The 10 Essential Capabilities of a Best-of-Breed SOAR

By John Dominguez

Ask a group of security analysts about the challenges of working in cybersecurity, and you’ll likely hear some common themes:

A shortage of skilled cybersecurity talent
A high volume of security alerts
Too many security point-products to manage
Lack of interoperability between those products
Inability to scale security operations over time
Increasing costs, shrinking budgets
Increasing sophistication of mlware
Slow speed of threat detection and response

It’s no surprise that security teams feel perpetually overwhelmed. Many teams have turned to security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) tools for help.

A SOAR tool can orchestrate security actions (like investigations, triage, response) across various security products in a team’s arsenal, and automate otherwise manual repetitive security tasks. Security teams can automate a majority of their alert triage and response, and subsequently free up time for them to focus on more mission critical tasks.

If you think SOAR technology can help your team overcome the challenges listed above, it’s important to evaluate the various solutions available in the marketplace against a checklist of best-of-breed capabilities. Any best-of-breed SOAR product should include the following:

Essential Capabilities of a Best-of-Breed SOAR
Orchestration	The machine-based coordination of complex workflows across disparate security tools should increase the efficiency and speed of your security operations.
Automation	The machine-based execution of otherwise manual, interdependent security actions using “playbooks” should allow you to execute in seconds versus hours.
Event and Alert Management	An event and alert management capability in a SOAR tool should queue and prioritize inbound security events and alerts to help analysts perform triage more efficiently.
Case Management	An event and alert management capability in a SOAR tool should queue and prioritize inbound security events and alerts to help analysts perform triage more efficiently.
Collaboration	Built-in chat and notes can facilitate communication across the security team, and thereby accelerate the resolution of security events.
Metrics and Reporting	Metrics and reporting are critical to understanding the effectiveness of the SOAR tool and identifying where improvements can be made to increase ROI.
Mobility	Control of the SOAR tool from the convenience of the analyst’s mobile device will allow for faster response times and easy alert triage — all on-the-go.
Scalability	A SOAR tool should grow with you as your organization grows. As an organization adds more use cases over time, there will be additional processing load placed on the platform.
Open and Extensible	A SOAR tool should easily support incorporating new security scenarios, new products, new actions and new playbooks.
Community Powered	A SOAR tool should easily support incorporating new security scenarios, new products, new actions and new playbooks.

Want to Learn More?

Access our whitepaper The Ten Essential Capabilities of a Best-of-Breed SOAR to dig deeper into each of these capabilities and how they can remedy common security challenges.

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