What is SOAR?
SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response) is a set of software solutions and tools that allow businesses to automate security operations in three major areas: threat and vulnerability management, information security, and cybersecurity automation.
Security automation, to put it another way, is the automated management of security operations-related duties. It is the process of carrying out these duties without the need for human interaction, such as scanning for vulnerabilities or looking for logs. A way of connecting security tools and combining diverse security systems is known as security orchestration. It is the interconnected layer that automates security operations and streamlines security activities.
Why is SOAR important?
Your security staff is most likely drowning in a sea of notifications, many of which are false positives or repetitions of earlier alarms. Each week, the average security team receives upwards of 175,000 notifications. There are very genuine hazards hidden among all that noise, many of which go completely unnoticed if security experts manually handle each one.
That’s where SOAR comes in, freeing up your security team to focus on more essential tasks by automating many of the repetitive, monotonous tasks.
SOAR enables you to:
- Make security, IT operations, and threat intelligence tools work seamlessly. To reach a more thorough degree of data collecting and analysis, you can integrate all of your different security solutions – even ones from different suppliers. Security teams can no longer juggle many consoles and tools.
- See everything on one site. Your security team has access to a single console that contains all of the data it requires to investigate and resolve incidents. Security teams can obtain all of the information they require in one location.
- Quick response to incidents. SOARs have been shown to decrease the meantime to detect (MTTD) and the meantime to respond (MTTR). A substantial percentage of events may be dealt with instantly and automatically because many actions are automated.
- Prevent time-consuming activities. SOAR helps security analysts save time by reducing false positives, repetitive jobs, and manual processes.
- Gain access to more information. SOAR solutions combine and evaluate data from threat intelligence platforms, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, SIEMs, and other technologies, providing additional insight and context to your security team. This makes resolving concerns and improving processes much easy. When problems develop, analysts are better able to undertake deeper and broader investigations.
- Improve communication and reporting. Stakeholders can get all the information they need, including clear analytics that helps them find ways to enhance workflows and minimize reaction times because all security operations activities are pooled in one location and displayed in intuitive dashboards.
- Boost capacity to make decisions. SOAR platforms seek to be user-friendly, even for less experienced security analysts, because they may include features such as pre-built playbooks, drag-and-drop functions for creating playbooks from scratch, and automated alert prioritizing. A SOAR tool can also collect data and provide insights that make it easier for analysts to review issues and perform the appropriate remediation activities.
What are some examples of SOAR applications?
Before you start talking to vendors regarding SOAR platforms, consider how your company will use the solution. Use cases should highlight your biggest problems and show how technology can help you solve them. The typical use cases vary greatly depending on your industry. Here are some ideas to get you thinking about how you could implement SOAR in your own company.
- Automated incident response to combat cyberattacks: SOAR platforms can automatically detect and investigate the sources of these types of attacks. They may, for example, detect and evaluate a suspected phishing email, search for copies elsewhere on the network, quarantine or destroy them, and block IP addresses and URLs to prevent these dangerous emails from reaching other people’s inboxes.
- Threat hunting: Security teams typically spend hours each day responding with a flood of alerts, leaving little time for threat hunting, investigation, and long-term planning. Many previously known malicious risks are promptly addressed thanks to automation, giving security professionals more time to work on projects that improve overall network security.
- Improving overall vulnerability management: A SOAR solution can help your security team prioritize and manage the risk posed by newly found vulnerabilities in your environment. As a result, they may be proactive, obtaining more information on weak points and properly researching them, while also putting measures in place to prevent breaches or other threats.
The Bottom Line
SOAR optimizes security operations
SOAR allows you to shift from a reactive to a proactive strategy by relieving your team of false positives, recurrent alerts, and low-risk cautions. Rather than putting out fires, security analysts may put their skills and considerable training to greater use, thereby boosting the overall security posture of your company. It’s feasible to accomplish more in less time with efficient security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) solutions while still allowing for human decision-making when it’s most important.
