Cybersecurity threats are growing at a rapid rate, leaving organizations desperate and anxious for efficient, “secure” security solutions to protect their IT infrastructure. 

Cyberattacks like Kaseya, SolarWinds, or Twitter have recently exposed how world-class security systems can be brought to their knees by attackers and heighten the risk of putting sensitive data in vulnerable positions. Given the value of assets involved in these attacks, the need for a more advanced security tool has only further transpired.  With today’s escalating cyberwarfare, a technology that offers modern capabilities to detect and prevent cyberattacks in the fastest fashion is the need of the hour. And this is where the supremacy of SOAR (Security Orchestration Automation and Response) technology comes into play.

What is SOAR?

SOAR (Security Orchestration Automation and Response) is a category of cybersecurity solution that is designed to govern and streamline incident detection and response functions. It automatically identifies, prioritizes, and responds to low-level security events thus, saving the organization’s time and controlling potential damage. The term “SOAR or Security Orchestration Automation and Response” was originally coined by Gartner in 2017, who also described its three prime capabilities to be-  

• Threat and vulnerability management, 
• Security operations automation, and 
• Security incident response.

Today, most organizations use SOAR within the Security Operations Center (SOC) to handle threats faster, more efficiently while standardizing incident response and improving overall security posture.

Components of SOAR 

Each component of SOAR - Security Orchestration Automation and Response performs a different and vital SOC function -

Orchestration 
Security orchestration connects and coordinates different security tools to ingest threats, enrich, monitor, and identify incidents efficiently. SOAR orchestration makes it possible for the cybersecurity and IT environments of an organization to collide and work together. 

Automation
Security automation provides automated investigation and response tools. It identifies and deals with security incidents to reduce the workload of SOCs. With SOAR, CSIRT (Computer security incident response teams) can standardize automation steps, decision-making workflow, enforcement actions, status checking and auditing capabilities. 
In addition, Automation provides both reactive (perform incident response, case management, and track incident response metrics) and proactive (threat-hunting and security operations) security measures.

Response
Security Response accelerates SOC reactions to lower-risk incidents. It helps analysts to manage security incidents, collaborate, and share data for incident resolution. SOAR solutions enable a single view dashboard to access, query, and share threat intelligence and also generate reports for all security levels.

Together, Security Orchestration Automation and Response form the fundamentals of SOAR software.

Benefits of using SOAR software

Cyberattacks rank first among global human-caused risks.The global situation is escalating at such a rate that In the next one minute, approximately 2 more names will be added to the list of cyberattack victims. Given the dynamicity of the cyber environment, a security software such as SOAR can prove extremely helpful in keeping your organisation safe and productive. SOAR not only solves issues around the speed and complexity of attacks, but it also addresses internal issues such as skills shortage and employee‘burn out’ at your organisation. Here are some significant benefits of using SOAR software.

Get more done with automation 
SOAR tools automate all mundane and repetitive tasks such as investigating emails, attachments, URLs, and other potentially dangerous activities to save your organization’s precious time. This allows your SOCs to focus on complex operations that require deeper expertise. Moreover, with SOAR’s automated workflows and pre-built security runbooks, organizations can battle staff shortages and get more tasks done in less time.

Multi-tool integration
A NASDAQ Global Information Services report found that the average security operations center (SOC) now uses more than 15 security products. Unfortunately, these do not always function together. One of the best parts about implementing SOAR is, it provides a built-in multi-tool integration solution that swiftly integrates hundreds of security tools. This feature enables your team to view IT tools such as asset datasets, configuration management systems, and helpdesk systems together.

Improve incident response and minimize damage 
According to studies, analysts need 4 hours to remediate one security alert (without a SOAR). However, with SOAR software in place, this time can be decreased to mere 15 minutes. SOAR aggregates the data and relevant attack information from alerts into a unified platform, allowing the SOC team to start mitigating sooner and taking proper measures to nullify it. Moreover, SOAR also makes it much easier for your SOC to minimize the potential damage by learning from past incidents and using that knowledge to automatically handle similar threats.

Optimize real threats and negate false positives 
SOAR’s advanced machine learning engines can detect false positives in real-time and respond to them without the need for any human assistance. With SOAR, SOCs are only alerted in case a “real” dangerous activity is identified. Meaning, SOCs can automatically eliminate false positives with SOAR and get more time to focus on real threats. 

Cost-effective
Since SOAR automatically deals with most repetitive tasks such as detecting false positives and low-level alerts, it cuts down millions of dollars of your organization’s operational costs.

SOAR Use Cases to prevent cyber attacks

Security Orchestration Automation and Response can be extremely helpful in handling security alerts and managing security operations. Here is how SOAR prevents cyberattacks in organizations- 

Eliminating phishing emails
Phishing emails are one of the most common ways to infiltrate an organization. To eradicate this right from the roots, SOAR repeatedly monitors your organization's mailbox where attackers send suspected hazardous emails. When an email arrives, SOAR automatically scans its contents, evaluates it with threat intelligence, runs security runbooks, and automates standardized responses to eliminate any possible threats.

Insider threat detection
Insider threats activities are quite similar to normal user behavior and hence can be difficult to detect. But not with SOAR. SOAR orchestration allows your SOC to integrate multiple tools for the fastest detection and response to tackle such incidents. Once a threat is detected, SOAR automatically triggers a playbook to lead an investigation, triage, response, and alert process. 

Dissecting failed user login 
When a user login fails an unusual amount of times, the SOAR system is automatically triggered. It proceeds with activating a playbook to challenge the user, evaluate response, and ultimately expiring the password of such users who do not respond accurately.

Unusual logins
In case of an unusual login being attempted, SOAR systems identify the suspected VPN access by investigating the possible involvement of a CASB (cloud access security broker), cross-referencing the source of IPs, confirming breach with real account users, and blocking the connection in time.

Endpoint malware infection
Endpoint device management can be highly exhausting and overwhelming due to the large number of alerts generated. SOAR tool allows SOCs to automatically pull in threat feed data from endpoint tools such as email boxes, threat intelligence feeds, and malware analysis tools, enrich that data, cross-refer retrieved files with other security tools, notify analysts via auto-generated tickets, clean endpoints, and update the endpoint tool database.

SSL certificate management
SOAR runbooks query the endpoints for SSL certificates for expiration, etc. If any issues arise during the process, automatic email communication is initiated with the user and the manager for the required updates. SOAR also follows up periodically to confirm changes. 

Endpoint diagnostics
SOAR’s threat intelligence solution sparks automatic connectivity checks with an endpoint security agent, opens a ticket, kickstarts agents, and closes playbooks- as required.

Vulnerability Management
After receiving a threat alert, the SOAR tool gathers security data, correlates it with multiple security tools to calculate risk and vulnerability, and prioritizes the threat accordingly. 

Binaryflux to combat modern cyberattacks

Cyber attackers are coming up with newer, more complex ways to invade your organization and cause humongous losses. Reportedly, ransomware has increased by 62% globally since 2019 and the losses reported against cybercrimes exceeded US$4.1 billion in 2020 alone. Thanks to the application of emerging technologies such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and 5G.4, the sophistication of these attacks today is larger than ever. Fortunately, SOAR technology keeps up with the evolving threat landscape and helps you avoid these attacks and it's tied losses.

Binaryflux’s SOAR solution- Automation & Response offers you sophisticated and robust incident management functions. Our platform empowers your security teams to measure security risks, prioritize operations, and assess your security posture, allowing you to take effective security decisions.

Automation & Response is based on one of it's kind neural brain technology, which combines advanced analytics, user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA), and security automation. With us , you not only detect and react to modern security events (SOAR) but also perform automated behavioral profiling (UEBA) while interacting with IT and security systems to mitigate threats. Meaning- you combat your attackers and stay one step ahead of your competitors all at once.

Let us help you take the first step towards a more secure and safer future with Binaryflux.