SOAR

SOAR Definition

SOAR connects all the other tools in your security stack together into defined workflows, which can be run automatically. In other words, SOAR lets you increase your team's efficiency by automating repetitive manual processes.

Why Is SOAR Useful For Security Teams

Automation is very important in today's security world because security teams are overwhelmed. As new tools are developed to address an evolving threat landscape, the analysts using those tools have to switch between them in order to accomplish their day-to-day-tasks. One common day-to-day task is responding to alerts. With more security tools comes more alerts, which are addressed in a series of manual processes and context switches that. Is switching from one tool to another. More alerts to respond to each day means that you have less time to spend on each alert, which increases the likelihood of mistakes being made. Performance degradation in the face of a flood of alerts is called Alert Fatigue. One obvious way to mitigate alert fatigue is simply to hire more analysts. However, thanks to a cybersecurity skill shortage, there simply aren't enough qualified analysts to hire. So if hiring more analysts is not an option, How do we solve alert fatigue with SOAR.

SOAR In Action

As mentioned, SOAR ties together the tools in your security stack. By pulling data in from all of these sources, SOAR reduces context switching that analysts have to deal with. So, analysts can preform all of their usual investigative processes directly from the source interface. Further, those processes can be manually or automatically translated into a Playbook, which is a Flowchart like set of steps, that can be repeated on demand. By using a playbook, you can ensure that every step in your standard operating procedure is followed. You also have data on exactly what was done, when, and by whom. This capability is called Orchestration and Automation. Investigation is another crucial SOAR capability. When a suspicious alert appears, teams can perform their investigative tasks, such as checking threat intelligence sources for a reputation or querying a Security Information Management system SIM, for related events from within the SOAR platform. The information gleaned from this investigation will determine the required mitigation steps. Then, because SOAR is a unified workbench of all your security tools, you can take those mitigation steps from within SOAR as well. For example, from within SOAR, you can block traffic from a malicious IP address in your firewall or delete a phishing email from your email server. By building your standard processes into playbooks, you can replace repetitive, time-consuming manual processes with automation at machine speed. Automation frees analysts to devote more time to investigating critical alerts.

Why You Should Implement SOAR Into Your Security Team

Implementing SOAR into your ecosystem does more than just centralize your incident response processes, it optimizes an entire operation. Optimization results in Streamlined responses at machine speed, allowing teams to improve collaboration and better manage the never ending wave of alerts. This is because SOAR allows users to assign alerts to different analysts or teams at different stages of the response process. And for those assigned users to add information to the alert as they work on it, so that others who reference that alert later will have additional context on the investigation.

SOAR Playbook Explained

Teams use a Playbook, sometimes called workflows, as a to respond to alerts or incidents the same way every time. Playbook work in unison with security teams by taking the steps an analyst would typically implement when responding to an incident. Playbooks do the repetitive tasks, such as complaining data into a report or sending emails, and can pause when human oversight is needed, such as to implement a firewall block. Playbooks are the key to the automation capability of SOAR, allowing teams to improve their response speed and consistency, while maintaining human authority over the process. Ultimately, using a playbook can lead to reduced analyst workload and reduced chance of error.