SOAR technology enables businesses to collect inputs that are monitored by the security operations team. Alerts from the SIEM system and other security technologies, for example, can assist define, prioritizing, and driving regulated incident response actions by employing a combination of human and machine power. An organization can use SOAR tools to define incident analysis and response procedures in a digital workflow format.

Three main components of SOAR platforms are;

  1. Security orchestration
  2. Security automation
  3. Security response 

SOAR PlatformNOTE: There is something called playbooks, that plays a huge role to SOAR success. These playbooks are predetermined automatic operations that can be prebuilt or altered. To execute complex actions, many SOAR playbooks can be linked. 

For example, if a malicious Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is discovered in an employee email and recognised during a scan, a playbook can be implemented that stops the email, notifies the worker of the prospective phishing attempt, and blacklists the sender’s Internet Protocol (IP) address. If necessary, SOAR technologies can also trigger follow-up investigative measures by security officers.

Figure 1: Malware analysis SOAR playbook sample (insert figure, flow chart, mechanism, process)

Best SOAR Playbooks 2022

  • For Ransomware: Use D3 XGEN SOAR
  • For Cryptojacking: D3 XGEN SOAR

Likewise, other SOAR platforms have their own playbooks, and more are on the way to hitting the market. 

What Is Threat Intelligence Management (TIM)?

A SOAR Platform may feature Threat Intelligence Management, or TIM, in addition to security orchestration, automation, and response. Threat intelligence management (TIM) allows enterprises to gain a better understanding of the global threat landscape, predict attackers’ next movements, and respond quickly to stop attacks.

There Is A Difference Between Automation & Orchestration

Security automation and security orchestration are terms that are sometimes used interchangeably, yet the two platforms serve very different purposes. Security automation, for example, minimises the time it takes to detect and respond to recurrent occurrences and false positives, ensuring that alarms do not go unnoticed for long periods of time.

  • Security orchestration, on the other hand, enables numerous tools to react to crises as a group, even if the data is scattered across a wide network and multiple systems or devices. Security orchestration employs a number of automated actions to carry out a comprehensive, complex procedure or workflow.

Importance Of SOAR Platform

Using SOAR Platform is way more important than major companies realise. Organizations now face multiple cybersecurity challenges in an ever-growing and increasingly digital world. 

The more complicated and vicious the attacks, the more corporations must devise an efficient and effective strategy for the future of their security operations. 

SOAR is transforming the way security operations teams handle, evaluate, and respond to alerts and threats as a result of this need.

With an increasing volume of threats and alerts, and a shortage of funds to address them all, analysts are not only forced to decide which alerts to take seriously and act on, and which can be ignored; they are also frequently overworked, risking missing serious dangers and making a large lot of mistakes as they attempt to respond to threats and bad brokers.

SOAR platforms allow you to:

  • Integrate tools for security, IT operations, and threat intelligence. To reach a more thorough degree of data collecting and analysis, you can integrate all of your different security solutions, including ones from different manufacturers. 
  • Accelerate incident reaction. SOARs have been shown to lower both the mean time to detect (MTTD) and the mean time to respond (MTTR) (MTTR).
  • Helps you avoid time-consuming tasks. SOAR significantly lowers false positives, repetitious procedures, and manual processes that consume security analysts’ time.
  • Helps Improve your intelligence. SOAR solutions collect and evaluate data from threat intelligence platforms, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, SIEMs, and other technologies, providing your security team with more context and insight.
  • Enhance your reporting and communication. Stakeholders may obtain all the information they need, including clear metrics that assist them to determine how to optimise procedures and minimise reaction times, when all security operations activities are pooled in one location and displayed in intuitive dashboards.
  • Improve your decision-making abilities. SOAR platforms are designed to be user-friendly, even for inexperienced security analysts, with features such as pre-built playbooks, drag-and-drop functionalities for creating playbooks from scratch, and automated alert prioritising.

There is numerous soar platform open source, such as Shuffle, SIRP, and much more. Even Securaa is one of them. Not all platforms provide free open source though. 

SOAR Capabilities

There are lots of SOAR tools in the market promising the benefits, but not all are effective, so do look for the right SOAR tool;

Here are some of the qualities to look for:

  • Reports that are easily understood. This broad perspective enables you to immediately grasp what’s going on in the network, analyse problems, and decide what to do next.
  • Alerts are automatically queued and prioritised. Essentially, you want to know what things are most important to work on right away, without having to do considerable research.
  • Alert information has been organised. IP addresses, domain names, file hashes, user names, email addresses, and other pertinent data fields should be arranged so that security analysts can process them quickly.
  • Playbook creation and management are flexible and simple. Look for a system that includes both built-in playbooks and the ability to alter and develop your own using your preferred playbook editor.
  • Integration with the business tools that you employ. Firewalls, endpoint products, reputation services, sandboxes, directory services, and SIEMs are examples of security and infrastructure assets.

What are some examples of SOAR applications?

Before you start talking to vendors about SOAR platforms, one of the wisest things you can do is consider how your business will use the solution.

Typical use cases vary greatly depending on your sector. Here are some ideas to get you thinking about how you may apply SOAR in your own organisation;

  • Threat hunting: Security teams typically spend hours each day responding with a flood of warnings, leaving little time for threat hunting, investigating, and brainstorming long-term changes.

In the financial services sector, for example, it has been stated that organisations are subjected to over 2,000 attacks every minute, with breaches and sensitive data theft tripling in the last five years. Many of those attacks might be addressed instantly with automation, freeing up bandwidth for security analysts to fix flaws and making it more difficult for hackers to access critical information.

  • Using automatic incident response to combat cyberattacks: The nature and severity of security events vary, and certain industries are suffering more than others. 

For example, while phishing assaults are on the rise everywhere, the healthcare business has experienced a surge, with the majority of them directed at collecting credentials from people within hospital databases.

The retail industry is coping with unprecedented levels of ransomware assaults, and hackers are increasingly targeting susceptible factory floor control networks.

SOAR platforms can detect and investigate the sources of these types of threats autonomously.

  • Improving overall vulnerability management: A SOAR solution can ensure that your security team triages and handles the risk caused by newly identified vulnerabilities in your environment. 

As a result, they may be proactive, obtaining more information on weak points and properly researching them, while also putting measures in place to prevent breaches or other assaults.

  • Penetration testing: According to eSecurity Planet’s 2019 State of IT Security report, about 40% of businesses do not undertake penetration testing consistently or at all. 

SOAR solutions can automate tasks like asset detection scans, classification, and target prioritisation, allowing security teams to operationalize their penetration testing efforts.

Benefits Of SOAR

  • Meet fiscal requirements: The increasing quantity and variety of risks pose substantial budgetary challenges for businesses. With each new threat, a new protocol must be devised, which may need the hiring of additional personnel to handle the process. 

With SOAR, each aspect of the approach is streamlined, and most of it can be automated, saving time and money.

  • Improve time management and efficiency: Because a SOAR strategy saves time, productivity increases. Team members who would ordinarily spend countless hours completing tasks that SOAR has automated can now devote their time to supporting other corporate goals.
  • Improve incident management: When hazards are dealt with more rapidly, businesses benefit as well. The SOAR architecture enables faster response times and more precise interventions. 

Because fewer mistakes are made, less time is required to remedy problems.

  • SOAR can be configured to meet the specific demands of a business. SOAR’s design allows it to adapt to the needs of the existing security system. 
  • Improved collaboration: As various sorts of threats are addressed by the central SOAR system, teams that would ordinarily handle these on an individual level can work on developing the appropriate SOAR settings and automation tools.

SOAR difficulties

SOAR is not a replacement for other security measures, but rather a supplement. SOAR platforms are not intended to replace human analysts, but rather to supplement their abilities and procedures for more effective incident identification and response.

Other potential disadvantages of SOAR include the following:

  • Failure to address a larger security strategy; 
  • misaligned expectations; 
  • deployment and management complexity; and 
  • a lack of or inadequate metrics

SOAR Platform Development (Evolution)

While SOAR used to just mean orchestration, threat intelligence platforms were only used for threat intelligence programmes, and SIRPs (security incident response platforms) were only used for incident response, the definitions and applications of these technologies have rapidly developed. The market needs a security operations platform to boost SOC efficiencies and effectiveness.

The Securaa platform assists analysts in the following ways:

  • activities should be prioritised
  • triage should be simplified
  • automate reactions to formalise IR
  • facilitate investigations, and keep network and endpoint security measures up to date
  • make collaboration easier

SOAR providers

Soar Platform Gartner, 2020 SOAR market guide includes a list of representative vendors and their products, such as;

  • Anomali ThreatStream
  • Cyware Virtual Cyber Fusion Center
  • D3 Security D3 SOAR
  • DFLabs Inc Man SOAR
  • EclecticIQ Platform
  • FireEye Helix
  • IBM Security Resilient

And many others are included. 

Some Of The Best SOAR Tools To Go For;

  • Splunk Phantom.Best SOAR Tools Securaa
  • IBM Resilient.
  • DFLabs IncMan.
  • Insightconnect.
  • RespondX.
  • Exabeam.
  • ServiceNow.
  • SIRP.

One Market Case Example Is;

AIOPS and SOAR;

Artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) solutions that collect data in order to automate and analyse IT procedures. These solutions go beyond the level of automation provided by SOAR platforms, yet they are ultimately supported by the aggregation provided by SOAR systems. 

The inclusion of a SOAR platform increases an enterprise’s ability to leverage actual machine learning and higher levels of automation found in AIOps. Given this relationship, it is feasible that AIOps may be integrated into the security platform suites of large companies such as IBM, Splunk, and others, as SOAR was.

How Can Securaa Assist?

Securaa is a soar platform open source, which includes all of the characteristics of a SOAR system in a way that allows your IT team—and your entire organization—to operate more efficiently. Modules comprise the platform’s foundation. Securaa includes modules for vulnerability management, incident response, legal processes, automation, notifications, and other functions. It also allows you to customise modules to meet the procedures of your organisation.

When you click on a module, you receive access to all of the fields contained within. Using Securaa’s role-based identity management, you can restrict who can see what. Even if a user has access to a module, you can restrict what they can see once inside it.

Wrapping Up

SOAR Platform can help you improve your security operations. You have the potential to provide your security team with the ability to accomplish the impossible: 

keep up with the never-ending security warnings that plague a highly sophisticated IT system. SOAR frees your team from dealing with false positives, repetitive alarms, and low-risk warnings, allowing you to shift from a reactive to a more proactive strategy. Rather than battling fires, security analysts can use their skills and thorough training to improve your organization’s overall security posture.

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