Streamline functions across vulnerability management, incident response, and SecOps automation.
Explore InsightConnectSecurity orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) is a category of security solutions that integrate and automate various cybersecurity tools and processes. By combining these capabilities, SOAR enhances an organization’s ability to detect, investigate, and remediate security threats with greater speed and efficiency.
It can sometimes be a bit head-spinning to try and simply state one main SOAR meaning, as the notion of SOAR encompasses multiple functionalities across both security and IT organizations. Indeed, according to the United States Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency (CISA), “Some organizations may worry about SOC updates changing IT assets, but using approved frameworks can ensure any changes align with existing priorities and policies.” Let’s dive in to see how.
Security orchestration refers to the process of connecting various tools and processes to create a streamlined and cohesive cybersecurity workflow. By integrating multiple solutions, orchestration ensures threat data and response actions are shared efficiently across platforms. This interconnected approach reduces silos, improves visibility, and accelerates security response times.
Orchestration also allows organizations to implement predefined workflows that ensure security tasks are executed systematically and consistently. These workflows can include processes such as incident investigation, threat intelligence gathering, and alert escalation. By bringing different tools and processes together, security teams can act with greater efficiency and confidence.
Security automation focuses on reducing manual effort by enabling security tools to execute repetitive and time-consuming tasks without human intervention. Tasks such as log management and analysis, malware attack detection, and threat intelligence correlation can be automated, allowing security teams to focus on more complex and strategic activities.
Automation is particularly useful in dealing with high volumes of security alerts, helping to filter out false positives and prioritize genuine threats. By leveraging automation, organizations can conduct faster incident response, reduce the risk of human error, and optimize resource allocation within their security teams.
Incident response within a SOAR security framework ensures that organizations can define, manage, and execute structured response plans when threats arise. By automating key elements of incident response, SOAR helps security teams contain and remediate threats more effectively.
A well-defined incident response plan outlines the steps needed to detect, contain, and recover from cyberattacks. With SOAR, these steps can be automated, ensuring that responses are executed in a timely and consistent manner. Additionally, SOAR solutions provide reporting and analysis capabilities that help security teams refine their response strategies and improve resilience against future threats.
SOAR integrates with an organization’s existing security infrastructure, acting as a central hub where security tools and processes work together to streamline and optimize incident response. By leveraging automation and orchestration, SOAR security platforms can perform multi-step processes with minimal manual intervention.
SOAR continuously monitors security alerts and automatically correlates information to detect threats. By aggregating data from various security tools such as security information and event management (SIEM), endpoint detection and response (EDR), and firewalls, SOAR enables real-time detection of anomalies and potential security breaches.
Key benefits of automated threat detection include:
SOAR uses predefined playbooks to assess the severity of security incidents, ensuring that security teams focus on the most critical threats first. Playbooks contain decision-making logic that helps classify threats based on risk level, asset value, and historical attack patterns.
With incident triage and prioritization, security teams can:
Once an incident is classified, SOAR automates containment and remediation actions, such as isolating compromised devices or blocking malicious IP addresses. By integrating with endpoint security tools, firewalls, and cloud security platforms, SOAR security capabilities ensure a swift and coordinated response to threats like an automated, step-by-step response to a phishing attack.
SOAR acts as the glue between various security solutions, enabling seamless communication and data sharing. It enables a SOC to create a unified security ecosystem that can connect functions like SIEM, intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS), vulnerability scanners, and more.
While both SOAR and SIEM solutions play a crucial role in security operations, they do serve different purposes but can also complement each other.
| Feature | SIEM | SOAR |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Function | Aggregates and analyzes security event data | Automates and orchestrates security responses |
| Data Handling | Collects, normalizes, and correlates log data | Uses predefined workflows to automate responses |
| Incident Response | Provides visibility and alerting | Automates and orchestrates incident response actions |
| Manual Effort | Requires human analysis for decision-making | Reduces manual effort with automation |
| Integration | Centralizes security logs and alerts | Connects multiple security tools for coordinated response |
While SIEM solutions are focused on collecting, analyzing, and storing security event data, SOAR goes a step further by automating and orchestrating responses. SIEM provides deep visibility into security logs and real-time alerting, but it often requires manual intervention for analysis and response. SOAR, on the other hand, enables security teams to define automated workflows that coordinate responses across multiple security tools.
By leveraging SOAR, security teams can respond to threats more efficiently, reducing the time it takes to contain and mitigate incidents. Security analysts no longer need to manually sift through large volumes of alerts; instead, SOAR can prioritize and automate routine tasks, allowing teams to focus on more complex and high-risk threats.
Ultimately, SOAR complements SIEM by enhancing its capabilities, reducing manual workload, and improving the speed and accuracy of threat response. Organizations that integrate SOAR with SIEM benefit from a more proactive and efficient security posture, ensuring threats are identified and addressed before they can cause significant damage.
SOAR eliminates the need for security teams to manually handle repetitive, time-consuming tasks, enabling them to focus on higher-value activities such as proactive threat hunting and strategy development. By automating routine processes like alert triage, data enrichment, and log analysis, SOAR reduces the burden on security personnel.
Time is critical in cybersecurity, and delays in incident response can lead to severe consequences. SOAR speeds up response times by automating key remediation steps, such as blocking malicious IPs, quarantining compromised endpoints, and alerting security personnel when an incident requires further investigation. By orchestrating these actions across multiple security tools, SOAR ensures that threats are addressed promptly, minimizing the potential fallout.
By integrating with SIEM and other security tools, SOAR aggregates and correlates data from multiple sources, creating a holistic view of an organization’s security environment. This correlation enhances threat intelligence, helping security teams identify patterns and detect sophisticated attacks that may otherwise go unnoticed.
A well-implemented SOAR platform enforces standardized response procedures across the security team, ensuring incidents are handled consistently and in alignment with best practices. Predefined playbooks guide security personnel through appropriate actions, reducing the likelihood of errors or inconsistencies in incident response. Standardization also facilitates compliance with regulatory requirements by ensuring security operations follow documented processes and protocols.
Successfully deploying a SOAR solution requires careful planning and integration with existing security operations. By aligning with the following best practices, organizations can fully harness the power of SOAR to streamline security operations, improve response times, and strengthen their overall cloud security posture.
When first implementing SOAR, it's best to begin with automation in low-risk, high-volume tasks such as alert triage, log enrichment, and routine compliance checks. This allows security teams to build confidence in automation before expanding to more complex processes.
Successful SOAR implementation requires that security analysts are properly trained to manage and optimize automated workflows. Training should focus on understanding automated playbooks, monitoring automated responses, and fine-tuning the system for continuous improvement.
Threat landscapes evolve, and SOAR playbooks must be regularly updated to reflect the latest attack tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). By keeping workflows aligned with emerging threats, organizations ensure that their automated responses remain effective.
SOAR solutions provide extensive reporting features that allow security teams to analyze trends, measure incident response performance, and identify areas for improvement. Organizations should leverage these insights to refine security operations and demonstrate compliance with regulatory standards.