelligence, detection engineering, or security engineering within 2-4 years. The role provides an excellent foundation for almost any defensive security career path.

— HADESS Team consists of cybersecurity practitioners, hiring managers, and career strategists who have collectively spent 50+ years in the field.