Effective cybersecurity is an important goal for every business. More so, as many companies have shifted to distributed and virtual working environments, more people are working from home and other remote locations. Like many organizations, you’ve deployed an array of digital applications to enable this shift.

You’ve also implemented best-in-class solutions to provide security at every attack vector and to shore up vulnerabilities. While each solution works well, they often don’t work together unless the enterprise has invested heavily in customized integrations. As a result, most cybersecurity teams are swamped with many alerts and unable to respond to them in a timely fashion. In cyber terms, that means “right away” in real-time. When incident response is slow, or alerts languish in a backlog pile, cybercriminals have a better chance of breaching your security perimeter. In fact, they’re counting on their ability to confuse and overwhelm your defenses and sneak in using complex, multi-vector attacks.

Be prepared to counter multi-vector cyberattacks.

Recent statistics from CyberTalk report that “in the past two years, cyberattacks have increased by 400 percent.” Cybercriminals launch 80% of these attacks, and they are using multi-vector attack strategies to increase their chances of success. If you know your security systems are not integrated. They know it too. One method is to stage a multi-vector attack over a combination of mobile and cloud-based access points. While each security system may generate an alert, you will not know that these alerts are related, and therefore, your response may be inadequate.

One of the best ways to improve your cybersecurity posture and mount a highly effective and efficient response to cyber threats is with SOAR – a Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response technology.

SOAR makes your cybersecurity strategy more efficient and effective

SOAR is a tool that automates your ability to collect, analyze and prioritize alerts and security data from many sources and systems. Instead of manually stitching together disparate data from multiple security systems, SOAR orchestrates and analyzes the data for you and presents all the contextual information and intelligence your security team needs for rapid threat detection and response.

SOAR not only does the heavy lifting in terms of data collection and correlation, but SOAR also utilizes workflows and playbooks to automate repetitive tasks, such as dealing with false-positive alerts. False positives are a constant burden on every security team due to low alert thresholds that cause cybersecurity systems to generate an alert at the slightest provocation. Just by automating the analysis and response to false positives, you can free up security resources significantly.

But that’s not all.

SOAR’s automated playbooks also assure a consistent approach to threat analysis as they guide security analysts to the proper response action(s). As a result, response time and effectiveness improve dramatically. In addition, analysts learn from the playbook guidance they receive and can enhance their security skills.

In short, a SOAR tool helps your security teams to respond to threats efficiently, reduce stress, and be much more productive.

Let’s take a closer look at the three key ways SOAR improves your organization’s security posture.

SOAR automates repetitive threat-response workflows

Security teams spend a good deal of their time managing the many disparate security technologies deployed throughout the organization and handling the thousands of daily alarms these systems generate – many of them false positives. Analysts must switch between multiple management interfaces to investigate and triage alerts, and in many cases, this is precisely the place where the human error occurs. SOAR solutions help your security team automate or semi-automate some of the daily, repetitive security workflows and thereby reduce their workload.

SOAR orchestrates disparate data to accelerate incident analysis and triage

SOAR systems collect the bulk of the data from your SIEM and other security products that are not connected to the SIEM. As a result, security analysts and CISOs have a complete and coherent picture of the threats they face and the necessary information to respond to them. SOAR systems intelligently prioritize alerts so security teams can focus their resources effectively.

With SOAR, security teams no longer need to spend time on manual investigation methods or rely on individual analyst knowledge that is undocumented and unavailable to the rest of the team. All the intelligence and controls are presented through a single pane of glass, allowing security teams to collaborate better and work smarter.

SOAR creates a standardized incident response that is easy to follow

Second, SOAR speeds response by fully automating investigation workflows and guiding security analysts to respond appropriately via pre-defined playbooks. In most cases, the SOAR system recommends a standardized response, and all the analyst must do is approve or execute that decision. Automated playbooks assure consistent threat response while increasing the productivity of your security team.

Ironically, playbooks are also the stumbling block for organizations that would like to adopt SOAR but do not have a set of playbooks or the security staff to develop them. These SOC teams simply never had the time to spare for such a project. This is especially true for mid-market businesses with limited cybersecurity budgets. However, that should not stop these organizations from considering SOAR because today, LogPoint offers a solution with built-in playbooks that can be used out of the box – and customized easily later once users have more experience with the SOAR system.

The benefits of using SOAR in your cybersecurity strategy

SOAR solutions create business value for organizations by:

Reducing cybersecurity risk: The orchestration and automation provided by SOAR solutions help organizations detect and respond to complex, multi-vector threats accurately and quickly. By automating security data collection, correlation, and analysis tasks, SOAR greatly accelerates alert investigation and response. It significantly reduces the risk of a successful breach and the extensive damage it can cause.

Increasing SOC effectiveness: SOAR delivers better quality threat intelligence and makes it available in one central place through a single pane of glass. SOAR aggregates and validates data from all your cybersecurity sources, including SIEM and UEBA systems, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and others. Not only do you get a more accurate and contextualized picture of every incident, but SOAR also guides analysts to a best-practice response. The ability to respond to threats consistently and standardized manner helps your SOC become more intelligence-driven and more effective.

Improving SOC efficiency: Through automation or semi-automation of repetitive security tasks, SOAR reduces the SOC workload and reduces the errors that creep in from manual methods. SOAR is especially useful for automating the detection and resolution of the numerous false-positive alerts, freeing up your security team to handle the triaged, high-priority alerts. As analysts learn from the best-practice responses recommended by SOAR playbooks, they become better skilled and manage their tasks more efficiently.

You’ll feel the difference with SOAR.

As SOAR accelerates and simplifies the threat detection and response process, your security staff will be the first to feel the difference. Mundane tasks will be automated and taken off their workload. Complete and contextual threat intelligence will be at their fingertips. They will receive real-time guidance to respond quickly and consistently to each security incident. And they will be able to accomplish much more with the resources they have. Using the right SOAR solution, your SOC can reduce MTTR (Mean Time to Respond) by up to 90% and significantly increase the number of incidents resolved per shift.

Your business will also feel the difference as SOAR helps you successfully fend off cyber threats and realize the previously untapped potential of your many security investments.

To learn more about innovative and affordable SOAR solutions, contact LogPoint.