Open-Source SOC Stack with Wazuh, Suricata, Zeek, TheHive

Enterprise SIEM and EDR platforms are prohibitively expensive for many small to mid-sized organizations. However, the requirement for deep visibility and structured incident response does not vanish simply because a security budget is tight.

This Open-Source SOC Stack is an architecture designed for organizations that have the engineering talent but not the licensing budget. By integrating Wazuh for endpoint telemetry, Suricata for intrusion detection, Zeek for network metadata, and TheHive for case management, we build a practitioner-grade security operation that rivals commercial alternatives in detection capability, provided it is managed with rigorous operational discipline.

Why an Open-Source Stack Matters

This is not a “deploy and forget” solution. Building an open-source SOC forces a security team to deeply understand their telemetry. When you own the pipeline from the endpoint agent to the case management dashboard, you eliminate the “black box” nature of commercial tools. You learn exactly why a rule fired, how the logs were parsed, and what context is required to close the alert.

Architecture Overview & Data Flow

The architecture is modular, designed to ingest, analyze, alert, and manage incidents efficiently.

Component	Function	Data Flow & Responsibility
Wazuh Agent & Manager	Endpoint Visibility (HIDS/EDR)	Collects OS logs, file integrity monitoring (FIM), and local configuration assessments. Forwards normalized alerts to the Indexer.
Suricata	Network Intrusion Detection (NIDS)	Inspects mirrored network traffic against known threat signatures (e.g., Emerging Threats ruleset). Forwards fast.log or eve.json alerts.
Zeek	Network Metadata Analysis (NDR)	Passively monitors traffic to generate protocol-specific transcripts (DNS queries, HTTP headers, TLS certificates). Vital for threat hunting.
Log Pipeline (Logstash/Filebeat)	Ingestion & Routing	Collects data from Wazuh, Suricata, and Zeek, enriches it, and ships it to the central indexing engine (Elasticsearch/OpenSearch).
Wazuh Dashboard	Visualization & Triage	The primary interface for SOC analysts to view alerts, hunt through Zeek metadata, and investigate endpoint telemetry.
TheHive	Case Management (IR)	Ingests high-fidelity alerts from Wazuh via webhooks. Analysts track investigations, upload evidence, and document remediation steps here.
Cortex / Shuffle (Optional)	Enrichment & Automation	Automates indicator lookups (VirusTotal, GreyNoise) and orchestrates response actions directly from TheHive.

Core SOC Use Cases

This stack provides coverage across the most critical defensive domains:

• Endpoint Detection & Response: Detecting anomalous PowerShell execution, unauthorized scheduled tasks, and local privilege escalation attempts via Wazuh.
• Network Intrusion Detection: Alerting on known malware C2 beacons, cleartext credential transmission, and exploitation of known CVEs over the wire via Suricata.
• Threat Hunting: Using Zeek’s dns.log to hunt for domain generation algorithms (DGA) or ssl.log to identify self-signed certificates associated with adversary infrastructure.
• File Integrity Monitoring: Tracking unauthorized modifications to critical configuration files (/etc/passwd, /etc/shadow) or web directories to detect web shell placement.
• Compliance Evidence: Providing centralized, immutable logs to satisfy ISO/IEC 27001 (Logging and Monitoring) and CIS Benchmarks requirements.

Alert Triage Workflow

A tool is useless without a process. This architecture enforces a structured incident workflow:

1. Detection: Suricata detects an anomalous HTTP POST request matching a known malware signature.
2. Alerting: The alert is indexed in Wazuh/Elasticsearch and visualized on the dashboard.
3. Escalation: An automated rule determines the alert severity is “High” and triggers a webhook to TheHive.
4. Case Creation: TheHive creates a new case, applying an “Infected Host” template with predefined investigative tasks.
5. Investigation: The analyst pivots to the Wazuh dashboard, utilizing Zeek data to confirm the network connection and Wazuh endpoint data to identify the specific process (e.g., svchost.exe) that initiated the traffic.
6. Remediation & Closure: The analyst isolates the host (via a Wazuh active response script), documents the findings in TheHive, and closes the case.

Operational Reality: Tuning and Storage

It is critical to be honest about the challenges of this stack.

• Tuning Workload: Out of the box, Suricata and Wazuh are noisy. A significant effort is required during the first 30 days to whitelist authorized vulnerability scanners, baseline normal administrator activity, and suppress false positives.
• Storage Planning: Network metadata (Zeek) and detailed endpoint logs consume massive amounts of disk space. Proper index lifecycle management (ILM) must be configured to transition hot data to warm/cold storage and eventually delete it, ensuring the cluster does not crash.

Deliverables

When implementing this architecture, we provide more than just deployed software:

• Architecture Design Document: Detailed network diagrams, port mappings, and hardware/compute requirements.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Ansible playbooks or Docker Compose files for repeatable deployment.
• Detection Use Case Matrix: A documented list of tuned, active rules mapped to MITRE ATT&CK.
• TheHive Templates: Standardized runbooks for common incidents (Phishing, Malware, Unauthorized Access).
• SOC Analyst Training Notes: Practical guides on pivoting between Zeek network data and Wazuh endpoint logs.

60-Day Build & Operationalization Roadmap

• Days 1-15 (Infrastructure & Deployment): Provision compute resources. Deploy the core Wazuh cluster (Manager, Indexer, Dashboard). Configure Filebeat/Logstash pipelines.
• Days 16-30 (Sensor Deployment & Integration): Deploy Wazuh agents to critical Tier 0/Tier 1 servers. Deploy Suricata and Zeek sensors on network span ports. Integrate alert webhooks with TheHive.
• Days 31-45 (Aggressive Tuning): Run baseline traffic analysis. Suppress the initial wave of false positives. Tune Wazuh FIM paths and Suricata signatures based on organizational context.
• Days 46-60 (Process Alignment & Tabletop): Finalize TheHive case templates. Conduct a simulated incident (e.g., executing a benign payload) to validate the end-to-end workflow from detection to case closure. Hand off to operations.

This open-source stack is not a compromise; it is a highly capable defensive platform. It demands engineering skill and operational rigor, but rewards organizations with deep visibility, structured response capabilities, and total control over their security telemetry.