What is SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response)?

Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response, or SOAR is a technology that promises to streamline and automate security operations. It has become an indispensable tool for modern security operations centers (SOC).

SOAR can address a variety of security-related challenges including:

• Inefficient Incident Response:
• Alert Overload:
• Complexity of Security Tools:
• Lack of Visibility:

These challenges impact an organization’s threat handling and response effectiveness and increase the likelihood and impact of cyberattacks. SOAR is designed to address these challenges by automating and streamlining security operations, improving incident response times, informing investigations, extending visibility, and enhancing overall security efficacy.

SOAR tools allow an organization to define incident analysis and response procedures in a digital workflow format.” Gartner defines SOAR as solutions that combine incident response, orchestration and automation, and threat intelligence platform management capabilities in a single platform. According to Gartner’s 2023 Market Guide for Security Orchestration, Automation and Response Solutions, modern-day enterprises leverage SOAR tools to document and implement security processes, support security incident management, provide machine-based assistance to security teams, and better operationalizethreat intelligence.

What is SOAR: Security Automation vs. Security Orchestration

It’s important for a security team to understand SOAR workflows for orchestrating and automating their security operation. Often the terms security orchestration and automation are used interchangeably in the cybersecurity landscape.

However, it’s imperative to understand that both terms have different meanings and objectives. When automation emerged, it became a significant asset for security teams that were tired of mundane, time-consuming, and low-level tasks. Following this, orchestration came into the picture, enhancing time and resource management for security teams, helping them respond faster to incidents, and prioritizing important tasks.

Security automation is the automatic handling of tasks in cybersecurity systems without the need for human intervention.

On the contrary, security orchestration refers to employing numerous automation tasks across different platforms. Automation tasks are part of the overallorchestration process, which includes more complex schemes and tasks. In a nutshell, orchestration is nothing but the automated coordination and management of different systems, services, and middleware. Security orchestration utilizes several automated as well as semi-automated actions to implement a complex process, which can comprise multiple automated tasks or systems.

It focuses on streamlining and optimizing repetitive processes and ensures the accurate execution of tasks. Whenever a process becomes monotonous and can be automated, orchestration is used to optimize the process and eradicate redundancies.

Automation and orchestration can be best comprehended by distinguishing between a single function and a complete process. While automation just handles one task, orchestration uses a complex set of tasks as well as processes. Automation allows security teams to perform time-consuming tasks smoothly without any human intervention, enabling them to take a more proactive approach toward potential threats. The aim of orchestration is to optimize a process.

The Benefits of SOAR

At its core, SOAR is about automation and integration. By connecting disparate security tools and systems, SOAR streamlines workflows, reduces manual tasks, and enables security analysts to focus on activities that require human reasoning and intelligence. By automating repetitive and high-confidence tasks, overall response times can be improved, security staff can work more efficiently, and ultimately enhance an organization’s overall security posture.

SOAR is designed to be a game-changing technology that transforms the way organizations investigate and respond to security incidents, enhancing the speed and effectiveness of reactive security.

• Faster Incident Response:
• Better Efficiency:
• Expanded Scalability:
• Advanced Metrics and Governance:
• Improved ROI:

Organizations need to carefully weigh the gains available through SOAR against the costs, both upfront and ongoing, of implementing SOAR since it includes many value propositions, but these do not come for free. To ensure a satisfactory ROI, organizations should thoroughly assess the costs, benefits, and potential challenges associated with implementing and administering a SOAR solution. Conducting a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis, evaluating the specific needs of the organization, and selecting a solution that aligns with those needs can help maximize the ROI and ensure the successful adoption of SOAR technology.

Finding a SOAR Platform

Investing in SOAR can help you protect your organization from cyber threats and minimize the impact of security incidents. With its advanced automation and orchestration capabilities, SOAR can help you respond to security incidents faster and more effectively. Moreover, it can reduce the workload on security teams, enabling them to focus on more critical tasks and improving their overall efficiency.

Baseline SOAR Capabilities

While there isn't a universally defined set of baseline capabilities for SOAR, there are several fundamental functionalities that are included in a robust SOAR platform. These include:

• Orchestration and Automation:
• Case Management:
• Automated Incident Management:
• Vulnerability Management:
• Threat Hunting:
• Playbooks and Workflows:
• Reporting and Metrics:
• Improved Threat Intelligence:
• Faster Response Time:
• Improved SOCs with Standardized Processes:
• Proactive Resolution of Security Alerts:
• Lowered Costs:
• Consistency and Compliance:

It’s important to note that SOAR capabilities can vary across different vendors and implementations. Organizations should evaluate their specific needs and requirements when selecting a SOAR solution to ensure it aligns with the objectives of their security operations center (SOC).

SOAR Capabilities that Create Compelling Value

By investing in an advanced SOAR solution, organizations can improve their ability to detect and respond to threats, while also reducing the risk of human error and improving overall efficiency. What sets an advanced SOAR platform apart from legacy ones are the capabilities that create compelling value.

• Threat Intelligence Aggregation:
• Integrated Capability:
• Seamless Integration with Existing Tools:
• No-Code/Low-Code Security Automation:

What is a Low-code SOAR Platform?

SOAR security vendors have started modifying their SOAR platforms in a low-code environment. So, what is a low-code SOAR platform? Low-code SOAR platforms are the ones that enable users with limited programming knowledge or technical experience to create or enhance software applications and build automated workflows on visual, drag-and-drop editors.Low-code SOAR platforms come with pre-built modules, functionalities, and rules for common use cases and repeatable actions that can be quickly combined to create complete services, workflows, and apps. These can be enhanced with customized, hand-coded features by more skilled developers at a later stage, if necessary.

While low-code SOAR is gaining momentum in the cybersecurity landscape, some enterprises have also started leveraging no-code security automation. No-code SOAR or lightweight security automation platforms eliminate the trouble of writing codes and take a codeless approach to security automation. Let’s find out the difference between low-code SOAR and no-code SOAR platforms.

Low-Code SOAR vs. No-Code SOAR

To begin with, both low-code SOAR and no-code SOAR platforms differ in terms of their capability to integrate. While low-code SOAR platforms come with larger prebuilt integration libraries and also allow security teams to build their own integrations with Python editor modules, no-code SOAR platforms are preconfigured with libraries of integrations that require the users to leverage REST APIs for building their own integrations.

When it comes to playbook customization, low-code SOAR allows customization of playbooks for a wide range of unique use cases, whereas no-code SOAR restricts customization as it offers inbuilt templates that support specific actions.

How similar or different low-code SOAR and no-code SOAR are to each other can be clearly said when more and more organizations start to embark on their low-code or no-code security automation journey.

• Deployment Flexibility:
• Dashboards and Reporting for SOC Management:

Cyware’s SOAR Solution

Cyware is an expert in the world of preventing cyber threats. We provide an advanced SOAR solution by combining three separate but integrated modules:

A full-incident analysis and response platform, designed to facilitate collaboration between disparate security teams against malware, vulnerabilities, and threat actors affecting digital and human assets in real-time.

When facing potential threats from around the internet, you need an advanced SOAR solution to fit into your security process. Trust Cyware for all your cybersecurity threat-hunting and prevention needs.