A modern SOAR platform automates threat hunting in many ways, making it faster and more effective. It lowers the mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR), which enables security teams to react quickly to threats before they become breaches.
SOAR platforms integrate data gathering, case management, standardization, workflow, and analytics, ensuring that analysts have all the information they need in one place for analysis and automated response. SOAR tools include playbooks and predefined automated actions to complete complex security tasks.
Detecting Threats in Real-Time
With real-time detection on soar security orchestration, automation and response, organizations can neutralize threats before they damage their infrastructure. This process improves incident response times and reduces human error, which leads to an overall more effective issue-management system.
SOAR platforms capture data from firewalls, SIEM tools, anti-virus software, and intrusion detection systems, providing detailed insight into cyber issues. The data can be filtered according to specific criteria, such as threat type and severity, making identifying threats at their earliest stages possible.
By integrating multiple tools from different vendors, SOAR solutions offer an integrated overview of security operations activities, saving time and effort. This also gives stakeholders better insight into improving processes and reducing response times.
As a result, it can be used to respond to any security alert, from network and endpoint vulnerabilities to malware, phishing, and other threats. SOAR can also automatically trigger response workflows based on the types of threats detected, ensuring that the proper protocols are followed, and key stakeholders are kept informed throughout.
As a result, SOAR solutions can automate and scale security operations across the entire enterprise. This can help security teams increase productivity and respond to threats more quickly and accurately, with up to 79 percent fewer false positives. Moreover, SOAR solutions can easily accommodate any organization’s needs, enabling them to adopt automation in their existing security environment without needing a major system redesign.
Identifying Indicators of Compromise
Indicators of compromise (IOCs) are pieces of forensic data that can identify suspicious activity on a system or network. They can aid information security, and IT professionals detect a breach or malware infection and limit the damage.
IOCs can be detected by monitoring systems logs and other methods, such as scanning email inboxes for leaked credentials. They can also be identified by watching for unusual network traffic, increased database read volume, changes in registry and system files, or unauthorized access to sensitive data.
The SOAR platform ingests hundreds of thousands of IOCs daily from internal and external threat intelligence feeds, malware analysis tools, endpoint detection and response platforms, SIEM systems, network detection and response tools, email inboxes, RSS feeds, regulatory bodies, and other databases. These IOCs are then consolidated, aggregated, and surfaced in an alerting format to be acted on by the SOAR platform.
SOAR can accelerate the IOC enrichment process by tapping multiple enrichment databases or querying different threat intelligence tools for context. This helps SOC analysts parse, verify, triage, and respond to threats more efficiently and accurately.
Another value of SOAR is that it automates repetitive tasks, such as logging events, tending to false positives, and messaging relevant parties. This saves time and improves ROI for all security investments.
Providing Automated Threat Intelligence
Effective threat hunting is an essential step in securing your network. It helps you identify and mitigate threats before they cause damage to your business. However, missing potential hazards is easy if you need the proper tools.
For instance, if a SIEM system detects suspicious activity, such as a hacker trying to brute force a password on your endpoint, it raises an alert. The security team must then investigate the signal to determine whether it’s a real threat or a false positive.
SOAR solutions automate several standard processes that can save time and reduce alert fatigue for security analysts. This includes the aggregation of data and the use of playbooks to execute specific tasks.
Playbooks are pre-configured checklists that address a known scenario with a prescribed course of action. This allows security teams to complete various tasks, such as blocking an IP address on a firewall or IDS system or suspending user accounts.
A good SOAR solution offers a single view into post-incident response activities, such as case management and reporting. This enables collaboration and sharing of threat intelligence across security, network, and systems teams. It also improves incident detection and response times.
Providing Automated Response
A company’s security operations team must constantly be vigilant regarding cybersecurity. To monitor the enterprise’s network, security analysts must process numerous alerts generated by multiple systems and analyze them to identify and respond to threats.
To do this, a security information and event management (SIEM) platform collects data from different sources and correlates it to pull threat intelligence. SIEM tools also raise alerts if they detect abnormal activities or security issues.
This allows security teams to determine if a threat is real and act accordingly quickly. However, this process is often a time-consuming and resource-intensive task.
Another issue is the volume of alerts. This is due to the plethora of tools used by different security teams, which can lead to “alert fatigue” and make it difficult for security teams to distinguish real threats from false positives.
To mitigate these challenges, security automation platforms have emerged that provide automated responses to security incidents and other security events. These solutions enable enterprises to automate many of the initial processes involved in incident response, reducing analysts’ alert fatigue and giving them more time to focus on analyzing new threats.
Also read: 5 Ways To Stay Safe On The Internet