SOAR: The Future of IT Security

Today’s security professionals face a relentless barrage of alerts, a widening cybersecurity skills gap, and the constant pressure to do more with less. Manually triaging alerts, investigating incidents, and coordinating responses across disparate security tools is no longer sustainable.

By integrating with existing security infrastructure, Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) automates repetitive tasks, orchestrates incident response workflows, and provides real-time visibility into security posture.

Why Are Teams Looking to SOAR?

With the help of SOAR, security teams can:

• Reduce alert fatigue and improve incident response times: SOAR streamlines alert triage and automate remediation actions, freeing up analysts for higher-level tasks.
• Maximize existing security investments: SOAR orchestrates actions across disparate security tools, amplifying their effectiveness and reducing the need for costly rip-and-replace initiatives.
• Bridge the skills gap: SOAR empowers less experienced analysts to handle more complex incidents, enabling organizations to scale their security operations efficiently.

By leveraging SOAR and related tooling, organizations can transition from reactive firefighting to proactive threat management, strengthening their defenses and achieving a more resilient security posture.

The Fundamental Importance of SOAR

As the threat landscape becomes increasingly complex, security teams must manage a growing arsenal of security tools. SOAR platforms act as a central nervous system, connecting and coordinating these separate elements to:

• Collect and aggregate security data: SOAR integrates with various security tools, such as Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), and threat intelligence feeds, to provide a comprehensive view of security events.
• Automate repetitive tasks: SOAR automates routine security tasks, such as alert triage, malware analysis, and incident remediation, freeing up security analysts for higher-level work.
• Orchestrate security workflows: SOAR defines and executes automated workflows, known as playbooks, to guide incident response processes and ensure consistent responses to specific threats.
• Improve incident response times: By automating tasks and orchestrating workflows, SOAR significantly reduces the time it takes to detect, investigate, and respond to security incidents.

The Marked Advantages of SOAR

While the capabilities of SOAR highlight its importance, its growing role in sectors like Managed Detection and Response (MDR) further underscores its specific benefits. According to IDC MarketScape, MDR providers increasingly incorporate SOAR capabilities into their offerings as a standard feature. This trend is driven by the need to:

• Reduce cost and complexity: SOAR helps organizations streamline security operations, reduce manual effort, and consolidate security tools, leading to cost savings and improved efficiency.
• Enhance visibility and transparency: SOAR provides centralized dashboards and reporting capabilities, offering real-time insights into security posture and incident response activities.
• Address the skills shortage: SOAR helps bridge the cybersecurity skills gap by automating tasks and empowering less experienced analysts to handle more complex incidents.

An NSA Cybersecurity Information Sheet emphasizes that SOAR is critical to a mature zero-trust security model. It highlights the need for:

• Policy orchestration: SOAR helps automate the enforcement of security policies across the enterprise, ensuring consistent and dynamic access controls.
• Critical process automation: SOAR streamlines essential security processes, such as user provisioning, access request approvals, and security policy enforcement.
• Integration with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML): SOAR leverages AI and ML to enhance threat detection, automate incident response, and improve the accuracy and efficiency of security operations.

Challenges and Considerations for SOAR Implementation

While SOAR offers numerous advantages, organizations must also consider the following challenges. Successfully navigating these challenges requires a strategic approach to SOAR implementation. Due diligence demands careful planning, resource allocation, and ongoing training and development for security personnel.

Integration Complexity

Integrating SOAR with security tools and processes can be complex and require significant planning and resources. As the IDC MarketScape report highlights, MDR providers increasingly incorporate SOAR capabilities. However, organizations with deeply customized security tooling may face challenges integrating these platforms. This underscores the need to evaluate SOAR solutions and their compatibility with existing infrastructure carefully.

Customization Needs

Organizations often need to customize SOAR solutions to fit their specific workflows and security requirements, which can be resource-intensive. The NSA Cybersecurity Information Sheet emphasizes the importance of developing well-defined playbooks and workflows for SOAR to be effective. Organizations require a deep understanding of their security policies, processes, and threat landscape and the technical expertise to configure and customize SOAR tools accordingly.

Skill Gaps

Although SOAR aims to reduce the workload on security teams, skilled personnel are still needed to manage and optimize these systems effectively. The IDC MarketScape report notes that while SOAR can help bridge the cybersecurity skills gap, organizations still need experienced analysts to oversee SOAR operations, fine-tune playbooks, and handle complex incidents that require human intervention. The NSA guidance further emphasizes the need for skilled personnel to develop and maintain robust incident response plans, which is essential for effective SOAR implementation.

Future Trends in SOAR

SOAR technology is poised to advance across several dimensions as the cyber threat landscape evolves. The need for greater automation, intelligence, and accessibility will drive change, and organizations can expect the following:

Increased Use of AI and ML

Future SOAR platforms will likely incorporate more advanced AI and ML capabilities to enhance threat detection and response automation. This trend is already evident in the MDR market, with providers leveraging AI and ML to power their threat-hunting and incident-response capabilities. The NSA guidance further emphasizes the potential of AI and ML to enhance SOAR’s effectiveness, particularly in areas like anomaly detection, user behavior analysis, and automated response.

No-Code/Low-Code Solutions

The development of no-code and low-code SOAR platforms will allow organizations to automate workflows more easily without requiring extensive programming knowledge. As a result, SOAR should become more accessible to a broader range of users. This trend aligns with the broader movement towards democratizing technology and empowering non-technical users to use sophisticated tools. This means the longtail of users benefiting from SOAR’s capabilities will include smaller organizations and those with limited security expertise.

Greater Emphasis on Threat Intelligence

SOAR solutions will increasingly leverage threat intelligence to improve their predictive capabilities, allowing organizations to stay ahead of emerging threats. The IDC MarketScape report highlights the importance of threat intelligence in enabling proactive security measures. By integrating with external threat intelligence feeds and leveraging AI and ML to analyze threat data, SOAR platforms will become better at identifying potential threats before they materialize — and more effective at automating preventative actions.

Are You Ready to SOAR?

These SOAR advancements will enhance its security operations capabilities, improve incident response times, and empower organizations to stay ahead in the cybersecurity race. With Kiuwan’s application security platform, organizations can create a comprehensive security strategy that addresses vulnerabilities at every level, from source code to runtime environments.