Here’s a curated reading list organized by skill level and focus area—essential for building SOC competency from fundamentals to advanced operations:

Core SOC Operations & Career Development

1. “SOC Analyst Career Guide” – Packt Publishing (2024)
   Practical daily TTPs (tactics, techniques, procedures) for modern SOC analysts with hands-on workflows for triage, escalation, and tool usage. www.packtpub.com
2. “Jump-start Your SOC Analyst Career” – Tyler E. Wall & Jarrett W. Rodrick
   Real-world insights for beginners transitioning into SOC roles, covering alert analysis, documentation, and communication protocols.
3. “Blue Team Handbook: SOC, SIEM, and Threat Hunting” – Don Murdoch
   Condensed field guide for security operations teams—excellent quick-reference for log analysis, detection engineering, and incident workflows.
4. “Security Operations Center Guidebook: A Practical Guide for a Successful SOC” – G. Jarpey et al. (Elsevier)
   Comprehensive coverage of SOC design, staffing models, metrics (KPIs/SLAs), and operational maturity frameworks.

Incident Response & Digital Forensics

5. “Incident Response & Computer Forensics, 3rd Edition” – Jason Luttgens et al.
   Industry-standard guide covering evidence collection, timeline analysis, memory/disk forensics, and legal considerations.
6. “The Practice of Network Security Monitoring” – Richard Bejtlich
   Foundational text on NSM philosophy—how to detect intrusions through traffic analysis, full-packet capture, and alert validation.
7. “Windows Forensic Analysis Toolkit, 5th Edition” – Harlan Carvey
   Deep dive into Windows artifact analysis (registry, event logs, prefetch) is critical for host-based investigations.

Threat Hunting & MITRE ATT&CK

8. “Cyber Threat Hunting” – Nadhem AlFardan (Manning)
   Practical methodology for proactive hunting using behavioral analytics and hypothesis-driven approaches. www.simonandschuster.com
9. “The Foundations of Threat Hunting” – Packt Publishing
   Structured approach to building hunting programs, defining scope, and measuring effectiveness. www.packtpub.com
10. “MITRE ATT&CK® For Dummies” – AttackIQ (Free eBook)
    Accessible introduction to mapping adversary TTPs to detection opportunities. www.attackiq.com
11. “Adversary Emulation with MITRE ATT&CK” – O’Reilly
    Bridges red/blue team perspectives—how to emulate attacker behavior to validate defenses. www.oreilly.com

Technical Skills & Tooling

12. “Linux Basics for Hackers” – OccupyTheWeb
    Essential Linux command-line skills for log analysis, scripting, and forensic triage in SOC environments. infosecwriteups.com
13. “Practical Malware Analysis” – Michael Sikorski & Andrew Honig
    Hands-on reverse engineering techniques—valuable for Tier 2/3 analysts investigating suspicious binaries.
14. “Splunk Essentials” – James D. Toney
    If your SOC uses Splunk: mastering search syntax, correlation searches, and dashboard creation.

For Enterprise Architects / Senior Practitioners

An Enterprise Architect with a security focus, prioritize these to bridge architecture and operations:

• “Building, Operating, and Maintaining Your SOC” – O’Reilly www.oreilly.com
  Covers SOC design principles, tool integration architecture, and scaling considerations—ideal for architects designing security operations infrastructure.
• “Aligning Security Operations with the MITRE ATT&CK Framework” – Rebecca Blair
  How to map detection coverage gaps to architectural controls and telemetry requirements.

Study Path Recommendation

Level	Focus	Books to Start With
Beginner	Fundamentals	Linux Basics for Hackers → Blue Team Handbook → Jump-start Your SOC Career
Intermediate	IR & Hunting	Incident Response & Computer Forensics → Cyber Threat Hunting → MITRE ATT&CK For Dummies
Advanced/Architect	SOC Design	Security Operations Center Guidebook → Building/Maintaining Your SOC

💡 Pro Tip: Supplement books with hands-on practice using free platforms like LetsDefend, Blue Team Labs Online, or TryHackMe SOC paths.