Turning to SOAR for your cybersecurity defence strategy
April 30, 2019Assessing the most common approaches to cybersecurity in 2019
May 4, 2019Top 5 Reasons for Adopting Security Orchestration,
Automation & Response (SOAR)?
The term Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) first appeared in 2017, representing a rise in automated incident response and management platforms. Organizations were desperately looking for talented cybersecurity staff to handle their excessive burden of security operations and were failing at fulfilling the overwhelming demand.
A CSIS survey of IT decision makers across eight countries found that 82 percent of employers report a shortage of cybersecurity skills, and 71 percent believe this talent gap causes direct and measurable damage to their organizations.
Surpassing one limitation a day, automation platforms for incident handling slowly emerged, initially offering limited orchestration and automation functionalities. With the evolution and increase in cyber attacks every passing day, SOAR gained popularity among security analysts for its core feature of handling repetitive tasks. Using SOAR, security analysts are able to focus their energies on new threats and incidents while SOAR handles and manages the known cybersecurity alerts.
1 - Simplification of threat response
Today’s threats and attacks have grown so complex and frequent that their manual handling has become impossible. SOAR offers capabilities that simplify repetitive tasks across workflows to reduce the time taken to handle such incidents.
Data gathered by SOAR helps inexperienced analysts in decision making processes. A very handy improvement being observed in SOAR platforms now is that they are less dependent on manual handling and get rid of major workload through built-in playbooks. Investigation workflows are automated and alert prioritization is set with predetermined metrics to determine the severity of incidents.
2 - Quick incident handling
Speedy incident response is not a luxury but a necessity now, which is required to make sure minimal damage by a security incident. SOAR makes sure that already logged incidents are effectively handled so the human resources are spare to focus on newer demons.
3 - Timely risk management
Calculating the amount of risk associated with an incident or asset through SOAR is also gaining traction now. It is important for an analysts to correctly prioritize security incidents based on the associated risk or damage.
4 - Vulnerability management
SOAR platforms may also provide cataloguing of assets for a clearer visibility of their security. If any asset is vulnerable to a cyber threat, timely patching of vulnerabilities will reduce the risk of cyber-attacks on those assets. SOAR also offers integration with tools that automate the process of vulnerability management, in addition to directly fetching information about vulnerabilities by integrating with threat intelligence.
5 - Actionable threat intelligence
Integrating threat intelligence feeds in a SOAR platform enables enriching the incidents and vulnerabilities data, enabling analysts in maintaining a proactive approach towards latest threats.
Rising Demand for SOAR
Sophisticated attacks today demand organizations to have automated and orchestrated security incident response platform. SOAR platforms improve communication, provide visibility of security posture and enhanced incident management. Initially meant for incident management, these platforms have now evolved into full-fledged security operations orchestration and management platforms and will continue to grow as cybersecurity requirements increase.
Where SOAR is Headed
SOAR serves as an automation and orchestration platform currently, but is expected to have more mature machine learning and artificial intelligence built into them. The global security orchestration market was reported to be worth $0.84 billion in 2018, reports a recent study, which is expected to see a growth reaching $7.7 billion by 2027 with an attractive CAGR growth rate of 28.8 percent in the forecast period. Growth in the annual revenues of organization will also lead to a higher budget for security orchestration, fueling the existing growth rate of security orchestration platforms.
