SOAR stands for Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response. SOAR is extremely important for any organization to fight any cybersecurity issues in an organization. This can be achieved through the following processes :

  1. Orchestration is a process that shows alerts from the network and security and converts them into actionable items that can be handled manually.
  2. Automation reduces the need for humans to deal with redundant alerts and tasks that can instead be computerized.
  1. Incident response is a workflow of steps and technologies which helps to resolve the incident.

SOAR platforms then use a combination of ML (Machine Learning) and humans to analyze diverse data in order to prioritize and comprehend incident response actions. The technology can be used to automate about 70-80% of a security team’s manual tasks.

SOAR Platform Gartner: Magic Quadrant

Gartner Inc., the consulting firm focused on identifying the best technological solutions for their clients. They created a quadrant for those who want to identify the best SOAR platforms for their organizations. Although Gartner claims that there is no true SOAR solution that exists today, it does expect usage to grow significantly in the coming years. 

Two axes have been identified: “Ability to execute” (which focuses on the current feature-set of the product) and “Completeness of vision” (which prioritizes market understanding and strategy). 

Then, as per Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, SOAR platform vendors are divided into four quadrants: 

  • Leaders : offer ready-to-adopt services based on current market trends. 
  • Challengers : offer some features based on market trends, with the potential to grow.
  • Visionaries : those who are investing heavily in unique technologies for the future
  • Niche players : specialists in their own regions, lack a comprehensive set of solutions. 

Difference between SOAR and SIEM. 

Security Information and Event Management also known as SIEM is the collection and aggregation of security data. This data is sourced from integrated platforms like firewalls, network appliances, intrusion detection and prevention systems, etc. Later, the data is correlated across devices, before issuing alerts. To deal with the alerts is a difficult, time-consuming process, which further wastes resources and manpower. 

On the other hand, SOAR can automate the response process by responding to the endless alerts. By prioritizing alerts, cybersecurity teams are able to prioritize threats and deliver solid results. SOAR solution takes SIEM’s response capabilities to the next level by offering automated responses to all cybersecurity solutions. 

Respond to security incidents with efficiency

Choosing the right SOAR platform can give you the right way to respond to security incidents with efficiency. Here are the top ways a good SOAR platform can help you out : 

1) Faster Response Time

Since orchestration can merge multiple alerts into a single window, it saves even more time for teams by enabling the system to respond to alerts with no human intervention. 

To get a faster and more efficient alert handling process, the decision-making process should be automated, which the SOAR platform that you pick must allow. 

2) Optimized Threat Intelligence

Threat intelligence provides crucial information that requires a more cautionary approach. However, on a day-to-day basis, not much attention is given to these. Analysts are constantly dealing with overloaded information. 

The best SOAR vendors will automatically correlate these with events in real-time and should ingest threat intelligence with in-depth analyses. This will help the SOC analysts team and provide immediately actionable information to incident response teams.

3) Reduced Manual Operations & Standardized Processes

Automation relieves SOC analysts of mundane and redundant tasks and includes them in an overall process of how to handle any situation that comes their way. 

A good SOAR platform will include these tasks into playbooks that layout the end-to-end incident response workflow.

4) Streamlined Operations

Every single element of a SOAR tool should aid in the streamlining of security operations since that is their primary function. Security orchestration collects data incoming from a variety of sources. 

Automation will be able to handle low-priority alerts through the use of automated playbooks, since incident response takes the heat-of-the-moment guesswork out of the picture, thereby limiting cyberattacks to a great extent and reducing the overall impact on the business. 

5) Reduced cyberattack impact (MTTD and MTTR)

Mean Time To Detect a problem (MTTD) and Mean Time To Respond to it (MTTR) are two critical metrics that affect the impact that a cyberattack has on an organization. The more time it takes to detect and respond to an attack, the more chances of damage to the same, and the greater the impact on the organization. 

The SOAR vendor and platform you pick should minimize both MTTD and MTTR. Orchestration reduces MTTD by providing context-heavy details on each incident, helping analysts to spend less time on requirement gathering and more time on investigating the alert. Security automation reduces MTTR by answering incidents and alerts automatically in real-time. 

6) Easy technology & tools integration

One of the advantages of orchestration is the ability to correlate alerts from a wide variety of technologies and products. This goes well beyond just SIEM. A SOAR tool should be able to integrate with different products across security technologies, such as:

  1. Cloud Security 
  2. Data Enrichment 
  3. Email Security 
  4. Endpoint Security 
  5. Forensics & Malware Analysis 
  6. Identity and Access Management 
  7. IT and Infrastructure
  8. Network Security 
  9. SIEM & Log Management
  10. Threat Intelligence
  11.  Vulnerability & Risk Management

The integration of these products into your SOAR platform through the correct vendor should be a seamless process. 

A SOAR platform open-source marketplace helps to access the integration for a specific product. From there, integration is as easy as clicking a button and swapping components into a playbook. 

7) Lowered costs

A business model can save a significant amount of money and time by integrating the SOAR tool into their respective business model. It is proven that a SOAR platform helps save:

  1. 90% time on reporting
  2. 80% time on playbook creation
  3. 70% time on alert handling
  4. 60% time on analyst training
  5. 30% time on shift management

8) Automated reporting & metrics capabilities

Automated reporting eliminates the need for manually-produced metrics and makes life much easier. 

By allowing SOC staff to pull reports on-demand, preferably with one click or automatically on a schedule, businesses receive timely and reliable metrics for each reporting period. 

To further simplify this process, most SOAR tools provide reporting templates and the ability to generate custom reports efficiently.

9) Standardized communication during incident response

Response and incident handling will require reaching outside of the SOC, especially for high-priority incidents. This means incident response teams loop in stakeholders both outside and inside the SOC, making a repeatable and reliable flow of information challenging to establish.

To mitigate this issue, organizations often form a mission control hub to handle high priority incidents. A good SOAR platform will have a virtual war room feature to ensure that critical communication is standardized to prevent any team member—from HR and PR to legal—from missing highly critical information during an incident response. 

Summary :

Choosing the right SOAR platform and vendor can be critical decisions that you will need to make for your organization. If you are looking for a top SOAR vendor for your organization, then look no further. 

You can contact the experts at Securaa for a one-stop security operations platform for predictive and proactive threat management. Talk to us now!

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Which are the best open-source SOAR platform vendors?

Ans. The top SOAR platform vendors are :

  • Exabeam
  • Securaa
  • Insight Connect 
  • RespondX
  • IBM
  • SIRP
  • DFLabs
  • Splunk Phantom
  • Who is a SOC analyst?

A security operations centre (SOC) analyst is a cybersecurity staff member who is responsible for monitoring and fighting threats to an organization’s IT infrastructure.

  • How can SOAR Tools transform your incident response?

Ans. SOAR platforms can help by relieving the information overload on SOC analysts from remedial and low-priority tasks. Instead it allows the team to focus on improving your SOC’s overall effectiveness and efficiency in responding to incidents recorded.

  • What are the different use cases of SOAR?
  • DoS Alert Mitigation
  • Incident Response
  • Malware 
  • Ransomware Alert
  • Threat Analysis
  • Lifecycle Automation (Threat)
  • Phishing Investigation

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