А cyber attack is expected to happen every 11 seconds in 2021, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. This fact only underlines what cybersecurity experts have been predicting for a long time - The age of SOAR security in SOCs is already at our doorstep. All we have to do is open the door.
To prevent irreparable damage, alerts need to be sorted in minutes, not days and weeks. Luckily, that’s where Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) steps in.
Thanks to its machine learning algorithm, SOAR reshapes the core of your SecOps workflow and skyrockets your incident response time, SOC productivity, threat hunting capabilities, and on top of that, SOAR automates a wide array of your SecOps.
How exactly does SOAR do that? Read on to find out.
The importance of adopting SOAR security
SOAR Security Benefit #1: Automation
One of SOAR’s biggest strengths is its ability to apply automation into SecOps. By automating processes SOAR frees up a lot of your analysts’ time, which they could use for more strategic initiatives rather than spending it on repetitive, menial tasks.
By automating repetitive tasks, you liberate your analysts from completing those tasks themselves. And, considering that analysts are paid to do more than just investigate alerts, you’ll be getting your money’s worth and thus increase the ROI from your investment in analysts.
Via standard operating procedures (SOPs), SOAR defines a consistent flow that covers end-to-end incident processes. SOAR automates tedious processes such as documentation of the incident and collecting alert information. Plus, via its progressive automation capabilities backed by a machine learning engine, SOAR can be instructed to fully automate low-risk tasks, without the need for human assistance.
And the best thing about security automation in SOAR is that it is totally adjustable. You decide which processes you want to automate and which ones you’d like to semi-automate or handle manually.
SOAR Security Benefit #2: Skill Shortage Resolution
The current pace at which threats are evolving is increasing the demand for qualified security professionals. The only problem is that in the past few years there have been more alerts than cybersecurity professionals available.
In other words, there is a lack of qualified security experts on the market. And many companies have limited budgets when it comes to hiring security professionals. This issue is resolved by SOAR. The way that it’s done is that by applying automation and orchestration, SOAR allows your SOC productivity to increase by 10x whilst allowing your security professionals to have more time to focus on more prominent threats.
So, by incorporating SOAR security into your SOC, you will both make your security professionals happier by allowing them to up their expertise by focusing on more challenging tasks, and you will also diminish the need of hiring more analysts to handle the continuous influx of alerts.
SOAR Security Benefit #3: Enhanced incident response
SOCs are struggling to respond to alerts and incidents in a timely manner. That’s not exactly news.
Most SOCs can’t cope with the huge volumes of alerts, and it may take days and weeks for them to respond to alerts. And by that time, hackers will have already inflicted their intended damage.
As we are very well aware, hackers are already using ML-backed technology to launch attacks. This only means that SOC teams must reciprocate in the same manner. Cloud SOAR, in particular, gives SOCs a much-needed boost thanks to its machine learning engine.
Cloud SOAR uses its machine-learning algorithm to store relevant data regarding incidents and alerts and uses that data to build its own proprietary knowledge base. Based on that knowledge, Cloud SOAR formulates a well-researched response and recommends the best resolutions regarding a specific incident.
If there is precedent regarding an incident that Cloud SOAR has stored in its knowledge base, Cloud SOAR will notify the analysts of the type of response that was used in the past so they can significantly improve the incident response process.
SOAR Security Benefit #4: Orchestrate tools with ease
In their everyday tasks, analysts are obliged to jump from one tool to another. And the process of managing too many tools is troublesome and slows down the operational processes.
Thanks to its orchestration capabilities, Cloud SOAR allows SOC teams to work as a unified entity. By providing a customizable dashboard through which analysts, analysts can easily interact with multiple tools and gain access to relevant incident data with ease.
Plus, thanks to its Open Integration Framework, not only does SOAR allow you to orchestrate your existing set of tools, but it also allows you to integrate with some of the most popular security technologies and add them into your tech repertoire. The process of integrating tools is seamless, and you can do it with very little coding experience required.
SOAR helps overcome the biggest challenges
SOAR overcomes the challenges previous technologies failed to overcome.
It’s as simple as that.
SOAR directly treats some of the most pressing modern challenges that cause headaches to every CISO:
Too many alerts to handle
Lack of skilled security professionals
Loads of repetitive SecOps
Poor incident response time
Too many false positives
These are some of the most common challenges present-day SOCs are facing, and chances are, your SOC is one of them.
We are all aware that AI, machine learning, and progressive automation are no longer a figment of our imagination. Nor are they a thing of the future. They are already here, and even though their capabilities are still young, hackers and other malicious actors are already using them. And as the old adage goes - you fight fire with fire.
Summary
SOAR works hand in hand with your security professionals to optimize the path from incident discovery to incident remediation. SOAR presents the best route to completing SecOps and offers its expertise gained thanks to its machine learning engine to enrich the incidents with just the right data.
Ultimately, SOAR enhances accuracy in threat detection, accelerates the investigation process, and automates the incident response.
Bottom line is, AI and machine learning are the next big thing in cybersecurity. Security professionals are drowning in too much information than they can handle, and the longer we postpone the reality that security automation is a necessity rather than a luxury, the worse the consequences will be.
The age of SOAR is already at our doorstep. All we have to do is open the door.
Learn more about the powers of SOAR and discover its endless potential.
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