You may not be aware of it, but you continuously broadcast yourself and what you’re doing–every word, photo, or video, can reveal your life. Unfortunately, people can take advantage of this information to access your accounts or steal your identity. That’s why it’s essential to follow a SOAR security strategy to make your online presence more private.
SOAR stands for “secure, open, aware, and responsible.” By following these simple steps, you can keep your personal information out of the hands of would-be intruders. and You’ll also maintain your privacy online.
In this guide, I’ll explain SOAR in detail.
What Is SOAR?
SOAR is a platform where you can perform tasks to protect your company’s assets and incident responders trained in using these technologies. SOAR combines three distinct capabilities markets: security orchestration, security automation, and incident response. These capabilities markets respond to attacks on networks or computers in your company. It also provides visibility into threats from humanly offered tips. and Lastly, it also triggers any alarm from sensors installed around the perimeter.
These three pillarsmarkets gather intelligence via monitoring programs. These collect data from across the network or even outside it, so you can detect threats before they become serious problems.
The SOAR technologies will also help you to carry out your company’s security processes. In addition, these developed systems can also identify and respond quickly to errors, even when faced with low-level events throughout the day. This way, you don’t have any gaps in protection!
Let’s take a look at each featuremarket separately.
Security Orchestration
The cybersecurity industry is a $6 billion sector of the global economy, with security operations teams employing hundreds of tools to prevent and detect threats. Security orchestration is a critical process to manage these security operations.
Security orchestration combines your company’s necessary tools and techniques to perform specific tasks. It also saves time from doing these tasks manually or with spreadsheets.
The number of security tools used by a company’s cybersecurity operations team can be daunting. It also isn’t easy to track what each tool does, and even harder to remember when their last update happened. In turn, these tools become more susceptible, but they also leave other members at risk. Imagine what would happen if no one knows about your company’s vulnerabilities!
Security orchestration is also necessary to adequately combine these resources and technologies. Otherwise, your company is at a high risk of inefficiency.
Security Automation
It takes a lot of time to manage offload low-priority and repetitive tasks. Security automation brings all security processes into one place. Technology can also perform tasks that normally need human assistance. Security automation combines applications and infrastructure without any extra work. Increased security automation also integrates processes, applications, and infrastructure.
If you replace routine tasks with automation, you’ll also free up your team’s time. In turn, they can spend time on important work, like provisioning and scripting. In addition, this will also let them focus where it’s most needed.
Orchestration vs. Automation
Security orchestration and automation are closely related concepts, but they also have some essential differences. Look at this table so you can see it better:
| Orchestration | Automation |
| Allows companies to perform complex tasks and secure their network | Handles tasks automatically in your information security systems |
| Combines coordination and management of systems, middleware, or services | Removes the need for human intervention, so it’s more secure |
| Makes it hard for companies to solve significant scenarios with multiple platforms | Allows you to automate multiple tasks within one product. |
The Verdict
Orchestration and automation go hand in hand in your SOAR security strategy. They’re also useful to mitigate security risks in your company. It’s also worth noting that you should consider implementing security automation, because it also has many defensive features. For example, it protects you from spam emails and blocks malicious sites. It can also ensure you don’t miss any notifications about data breaches.
Incident Response
Incident response is an organized approach to handling and managing security incidents. This process aims to handle situations with minimal damage. It also lessens the time it takes for you to get back up after an attack.
Incident response is the process of investigating and analyzing informed security incidents. Its team includes IT staff, C-suite members, and other experts in information technology. In addition, the CSIRT consists of those who work with computers: system administrators or software engineers. They include people at all levels. The SOAR system also helps CSIRT teams automatically collect essential information, data artifacts, or log data from multiple systems.
Now, I’ll explain the pros and cons of using the SOAR security strategy.
The Pros & Cons of SOAR
SOAR’s security strategy is to make your online presence more private. Does this system really secure you while being online? Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of SOAR security.
| Pros | Cons |
| Allows companies to better understand their security status and make more informed decisions. | Is only for companies with solid security cultures and clear plans. |
| Centralizes processes and operations for an alert system and effective triage, so it allows swifter vital responses if any issues arise. | Leads management away from valuable human expertise if you’re in a shaky foundation. |
| Utilizes all tools at your disposal, so it ensures maximum value. | Might not deliver desired results as expected! |
| Enables security professionals to focus on the more complex and challenging tasks, so it leaves a lighter load for those who have converted. | Can be inaccurate, so you need to set out clear expectations and craft metrics so you can measure its success. |
| Provides transparency in your business, which helps create more accessible communication across departments because everyone knows what they’re working towards together. | Is complex |
| Allows you to consume your time more efficiently and solve more extensive issues with automated security tools. | Has challenging integrations. |
| Improves the efficacy and efficiency of operations. | Can’t define a security strategy. |
| Reduces standardized processes and manual operations. | Lacks support for security-centric culture. |
| Reduces cyber attack impact. | Relies on software. |
| Captures knowledge and streamlines reporting. | Redirects staff resources to technology resources. |
| Delivers the best quality intelligence. | Has unrealistic expectations. |
9 SOAR Use Cases & Capabilities
In this section, I’ll show you 9 use cases for SOAR, so you can see how you can implement it.
1. Combined Remediation and Phishing Investigation
To protect your online privacy, you should know about all the different attacks. One especially hazardous attack is a phishing attack. Phishing is when a hacker sends you a fake email or text message that looks legitimate. Instead, it’s a malicious link or attachment. This can also compromise your personal information!
SOAR is also essential to spot and remedy a phishing attack. It can also help you act if you think you’ve received one.
2. Endpoint Protection
One important way to protect your online privacy is to use endpoint protection software. SOAR can help protect your computer or device from malware and other attacks. SOAR also secures your different endpoints, like laptops and desktops. That’ll also prevent attackers from accessing your internal network through these devices.
3. Forensic Investigation
A forensic investigation is crucial in determining the extent of a data breach. When you think your privacy may have been compromised, it’s vital to collect all the evidence. That way, you can conduct a thorough investigation. Using SOAR will also help you determine what information was accessed and how the breach occurred.
4. Identity Verification
You can protect your privacy through identity verification. This process confirms your identity by asking you a series of questions that only you would know the answer to. That also helps to ensure that only you can access your accounts. It also keeps your information safe. Identity verification is also a vital part of SOAR!
5. Insider Threat Detection
An insider threat is a danger that comes from within an organization, not outside threats. These people have access to your systems and data , so they may also steal or misuse your information.
That’s why it’s essential to have a strong Insider Threat Detection program. SOAR regularly monitors your systems. It also includes employee training on how to spot and report insider threats.
6. Malicious Network Traffic
One of the dangers of going online is that malicious network traffic can easily access your computer. That puts your personal information at risk. This type of traffic can also come from hackers, criminals, or even spies. To protect yourself from these threats, it’s essential to use the SOAR security strategy. It can send out notifications, but it also identifies similar occurrences in the future! That’ll also shield you from potential malicious traffic.
8. SIEM Incident Triage
If your organization uses a legacy SIEM solution, it may not provide the necessary incident context. It may also require you to gather additional information. As SOC teams are limited in number, they’ll eventually exhaust their resources dealing with security alerts. In turn, they’ll also become open to attacker infiltration. Using the SOAR strategy gives you maximum security, and it allows you to deal with security alerts timely.
9. Threat Hunting and Intelligence
Threat hunting is identifying and eliminating potential security threats before they can cause damage. It also involves actively searching for threats, using various methods, like malware analysis, network traffic analysis, and threat intelligence.
You can stay ahead of the latest security threats and protect yourself and your organization from harm by using threat intelligence in SOAR.
I’ve shown you the most typical SOAR capabilities, but you may still be wondering ‘How does it differ from SIEM?’. Let’s see that in the next section.
SOAR vs. SIEM
SOAR and SIEM tools are designed to help companies deal with the high volume of security-related information they receive. Let’s see their differences head to head.
SOAR
We’ve already covered SOAR in detail, but in a nutshell, it provides a robust infrastructure for managing patient data. It also has features to facilitate case management and analysis.
SIEM
SIEMs are a great way to get security intelligence into your organization. They can analyze log data from different IT systems and alert engineers when they find something potentially dangerous. For example, if an employee’s computer appears to be in use by someone outside the company, it might be malicious software! Of course, that’ll cause serious business interruption.
In that case, SIEM collects event logs from individual devices such as switches, routers, and firewalls. In turn, this provides an IT expert with comprehensive analytics on their users’ behavior. That’ll also give them everything they need without having too many different programs running simultaneously.
Combining SOAR and SIEM
Integrating SIEM tools with a SOAR solution creates an efficient, robust, and responsive security program. It allows for the production of more meaningful alerts that your team can effectively respond to.
The two complement each other: integrating them both increases efficiency. Together, they also provide additional value in reliability and frequency/relevance. The partnership between these technologies produces superior results. It’s much better to use them in tandem than to use them separately.
SOAR Vendors: What You’re Looking for in a SOAR Platform
It’s essential to find the right SOAR platform vendor who offers multi-tenancy, cloud-deployed, and on-premise solutions. Vendors should also be able to provide broad-based integration with existing tools!
Take a look at these 7 qualities a SOAR platform should have:
- Integrate seamlessly with your existing cybersecurity interface to give you a seamless experience from the start-to-finish
- Code the company’s existing playbooks to make them more efficient
- Interact with data and share your insights more efficiently using collaboration tools
- Know how to work with your organization to create a pricing model that best suits you
- Be easy to use and flexible in deployment, hosting, or scaling up
- Execute manual and automated actions simultaneously
- Have reporting and tracking features
Still not sure what to choose? Here are some best SOAR vendors:
Cyberbit, IBM, Logsign, Palo Alto Networks, Rapid7, Siemplify, Splunk, Swimlane, and ThreatConnect.
Next, I’ll tell you how SOAR can help your company, so you can choose whether you want to implement it.
How Can SOAR Help Your Organization?
SOAR helps teams take a holistic approach to security, making it easier for you to respond quickly and accurately when threats arise. SOAR also automates many tasks that previously needed human intervention, so IT professionals are free to investigate new opportunities. They can also deal with high-priority issues as they come across them throughout their day.
SOAR also helps your security team remediate incidents in minutes instead of days, weeks, or months. Finally, SOAR can save resources for your bottom line, because it also enables automated incident response procedures!
What Type Is Best for You? SIEM or SOAR
SOAR is a more efficient solution for alerts because it can quickly and easily, while SIEM solutions require additional time to analyze the situation.
SOAR also takes the hard work out of investigating because it creates defined investigation paths. Compared to SIEM, SOAR also provides more insight into what happened and how SOAR can resolve it. It also sends alerts on potential problems that weren’t even there before!
The SOAR solution takes the capabilities of an incident management system to a whole new level. It offers automated responses in case of issues with alerts or data. Conversely, when receiving these notifications from your SIEM, you must have this sorted out because otherwise harmful situations can happen, like not being able to stop financial drains on company time!
Pro Tips
- SIEM forces security managers to decide on the action plan in the aftermath. Go with SIEM if you only need to receive notifications about security incidents
- SOAR selects the action path needed after notifying you. Go with SOAR if you want to automate your response to security alerts
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, it has been found that SOAR technology can help every type of organization. It’s also especially helpful when security personnel and budget are lacking in a company. The system also saves analysts time, money, or resources while also protecting the data within their company’s databases from cyber attacks by hackers who want access at all costs. In this guide, I showed you all about SOAR’s pros, cons, and use cases. I also gave you a brief comparison between SOAR and SIEM. For your company to function more efficiently, consider combining these tools.
Finally, I showed you what you need to look for in a SOAR vendor. In all, I hope this guide has helped you safekeep your online privacy.
Have more questions about SOAR security? Check out the FAQ and Resources sections below!
FAQ
What characterizes the SOAR security platform?
The SOAR strategy offers three core capabilities–security operations, threat and vulnerability management, and security incident response. The system allows companies to collect data on threats from a range of sources. That way, they can also respond correctly with little effort.
What are SOAR capabilities?
The SOAR technology is a system that helps to coordinate, execute, and automate security tasks between various people all within one platform. SOAR has many capabilities, like mitigating phishing scams, implementing threat hunting and intelligence, and preventing malicious traffic. In all, it’s a cybersecurity system that may also help you stay private online.
What are playbooks used for SOAR?
The use of playbooks in security operations is a highly effective way to resolve alerts quickly. Teams can use them for handling different types of incidents with automation and consistency. SOAR playbooks are sets of rules that enable SOAR to perform automatically. That also frees up time because developers can streamline processes.
What is the difference between soar and SIEM?
SOAR and SIEM are both essential tools for protecting your online privacy. SOAR is a security strategy that helps you stay aware of the risks and take responsible actions to protect yourself. SIEM (security information and event management) is a system that collects and analyzes security data to identify threats.
Can SOAR replace SIEM?
The advanced SOAR system supplement rather than replace the SIEM. This means that your organization will have access to more automated information with less decision-making required by you or team members. That also saves time while increasing overall security effectiveness.
Resources
TechGenix: How secure is your IP address?
Follow these steps to secure your IP address.
TechGenix: WARP v. VPN
Learn which tool is better for online security in this article.
TechGenix: 5 best VPN protocols to protect your business
Learn about these 5 best VPN protocols to protect your business.
TechGenix: Tor vs. VPN
Choose the best security and privacy option for you here.
TechGenix: LinkedIn Scams
Learn how to protect yourself from LinkedIn scams here.
