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

Security Orchestration Automation and Response

Posted on: July 12, 2022

With multiple security tools available in the market, enterprises need an integrated approach to connect them all so that they can take threat data and alerts from diverse sources and automate their workflows for every security process. Vendor-agnostic security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) platforms have the capability to integrate different technologies and allow security teams to automate time-consuming, manual actions at machine speeds. By integrating with DevOps and IT technologies, vendor-agnostic SOAR platforms enable the SecOps team to collaborate under one roof, giving them a holistic view of the cybersecurity environment. Also, these platforms enable the correlation of internal threat intelligence with external threat intelligence sources to foster complete threat visibility and response.

While most organizations are grappling to achieve their security goals, the smarter ones are turning toward vendor-agnostic SOAR solutions to streamline their security operations. With an effective vendor-agnostic SOAR platform, organizations can build automated workflows to spot cybersecurity risks and react to complex security incidents at machine speed.

What is Vendor-Agnostic SOAR?

The SOAR solutions that are capable of interacting with the entire security technology ecosystem are called “vendor-agnostic”. Such SOAR platforms are driven by customers’ needs and are not predisposed toward any particular technology, allowing customers to choose the security tools that are right for them. Vendor-agnostic SOAR companies, also referred to as “vendor-neutral” SOAR companies, prioritize flexibility to find the right solutions and eliminate reliance on a single vendor.

In a nutshell, vendor-agnostic SOAR is an approach to connecting the entire security infrastructure with all deployed technologies to talk to one another for better, automated incident response. Most networks are irretrievable with regard to network software and hardware and the different vendors and technologies that are used. Enabling systems to talk to each other is a difficult challenge that some SOAR vendors are turning toward.

The need to manage several security technologies can stress the security teams. Constant monitoring of a multitude of systems is a tedious job. Also, switching between different systems makes the situation worse, costing teams time and effort, as well as elevating the risk of mistakes being made. This is where vendor-agnostic SOAR comes into the picture and empowers SOCs, SecOps, and DevSecOps teams around the world to expedite and scale their security operations, bolstering their ability to determine suspicious behaviors, perform quick investigations, and remediate threats.

Benefits of Vendor-Agnostic SOAR

Today, large enterprises have more than 100 different security technologies from different vendors deployed in their security operations centers (SOCs). While it’s important for them to communicate with each other, integrating them together is a nightmare for SOC teams. Enterprises have been relying on a combination of multiple SOAR (security orchestration, automation and response) capabilities to connect all tools. However such integrations are tremendously complex, time-consuming, and lack scalability. With vendor-agnostic SOAR, security teams can deploy a single centralized and decoupled orchestration layer that connects every security, IT, and DevOps technology across cloud and on-premise environments.

Instead of employing multiple SOAR solutions for incident response, organizations should go for vendor-agnostic SOAR products. Such SOAR solutions enable a centralized analysis of entire data, helping security analysts triage cases as per the gravity of the affected business functions. Besides, organizations enjoy improved efficiency and greater productivity with vendor-agnostic SOAR solutions.

Security teams benefit from vendor-agnostic SOAR solutions over vendor-specific SOAR tools for the following reasons:

Centralized Orchestration

Vendor-agnostic SOAR platforms deliver centralized orchestration, improved automated workflows, and real-time response. Such tools also expand the scope for customization, enabling security teams to design solutions that meet their security needs. This freedom empowers enterprises to keep their existing solutions while adding a new orchestration layer to make sure their security processes are appropriately automated and orchestrated.

Stable Integration with Security Tools

The effectiveness of a security orchestration, automation and response platform is measured by its ability to integrate. With vendor-agnostic SOAR platforms, maintaining integrations is easy. Vendor-agnostic SOAR tools smartly integrate with a wide spectrum of security tools, providing a comprehensive view of the infrastructure. These tools improve the efficiency of security analysts by helping them identify threats and safeguard the organization from threats. Also, vendor-agnostic tools reduce the need to learn about numerous security tools.

Pinpoint Process Gaps

Data synchronization is a key feature of a vendor-agnostic SOAR platform that allows organizations to seamlessly synchronize their data between disparate third-party security tools. This enables organizations to gain insights into real-time data with regard to incident response and helps CISOs to identify the process gaps and allot the necessary tasks to the right people.

Prevent Vendor Lock-In

Vendor-specific SOAR platforms limit the scalability of SOCs (security operations centers) by completely tying them to their products. Vendor-agnostic SOAR platforms, on the other hand, are designed to be in tune with other security tools and technologies. The best way to prevent vendor lock-in is to wisely choose an independent SOAR vendor in the first place.

Eliminate Vendor Fatigue

With more and more vendor-specific SOAR platforms than ever, enterprises are overwhelmed with signing contracts with them bearing operational overhead. Having multiple security technologies that don’t interoperate with one another is a difficult situation to be in for organizations. Vendor-agnostic SOAR platforms allow organizations to choose robust technologies while enabling them to enjoy improved security automation and orchestration.

Fulfill Complex Needs

While some organizations have security orchestration needs that can be met by a single vendor, many enterprises cannot find a vendor who can fulfill all their requirements. Vendor-agnostic SOAR platforms make it simpler for companies to find and deploy the best solutions.

Support MSSPs and MDRs

Managing the security needs of a large number of clients requires different technologies and workforce. The vendor-specific SOAR platforms lack scalability, add operational overhead per client, and generate massive threat alerts. Vendor-agnostic SOAR platforms support multi-tenancy, tools deployed on different environments, and integration with a variety of security tools, benefitting managed security service providers (MSSPs) and managed detection and response (MDR) providers in security orchestration.

Cost Savings

Cost is one of the fundamental aspects of security automation and orchestration. By helping security operations centers become more efficient and productive, vendor-agnostic SOAR solutions are one of the great ways to reduce operational costs.

Moving Beyond Vendor-Specific SOAR

SOAR solutions are all about prioritizing incident response activities and reducing mean time to respond (MTTR), keeping pace with today’s evolving cybersecurity landscape. Instead of moving beyond point-to-point integrations for their technology stack, security teams can rely on a vendor-agnostic SOAR solution that empowers them to improve various security operations and connects them with the right people and technology to meet their security goals.

Cyware Orchestrate: The Next-Gen Vendor-Agnostic SOAR Platform

Cyware Orchestrate is a vendor-agnostic orchestration platform for connecting and automating cyber, IT, and DevOps workflows across cloud, on-premise, and hybrid environments. This independent, decoupled any-to-any orchestration platform offers out-of-the-box and customizable integrations, helping SecOps teams integrate and automate security workflows using 300+ app integrations, as well as build custom apps from scratch. Apart from full customization features, our vendor-neutral SOAR platform enables orchestration across multiple deployment environments with nested playbooks and flexible APIs.

The entire product suite of Cyware functions as a cyber fusion center, which integrates all security functions under one roof and provides a single pane of glass to security teams, fostering collaboration and faster threat response.

Read more about Cyware’s vendor-agnostic SOAR solution in Gartner’s 2022 Market Guide for SOAR Solutions.

To know more about Cyware’s suite of products, book a free demo.