The state of enterprise cybersecurity is becoming increasingly complex, thanks to the growing number of malicious threats. According to Gartner, a burst of varied security alarms are terrorising the cyber landscape. However, there are very few efficient people or processes to help organisations deal with them. In 2017, the research company came up with an innovative and powerful approach to address and deter catastrophic cyber threats to enterprises - SOAR!
Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response or SOAR cybersecurity has since being adopted by enterprises to empower their security operations team through orchestration and automation of threat intelligence mechanisms.
What is SOAR? Why Should You Implement SOAR Platforms?
If you own a business, guarding your financial, employee and client data against unwelcome authorisation is your first and most crucial priority. With cyber incidents happening almost every day to even the biggest tech giants, investing in an efficient SOAR security tool is the need of the hour. SOAR platforms empower organisations with a centralised system that collects incident data and stitches together a response plan to proactively deal with hostile cybersecurity landscape.
SOAR security platforms when combined with new-age technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), can help businesses deal with un-winnable fights against security incidents. Automation has resulted in faster threat mitigation and accurate incident predictions that easily collate data related to security breaches and push it towards end-point security interfaces.
How Security Incidents Impact Enterprise Data?
Here is how a single security incident can impact an enterprise that does not have a proper SOAR security platform in place:
● 35% of customer records are compromised
● 30% of employee records are stolen by hackers
● 29% loss and damage to internal business records including financial information
(Source: The Global State of Information Security Survey)
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No business can afford to lose confidential information to threat agents. But implementing new technology can be daunting at first. With an increasing demand for SOAR products, there has been a drastic rise in the number of SOAR vendors who promise that their products assure an unbreakable cybersecurity framework. The SOAR cybersecurity platform you choose should provide you with a solution that is best suited for your cybersecurity approach, framework, and infrastructure. So, as a security head or CISO, you should conduct thorough research, evaluate the tools and ask for a proof of concept before you sign a deal with SOAR vendors.
Confused if you should invest in security tools? Read our blog: Signs it’s time to relook at your approach to security operations
Here are 5 questions for you to ask yourself before you invest in SOAR security tools.
Your SOAR products should be versatile and fluid enough to integrate efficiently with your existing cybersecurity posture. Any average security operations team of an enterprise uses over 10 tools to maintain their security framework. These include Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools, malware reversal and redressal tools and general threat intelligence systems.
Proper integration of your newly incorporated SOAR platforms provides a multi-directional flow of information that helps mitigate security incidents with more ease and efficiency.
One of the significant concerns of enterprise security is the growing alert fatigue among security professionals. Repetitive, mundane tasks may demotivate even the most skilled security analysts. The best response to this issue is automating tedious processes and letting security experts concentrate their skills on the interesting tasks that require human intervention.
The SOAR platforms should allow both human and automated actions simultaneously, to effectively automate menial tasks.
This question is often overlooked while looking into other more technical issues. Look for SOAR products that come at affordable costs with no hidden payments. Your vendor should give a clear picture of charges related to configuration, deployment, and maintenance of the product.
Make sure to accurately evaluate which features you need and the ones you can do without. The SOAR tools you buy should be flexible with options for you to choose the best features as per your budget.
As discussed earlier, alert fatigue can happen due to increasing manual workload and repetitive tasks. When investing in SOAR security tools, make sure that it empowers the analysts to work smarter and not just toil away over menial tasks. The software should be able to consolidate alerts and prioritise cases before assigning them to the security professionals in order to carefully manage their workflow and increase productivity.
Cyber-attacks can take place any day, any time. In many cases, it is impossible for analysts and systems to predict threats before they occur. For better detection and to increase prediction capabilities, it is important for your SOAR cybersecurity platform to track and manage real-time performances.
This helps security analysts to carefully analyse reports, the time taken to respond to incidents and effectively mitigate security threats. This further empowers them to create informed and well-devised plans in the future, hence aiding in the improvement of enterprise cybersecurity.
Summing up, the importance of SOAR for enterprise security has become manifold in recent years. But before you invest in any product, it is important to analyse its features and metrics carefully. The best SOAR tool should be able to intelligently fit into your cybersecurity framework, make security operations simpler, increase visibility and be cost-effective. In the age where chances of security breaches are increasing due to human errors, it is important to automate and bring in new technologies that challenge malicious incident threats with an equally strong response.
Want to know more about cybersecurity tools? Read on - The Need for SIEM in the service industry
