Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)

With your organization’s cybersecurity strategy being more critical than ever, incorporating a SOAR system is an essential step toward protection.

Let’s dive into what SOAR is and how it can help shield your organization from malicious threats, especially with the total cost of cyberattacks rising quickly.

What is SOAR?

SOAR is an acronym that stands for security orchestration, automation, and response. SOAR refers to a set of tools that help streamline IT security operations by coordinating, automating, and executing a holistic cybersecurity strategy through a single platform. 

The goal of a SOAR cyber security product is to simplify IT security operations by offering these three stages of IT security methods under the umbrella of one user-friendly system. 

A comprehensive SOAR cybersecurity tool, by definition, has three primary software capabilities: vulnerability management (orchestration), security operations automation, and incident response. Let’s break each of these down a little bit further… 

• Orchestration: The orchestration component of SOAR refers to your company’s individualized cybersecurity plan. A SOAR platform will help you gain overall visibility into your IT vulnerabilities to determine focus areas and take a proactive security stance informed by both internal and external threat intelligence. SOAR orchestration also refers to combining intelligence from different sources in one comprehensive place. 
• Automation: SOAR automation helps to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks in your cybersecurity strategy. Automating your IT security efforts with tactics like automated patch management, routine checks, and scheduled deployments takes some of the workload off of your IT security technicians and strengthens your overall posture. 
• Response: If a cybersecurity incident does occur, it is important to be ready with a quick and effective response. With SOAR systems, you will achieve strong visibility into your IT environment, allowing you to respond to incidents faster than ever. 

How does SOAR work? 

A SOAR solution works by harvesting data which then triggers automated response workflows or tasks. Through a combination of human efforts and machine learning (such as artificial intelligence, or AI), organizations can leverage this data to generate and prioritize incident response protocols for future threats. As a whole, this allows companies to build more effective and efficient approaches to their cybersecurity strategies. 

A SOAR IT security tool harnesses the power of security automation to detect, investigate, and address cybersecurity threats without needing human intervention. This lessens the amount of rote work and alert response time that might be slowing down your team, freeing up your human resources to focus on complex, critical-thinking tasks that add value. 

Security automation can detect threats in your IT environment, triage those potential threats, determine whether or not to take action on any given threat, and then contain and resolve the issue in question. And all of that can happen in just seconds, without the need for IT staff to get involved. Security automation programs can handle minor and even mid-range incidents independently, cutting down on response time and improving organization-wide security. 

Security orchestration is another key part of a SOAR security strategy. It refers to the coordination of all of an organization’s security actions across one user-friendly infrastructure. The goal of SOAR orchestration is to ensure that all of the organization’s tools (those focused on security and those that are not) are working together effectively. 

Orchestration also simplifies work for your IT department by combining data and alerts from numerous sources in one convenient dashboard. 

There are countless benefits associated with security orchestration, including… 

• More meaningful investigations: Instead of managing alters, IT security techs can focus on diving into the why behind those incidents, engaging in root cause analysis, or RCA. Strong SOAR platforms typically offer detailed dashboards with aggregated data in the form of graphs, timelines, and other visuals that can be extremely helpful in examining the ultimate causes behind cybersecurity incidents. 
• Better context: Because a security orchestration tool aggregates data from a variety of different sources, you will gain deeper insights into your IT environment. This provides enhanced context around why and how incidents occur, allowing more detailed RCA investigations and enabling better planning for future incident response. 
• Improved collaboration: Key stakeholders at all different levels throughout an organization may need to be involved in responding to certain incidents. Security orchestration allows for this collaboration by sharing the necessary data (and context) with all who need it in an intuitive and accessible manner. 

In all, a SOAR system uses the best of security automation, orchestration, and response to improve your security posture. SOAR systems automate complex processes, ensure better collaboration, and lead to improved response times and efficacy. 

Challenges that a SOAR security strategy addresses

A SOAR platform offers all-in-one IT security management that encompasses cybersecurity strategies from beginning to end. Security orchestration automation and response tactics can help modern-day organizations deal with a number of common challenges, including… 

• Many organizations face an unmanageable number of security alerts, making it challenging to sift through and find the ones that really matter or are of high importance. This increases the probability of missing an important alert that requires immediate action, thus enhancing the chances of damage occurring and slowing response times. 
• Slow response times can arise due to a lack of standardized response processes. Many organizations end up wasting time because of manual, inefficient internal processes. 
• Finding human resources with IT security expertise can also be a challenge, making it hard to execute manual strategies effectively within an organization. 
• Lack of SOAR orchestration can lead to inefficiencies in combining information from data sources. Limited visibility across data sets, tools, and IT environments can slow down response times and leave out important context that is necessary to properly approach and remediate an attack. 

If your organization has struggled with one or more of these problems, you are not alone. These issues are becoming more and more commonplace as cybersecurity threats continue to grow more sophisticated. However, there is a solution. SOAR in cybersecurity comes with numerous benefits that can help resolve these common challenges. 

The benefits of SOAR in cyber security

Employing a SOAR solution can change the way your organization handles cybersecurity, yielding a more proactive, streamlined, and most importantly, effective security posture. Here is what you can expect when you choose a program with SOAR capabilities: 

• Integrated security tools: By connecting all of your various security solutions, even ones sourced from different vendors, you will get more comprehensive data collection and analysis that allows you to view all of your information through one console. 
• Faster incident response: SOAR systems have been shown to reduce both the MTTD (mean time to detect) and MTTR (mean time to respond) for security incidents. Automation capabilities help to solidify these improvements. 
• Better time and resource management: SOAR programs free up technicians, reduce repetitive and manual tasks, and limit false positives that eat away at analyst time. 
• Stronger intelligence: Because SOAR solutions aggregate and validate data from a number of sources, your security team will have better insights and enhanced context. This makes it easier to resolve issues in the short term and plan better for long-term security moves. 
• Improved reporting and communication: With all of your security activities accessible through one intuitive dashboard, stakeholders at all levels can access the information they need with clear key metrics that help build effective workflows and faster responses. With all of this data, your team will be able to make better-informed decisions. 

Level up your cybersecurity game today

If you did not know what the SOAR acronym stood for before reading this article, don’t worry – as you can see, SOAR strategies are somewhat intuitive once you understand that SOAR stands for security orchestration, automation, and response. 

While Atera is not a SOAR platform, we empower IT teams to strengthen their security posture through seamless integrations with leading cybersecurity solutions. These integrations, combined with Atera’s comprehensive IT management tools, provide a unified approach to safeguarding your organization.Ready to experience the difference? Start your 30-day free trial of Atera today and discover how our all-in-one platform can elevate your IT operations – no credit card required!