The acronym, SOAR, refers to security orchestration, automation, and response. SOAR is best described as an assembly of solutions and/or tools that give an organization the ability to gather security data from different sources, as well as the capability to respond to entry-level security threats without human intervention.

Challenges SOAR addresses

With the help of SOAR’s automation and orchestration of many security processes, it can address many major challenges that security teams are facing today.

Excess alerts 

In today’s security landscape, we have a great number of technologies that allow us to detect suspicious activity on our networks, endpoints, and user behaviors. These tools are definitely beneficial to security teams, but when faced with the unprecedented amount of attacks happening, the level and number of security alerts keeps increasing. Often, it gets to a point where it’s close to impossible for a security team to effectively address each and every alert that comes across. 

Incompatible tools

If you are a security analyst, you have most likely worked with your fair share of tools for detection, investigation, and remediation. We know it’s common to have multiple consoles open in front of you—your SIEM, threat intel, EDR solution, sandboxing solution and more—and as an analyst, you have to go back and forth through all these solutions in order to investigate, triage, and remediate a copious amount of alerts. The fact that these tools generally do not integrate with each other makes this really labor intensive. 

Manual processes 

Most companies have state-of-the-art technologies, but when it comes to security and response processes, many still remain manual (and poorly documented!). It becomes an even larger challenge then, to ensure that all analysts know where those processes are documented, and that they follow them each time a response is required. It becomes even more convoluted when you realize that a lot of tribal knowledge exists in the heads of security analysts. When an analyst leaves the organization, newer analysts may struggle with how to do things, what steps to take, etc. 

Shortage of talent 

Today’s cybersecurity talent shortage is causing organizations to look at solutions that can automate a great deal of the daily to-do lists and routine tasks that security professionals take care of, allowing them to focus their time on higher-value security efforts.

When organizations deploy SOAR solutions, they typically see several benefits, including a rise in analyst productivity, faster response times, and a diminished volume of alerts.Looking forward to implementing SOAR in your organization? Check out these helpful assets: