What is SOAR? Functional Components & Benefits
Unsure how to track threats proactively? Take your business further by deploying automation in day-to-day security activities and identify the potential harm in real-time!
Quick Summary: Cybersecurity continues to be a topic of debate. With a visible gap in the skills available and needed in the virtual security department, employers often scramble to fill positions with suitable candidates. If your organization also struggles with a similar issue, here is a perfect solution to operate your firm’s regular security tasks without hassle!
Introduction
Many organizations have begun relying on online platforms or cloud applications to store confidential data. It is understandable as data stored virtual calls for less effort and hassles. It rules out the need to maintain big, intimidating files with hundreds of pages containing customer information, employee data, etc. However, as it is said, “Nothing great ever came that easy.” Like various other things, this virtual transition of corporations accompanied a very malicious danger; cybercrimes.
The digital world exposes you to threats and attacks. Cybersecurity risks continue to increase. As per the FBI reports, there was an increase in cybercrimes by 300 percent worldwide since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2019-2020. With cybercriminals honing their skills to break even the most stringent security measures by utilizing sophisticated plans, it becomes necessary to devise a strategy to ensure your business’s safety.
Read the article to learn about the ideal technique to protect and secure your critical systems with an efficient threat detection and response system!
What is SOAR?
SOAR (security orchestration, automation, and response) is a combination of various software applications that allow an organization to gather data about security risks and respond to these incidents without the need for human intervention. A SOAR platform is intended to improve the effectiveness of both physical and digital operations.
An example of SOAR is automated phishing emails. A security to the organization is Phishing emails meticulously engineered to execute data breaches. SOAR investigates potentially harmful emails by gathering the information from the header, attached URL, email addresses, etc. By integrating the SOAR platform with other IT tools, you can automatically analyze the data and identify the threat.
If any threat is discovered, the SOAR platform either blocks or quarantines the email or may block the IP address. This way, the platform shortens the response and investigation time. When paired with important threat data, it simplifies the job of security operations centers (SOC) by minimizing low-level incidents while containing threats and thus significantly lowering organizational risk.
What are the functional components of SOAR?
A SOAR system is made of three parts, namely: Orchestration, Automation, and Response. The functionality of these components is as follows:
- Orchestration
Orchestration fastens up the process of incident response by combining security tools and technology. The integration of various technologies together helps detect complex cybersecurity incidents as well. SOAR comes with the possibility of integrating IT operational tools with security tools.
- Automation
Manually identifying and resolving security problems leads to several repeated operations. Since this incident response has several repetitive steps, they can be automated with the help of a SOAR system.
SOAR systems, for instance, can handle specific events, produce a response to them, and eliminate laborious analysis of each incident to determine the valid security concern. SOAR systems enable security professionals to establish, automate, and standardize routine procedures such as health checks, decision-making workflows, and audit functionalities.
- Response
SOAR acquires data from the various integrated security tools by interacting with threat intelligence feeds and SIEM. It helps in the assessment and prioritization of security events. Moreover, all the information and the complete report are passed to the security personnel after the event analysis. It also offers collaboration, case management, task management, and communication among security operations center (SOC) personnel.
What are the benefits of SOAR to an organization?
To manage the increasing cyber threats, the shortage of experienced professionals, and the constant monitoring of IT infrastructure, organizations require a platform like SOAR. SOAR is suitable for all organizations. It helps organizations to discover and respond to cyber-attacks. Moreover, it has several other benefits as well. They are as follows:
- Quicker Response Time
Security orchestration combines several alarms from different systems into one event. Security automation saves a lot of time as the system is capable of tackling the warnings without the need for any human assistance. Moreover, with the automation of the decision-making process, a quicker alert response can be issued, reducing the damage.
- Easier management of Operations
Each component of SOAR helps in making security operations simple and streamlined. With the help of security orchestration, the data from various sources is collected. On the other hand, security automation assists in handling threats and incidents that are of lower priority. Such a quick response also reduces the chances of possibilities, thus decreasing the cyberattack dwell time and reducing the impact on the organization.
- Smooth Integration of technology
The most significant advantage of having a SOAR in an organization is its flexibility to integrate with other technologies and products. The SIAR platform can easily integrate with email security, IT and Infrastructure, Endpoint Security, Identity, Access Management, etc. The organization can incorporate new products and technologies by making a few clicks and adding the component to the playbook.
- Automation of Standardised Operations and Processes
Organizations can save considerable time by automating standardized processes and operations by implementing SOAR. With the help of security automation, the SOC does not have to handle repetitive tasks. Such functions and operations are included in the SOAR, enabling the system to tackle such incidents. A competent SOAR platform will have all these processes and procedures in its playbooks, making it capable of producing an end-to-end response.
- Capabilities for automated reporting and metrics
SOAR systems come with the capability of producing computerized reports. Moreover, there is no need to analyze the data manually as the system can do it. Due to this automation, SOC professionals can generate reports related to a business within seconds by giving a few commands. They can even schedule the delivery of these reports so companies can get reliable information on time. To make things even easier, most SOAR products also include templates that can help organizations make reports quickly.
- Cost Effective
SOAR helps in reducing the cost. Instead of manually carrying out the threat analysis and the response process, it is automated, saving the security analysts’ efforts and time. Moreover, SOAR reduces the 69% training cost of security analysts, 90% on reporting, 70% on alert handling, etc.
How can NewEvol help your company?
Operating security operations can be exhausting. Efficiency and speed are critical, but simultaneously, it is difficult to synchronize all the systems. Moreover, the volume of notifications from various systems can overwhelm analysts. Further, acquiring and correlating the data required to distinguish the actual threats from false ones is time-consuming; hence, SOAR is needed.
Our SOAR solutions efficiently help in handling critical security issues. The organization can enhance the automation process and instantly respond to threats and potential attacks lurking in the network. NewEvol offers a clear idea about the details of each incident by employing the latest technology tool such as ML.
Our product stands out from other security tools owing to its exponential features. Some of them are:
- Our SOAR solutions assist a company in reverting to potential attacks with a single click in a real-time environment.
- Businesses can avail of security orchestration with a single console ranging from case creation to investigation to remediation.
- Our cutting-edge playbooks for efficient incident response are customizable and well-equipped to counterattack cyber attacks.
Besides safeguarding a company from cybercrimes, we also help them boost their performance with our meticulous solutions. NewEvol SOAR comes with various benefits. Some of them are:
- The organization can automate repetitive mundane tasks, allowing their employees to focus on high-level and critical activities using our flow-controlled playbooks or linear-style playbooks.
- Integrating an organization’s security tools with SOAR will enable them to perform bidirectional integration with several security products.
- Organizations can increase their functionality and productivity by minimizing manual work.
