Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)#

By gathering threat data from many sources, security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) assists enterprises in automating security activities, particularly incident response. It may also respond to minor events without the need for human intervention. SOAR solutions assist security companies in defining, prioritizing, standardizing, and automating response activities, as well as improving operational efficiency. Here are listed a few ways SOAR may aid in the optimization of security operations…

Managing the Cybersecurity Skills Gap#

The cybersecurity skills gap persists, and recruiters are having difficulty finding qualified applicants for security roles. Automation is a logical next step towards closing the gap. SOAR systems include solutions for automating day-to-day security procedures. Security personnel may devote their efforts to more sophisticated tasks that cannot be handled by automation.

Boosting MTTD and MTTR#

SOAR may automate threat detection via simplification and automation of human activities now required for incident triage. This feature of SOAR can assist teams in decreasing the average time to find a security event (MTTD) and the mean time to recovery (MTTR). While SOAR technologies have the potential to shorten the time necessary to detect and recover from security breaches, they do have a learning curve and require constant technical evaluation.

Using Automation to Reduce Human Error in Patch Management#

Patch management is critical for system and application upkeep. Unfortunately, due to the monotony of this duty, security teams frequently neglect it. Patch failure exposes the organization to considerable risks.

SOAR technologies can assist security teams in properly managing patches. SOAR platforms can autonomously monitor key systems and apply fixes without the need for human interaction. To coordinate this with other change management processes, organizations can interface the SOAR platform with their configuration management system.

SOAR Tool Functional Components#

Orchestration, automation, and response are the three main components of a SOAR platform.

  • Orchestration: By combining technology and security tools, orchestration increases incident response. By combining several technologies, it can assist businesses in dealing with complicated cybersecurity crises. SOAR may connect network security and IT operations tools, gathering data from network monitoring tools and using it to establish firewall rules, for example.

  • Automation: Detecting and reacting to security problems manually may need hundreds of repeated operations. During the incident response phase, many of these procedures may be automated. SOAR systems, for example, can automatically triage specific sorts of events, minimizing the need for manual analysis of each event to identify a true security concern. SOAR systems enable security teams to design standardized, automated procedures such as workflows for decision-making, health checks, enforcement and containment, and audit activities.

  • Response: SOAR technologies acquire data from other security tools by interacting with SIEM and threat intelligence feeds. They aid in the triage and prioritization of security events, as well as the transmission of detailed information about the security incident to human security personnel.

SOAR also offers case management, facilitating cooperation, communication, and task management among security operations center (SOC) personnel.

Best Practices for SOAR Solutions#

  • Exploit Security Playbooks: Security playbooks enable teams to create automated response methods for various sorts of security incidents. Although certain complicated threats need manual involvement and cannot be entirely managed by playbooks, the use of playbooks decreases average reaction time and assures a more effective, automated response for a wide range of risks.

  • Take a Threat-Centric rather than an Alert-Centric Approach: A threat management system based on alerts frequently results in numerous analysts reacting to each alarm. This is a squandering of resources. Use a threat-centric strategy to improve efficiency. Rather than assigning numerous analysts to respond to similar signals, you may employ group alerts depending on danger category. Consider building security orchestration and automating responses to different threat types. This can assist you avoid having to reply to each warning separately.

  • Boost Cooperation: When procedures are disrupted by a security issue, various teams employ different software sets to identify and respond to the incident. On a daily basis, a single, centralized SOAR platform promotes team cooperation. Using SOAR’s case management tools and task management dashboards, teams can track and communicate event details.

See also

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