Article’s

Abstract Security Operations Centers (SOCs) represent the core defensive mechanism of modern enterprises facing increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. The digital transformation of organizations, cloud migration, remote workforce adoption, and interconnected systems have significantly expanded the attack surface. Consequently, real-time monitoring and rapid incident response have become essential for ensuring cybersecurity resilience. This survey provides an extensive academic analysis of real-time SOC architectures, including log management pipelines, SIEM correlation engines, SOAR automation frameworks, behavioral analytics, artificial intelligence integration, and structured incident response methodologies. Detailed discussion is provided on detection mechanisms such as rule-based correlation, signature matching, anomaly detection, machine learning classification, and User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA). The study also evaluates operational limitations including alert fatigue, scalability constraints, compliance requirements, budget limitations, and shortage of skilled analysts. Emerging paradigms such as Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA), Extended Detection and Response (XDR), cloud-native SIEM, and predictive AI-driven SOC models are examined. The objective of this paper is to provide a detailed, humanized, research-oriented survey aligned with IJEDR publication standards. Keywords: Index Term Security Operations Center, SIEM, SOAR, Incident Response, Real-Time Monitoring, XDR, UEBA, Cyber Threat Intelligence.