Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) tools combine inputs and alerts from your whole security stack, into a single, manageable solution. These tools allow you to extend your network visibility, thereby making it easier to identify and remediate threats.
SOAR tools leverage human intelligence, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to identify the most urgent threats and triage vast quantities of data into manageable and meaningful insights. SOC teams can use this intelligence to design playbooks that ensures a response is carried out in the most effective way. SOAR tools can be configured in a range of ways, to suit a range of use cases.
When looking for a SOAR solution, some of the key things to look for include:
- Alert triage and investigation
- Intelligence management
- Case management
- Pre-built and customizable playbooks
- Reporting dashboards and analytics
In this article, we’ll explore the key features and highlights of the best SOAR tools on the market. We’ll highlight the things that set each solution apart from other tools and suggest what type of organization they are best suited to.
Originally Siemplify, Chronicle SOAR is part of the Google Cloud umbrella, designed to allow enterprises and MSPs to accumulate data and security alerts through orchestration, automation, threat intelligence, and incident response. The solution integrates with Chronicle SIEM to ensure both solutions are working effectively and can utilize the latest data.
Features
- Efficient case management that can ingest, group, prioritize, assign, and investigate alerts
- Zero-code based playbook creation
- Effective investigation capabilities – focus on the root cause of threats, rather than alerts
- Threat intelligence is integrated across the detection and response lifecycle
- Easy collaboration – you can maximise effectiveness through incident collaboration and transparency
- Raw log scan – ability to search unprocessed data to gain new insights
Expert Insights’ Comments: Chronicle SOAR is widely praised for its ease of deployment, and effectiveness once live. The solution is highly capable and provides a range of useful insights into the status of your network and security threats. We would recommend Chronicle SOAR for organizations of all sizes thanks to its broad feature set and easy deployment – it is particularly useful for MSP clients as it is capable of handling larger and more complex organizations.
Devo (formerly a part of LogicHub) is a cybersecurity vendor that was founded in 2011 and focuses on intelligence-driven threat detection and response products. Devo SOAR provides end-to-end automation and allows security teams to improve efficiency, collaboration, and effectiveness. The solution is able to reliably prioritize and triage alerts, ensuring that you can cut through the noise and focus on the most important issues.
Features
- Entire threat lifecycle can be automated
- Over 300 of out of the box integrations allowing quick and easy integration
- Pre-built and customizable playbooks that can be edited without coding
- Robust triaging and ability to eliminate noisy alerts
- Intuitive case management capabilities that adapts to your workflow
Expert Insights’ Comments: Devo SOAR has a particularly strong case management feature – it enriches data with relevant context and suggests the most effective remediation actions. Many users praise it as an efficient, cost-effective, and flexible SOAR solution. We would recommend Devo SOAR to organizations of all sizes who are looking for a highly automated solution with effective triage capability.
Fortinet is a California-based market-leading cybersecurity company with a range of firewall, intrusion prevention, and endpoint solutions on offer. Fortinet FortiSOAR is the company’s SOAR solution. It works by gathering data from a range of sources, and collating it into manageable, actionable intelligence.
Features
- Over 350 integrations and 3,000 automated workflow actions
- 160 out-of-the-box customizable playbooks
- Advanced threat intelligence management – thanks to its integration with FortiGuard
- Mobile application that enables analysts to respond to alerts and execute crucial actions
- Role-based dashboard, reporting capabilities, and incident management – this allows you to track metrics, analyze performance, create data models, generate weekly reports
Expert Insights’ Comments: Fortinet FortiSOAR is a highly sophisticated solution that offers a great deal of control over threat management. It is praised by users for its ease of integration, though some comment that the creation of playbooks could be simpler. We would recommend Fortinet FortiSOAR to solve a wide range of use cases thanks to its advanced protection and flexibility. It is particularly suited to SMBs, enterprise, and MSP customers who need an all-encompassing and multi-tenant incident response platform.
Cybersecurity and technology company, IBM have developed a host of effective products across a range of sectors. QRadar is their SOAR solution that empowers your organization to assess and react to developing cybersecurity situations within your network. The solution has multiple pre-built remediation playbooks to ensure that you can resolve cybersecurity issues quickly.
Features
- Intuitive dashboards and metrics tracking to improve admin’s visibility
- Drag-and-drop automation with in-app guidance to assist in decision making
- IBM Security App Exchange provides hundreds of free integration configurations
- Carry out planning and preparation to ensure your team can respond efficiently when and attack occurs
- Extensive case management tools ensure that the right users receive notifications that they can act upon
- Tools to help understand and visualise relationships across incidents
Expert Insights’ Comments: IBM QRadar SOAR is a comprehensive and robust solution that empowers your security team to respond effectively to security threats. We would recommend this solution for large organizations who need a robust, technically competent, and effective means of monitoring and addressing security issues.
Headquartered in California, Palo Alto Networks is a global leader in enterprise security. Cortex XSOAR utilizes Demisto’s SOAR platform (acquired by Palo Alto in 2019), with Cortex threat prevention, response capabilities, and intelligence management. These elements together make Cortex XSOAR a powerful and sophisticated option.
Features
- 750+ integrations and 680+ content packs
- Ability to operate completely automated, or with SOC oversight
- Correlates data points in a dedicated “war room” which allows real-time human investigation
- Ingest data from all major SIEM solutions
- Threat Intelligence Management (TIM) module adds context to alerts
- Integrations can be customized, or downloaded from the Cortex XSOAR marketplace
Expert Insights’ Comments: Cortex XSOAR is a powerful solution that gives admin an efficient dashboard to investigate and respond to threats quickly and accurately. Thanks to its integrations and automation packs, Cortex XSOAR is easy to deploy and scale as your organization grows. We recommend Cortex XSOAR as a leading SOAR solution.
Rapid7 is a Boston-based cybersecurity company who use increased visibility, analytics, and automation to secure digital environments. InsightsConnect is the company’s SOAR platform, which benefits from Komand’s platform, which was acquired in 2017. The result is a powerful, cloud-based SOAR solution that streamlines processes and workflows, allowing you to focus on other pressing issues.
Features
- Automate workflows without code
- Over 200 plugins and customizable workflows
- ChatOps allows integration with apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams
- Automate third-party products with InsightConnect Pro Automation
- Automate investigation and responses to threats like phishing and ransomware
- Vulnerability management with cross-functional collaboration and human decisioning where needed
Expert Insights’ Comments: InsightConnect gives users deep visibility across environments and a wealth of integrations, whilst being praised for its ease of use. Through the automation of processes and the enrichment of data, InsightConnect allows a small SOC team to have a large impact. We would recommend InsightConnect to organizations looking for a powerful SOAR solution that allows collaboration, customizable workflows, and a wealth of plugins.
Founded in 2004, ServiceNow is a digital workflow, IT, and business management leader. Security Incident Response (SIR) is a powerful cloud-based SOAR solution that is included as part of the Security Operations (SecOps) platform and allows SOC teams to seamlessly manage and respond to incidents, simplify collaboration, and streamline workflows. The SecOps platform includes vulnerability management and response, threat intelligence, and configuration compliance tools.
Features
- Automate workflow and coordinate incident response
- Extensive playbook and orchestration library for a range of scenarios
- Additional applications available from the ServiceNow store
- Artificial intelligence tools for incident investigation
- MITRE ATT&CK mapping to add context
- Virtual war room for enhanced collaboration
- Granular, real-time reporting capabilities
Expert Insights’ Comments: ServiceNow offers three product options: Standard, Professional, and enterprise. Standard comes with either SIR or Vulnerability Response, while Professional adds vulnerability management, threat intelligence, event management, and performance analytics. Enterprise offers both SIR and Vulnerability Response. We would recommend ServiceNow SIR for mid-sized and enterprise organizations who need a powerful SOAR solution alongside the full capabilities of the SecOps package.
Founded in 2003, Splunk is a software provider that specializes in helping organizations search, monitor, and analyze data with its powerful data platform. Splunk SOAR (originally Splunk Phantom) is a powerful solution that allows for effective collaboration and engagement with security orchestration and response workflows.
Features
- Integration with more than 350 tools
- Comes with 100 out-of-the-box playbooks
- Visual editor for code-free editing
- Threat intelligence enhanced by Splunk SURGe cybersecurity research team
- Powerful case management tools
- Linked SOAR mobile app allows SOC teams to respond to threats, triage alerts, run playbooks and collaborate anytime and anywhere
Expert Insights’ Comments: The solution is easy to integrate, thanks to the large library of third-party tools. It can be deployed flexibly through cloud, on-premises, hybrid environments. Ease is at the heart of this solution with playbooks being intuitive to design and don’t require any coding ability. The case management features allow organizations to define workflows and build operational rigor to inform procedures. We recommend Splunk SOAR for mid-sized to enterprise organizations looking for powerful case management, threat intelligence, and easy collaboration.
Swimlane is a Colorado-based industry-leading SOAR vendor specializing in security automation. The platform collects alerts and data from a wide range of sources, as well as automating incident responses and operational workflows. The solution is low-code, making remediation playbooks easier to create and visualize. The platform can be deployed on-premises, or via cloud, and is charged on a per-user basis. This makes the solution scalable, and easy to roll out.
Features
- Manage and coordinate workflows via easy-to-configure playbooks
- Powerful case management
- Advanced reporting dashboards
- Customizable and open platform – this allows SOC teams to build the tools they need and address a wide range of use cases and challenges
- Hundreds of out-of-the-box integrations
Expert Insights’ Comments: Swimlane SOAR is a flexible and highly customizable solution that gives you a great deal of control over how the solution operates. To utilize this level of customization, a degree of coding experience is required. We would, therefore, recommend Swimlane SOAR to enterprise businesses who need a highly flexible and customizable solution for a diverse range of use cases.
Founded in 2011, ThreatConnect is a cybersecurity vendor who specialize in threat intelligence, analytics, and cyber risk quantification. Its SOAR platform can integrate seamlessly with a host of security tools to coordinate investigations, add additional context, and provide effective response.
Features
- Ability to automate tasks with a drag-and-drop editor
- Use historical data to triage alerts so you can focus on crucial tasks
- Extensive threat hunting capabilities using automated and templated workflows
- Malware and phishing attack analysis and response
- Hundreds of built-in playbooks
- Threat detection and blocking utilizing high-fidelity intelligence
Expert Insights’ Comments: ThreatConnect’s SOAR platform excels in its threat intelligence management capabilities, enabling teams an overview of their entire IT estate – including key performance indicators and case metrics. It offers flexible pricing models and can be deployed either on-premises or in the cloud. We recommend ThreatConnect SOAR for mid-sized to enterprise organizations and MSPs that need a powerful SOAR platform that also has advanced threat intelligence management capabilities built in.
FAQs
What Is Security Orchestration, Automation, And Response?
Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) solutions take information from all the security tools in your cybersecurity stack to gain extensive visibility. From this vantage point, it is easier to identify threats and understand their potential impact, than from one security tool alone. This centralized management then allows remediation and response capabilities to be initiated.
SOAR can effectively analyse data from your endpoints through its comprehensive use of AI and ML capabilities. This allows it to work much faster than a human could, without increasing the risk of making a mistake. In practice, this allows it to carry out advanced threat hunting and even identify dormant malware that may be activated later. As it monitors your network, it can also identify network vulnerabilities and catalogue how previous attacks have been initiated.
What Should You Look For In A SOAR Solution?
There are three key features to look out for when selecting a SOAR solution.
- Alert triage and investigation. As these solutions will take in a great deal of information from across your entire network, the amount of data they can gather will be vast. It is simply unfeasible for a human analysis to shift through this data and identify anomalies. Your SOAR solution should analyse data automatically, and only alert admin users to the most critical events, or events that require human input.
- Playbooks. There are many thousands of events that your SOAR solution could run into. Rather than needing AI and ML capabilities to “decide” how best to respond in each case, you can use pre-built playbooks to respond. For instance, if a known attack type is encountered, you can follow the steps as prescribed in a playbook to ensure that you are responding efficiently an effectively. Your SOAR solution should have pre-built and customizable playbooks for you to use.
- Reporting dashboard. As these solutions assess large quantities of data, there should be an effective and streamlined dashboard that can highlight key findings and present information in an accessible way. There should be a record of remediation events that have happened without any need for human interaction. Overtime you can assess these trends and decide if any security protocols need changing.
How Do SOAR Security Tools Work?
SOAR security tools analyse data from across your network to carry out advanced and comprehensive analysis. This allows you to respond to attacks quickly, as well as gaining visibility of an entire attack lifecycle. This provides valuable information that can help to prevent future attacks and identify vulnerabilities. Let’s break each of these stages down into a little more detail.
- Data Gathering – Through deep integration with your endpoints and your network, SOAR solutions will gather as much data as possible. It is important that they have unrestricted access to ensure that the SOAR solution does not miss any threats. If there are areas that the solution cannot monitor, these blind spots could be exploited by attackers.
- Data Analysis – A SOAR solution will use machine learning (ML) to sift through the vast quantities of data that it has access to. The tool will then carry out analysis to determine if any processes are occurring abnormally – this would suggest that a system is under attack. Prioritized notifications can be sent to SOC teams to pick up anything that has been missed.
- Response – Once a threat has been identified, a SOAR solution can work to automatically enact remediation procedures and stop an attack before it causes too much damage. There will be several inbuilt playbooks that will dictate the correct response given a particular scenario.
Things To Keep In Mind When Using A SOAR Solution
SOAR is not a silver bullet. While SOAR solutions are technically advanced and use complex algorithms and analysis, they are not perfect. They allow you to reduce the risk facing your network but cannot eliminate it entirely.
When implementing a SOAR tool, you should ensure that you understand how it is configured. Rather than assuming that the SOAR solution is managing everything, understand its limitations, and put additional measure in place.
Cybersecurity threats are becoming more complex. Each day, countless new and evolved cyberattacks are created. At each stage, these will attempt to exploit a vulnerability and compromise your network. Your SOAR solution – and your SOC team – will have to be agile and adaptive to identify and understand new and unique threats.
Over-reliance on automation. SOAR is a very useful and efficient solution for automating analysis and remediation tasks. It is not, however, suited to automate all activities. For more complex or unique cases, it may be more effective for a human-led team to implement fixes. It is also worth following up the tasks completed by your SOAR solution to ensure that your network is secure.
What Is The Difference Between SOAR And SIEM Tools?
SIEM stands for Security Information and Event Management. These tools will collect and log cybersecurity event data from across your network, including your servers, applications, and databases. If anything suspicious or anomalous is detected, the SIEM solution will send an alert notification.
SOAR solutions work in a similar way – they start by monitoring and detecting networks events. The two solutions begin to differ in their response. Rather than sending a notification alone, SOAR tools are capable of responding and remediating the issue. Some issues are too complex for SOAR solutions to automatically remediate, in these instances, the tool will triage the threats, then notify admin teams.
