How Does SOAR Differ from SIEM?

SOC (Security Operation Center) is a fundamental function of the security unit within the organization, which detects, analyses, mitigates against cyber security incidents and responds, when necessary, by using processes and technology in a necessary way.

One of the primary tasks of SOC services is monitoring the alarms of the systems; Using SIEM or log management and analysis/monitoring software, it is to search for the indicator of compromises/attacks/vulnerabilities in a potential circumstance, detect and determine the criticality of alarms and sort them according to their severity/criticality. In addition to this, SOC optimally manages critical processes required to detect malicious activities, such as identifying attack sources, with the help of security monitoring devices.

Log records are a must-have for SOC, but without log management, it is difficult to manage a SOC system or SIEM, determine the actions to be taken, and take countermeasures. Because without knowing the source of the problem, it is impossible to know where, when, and how to do it. In this case, it is not possible to act and solve a problem in something unknown. In this case, log management is a method that should be considered for SOC management.

As we have highlighted in detail in our previous articles (What is SIEM? What Makes a Next-Gen SIEM?), SIEM is mainly a correlation platform that helps to detect possible attacks by establishing meaningful connections between security events that seem to be independent with the help of determining policies and rules.

However, now we have a terminology called SOAR designed to manage and respond to alarms like SIEM. So, what is this SOAR, how is it different from SIEM? Let's answer these questions first.

So, What Is This SOAR?

SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response) is the terminology adopted by Gartner and is an approach to security operations and incident response used today to increase the efficiency, effectiveness, and consistency of security operations.

SOAR platforms take things a step further by combining comprehensive data collection, case management, standardization, workflow, and analytics to provide organizations with the ability to implement advanced defense-in-depth capabilities.

Let's take a look at its components separately to understand better what this means.

• Security Orchestration
• Security Automation
• Security Response

Security Orchestration is the coordination of various security tools and technologies used to seamlessly integrate and communicate with each other to create repeatable, actionable, measurable, and effective incident response processes and workflows. People and process factors should also be considered to ensure maximum efficiency.

Security Automation is a method of reducing this time by automatically handling tasks and processes without the need for manual human interaction, automating repeatable processes, and applying machine learning to appropriate tasks. Automation often happens by using playbooks and runbooks to reduce or eliminate mundane actions that need to be performed.

Security Response is an approach to handling and managing a security incident after an alert has been triggered, including filtering, containment, remediation, and more. Today, many actions are performed automatically, such as quarantining files and disabling access to compromised accounts, so that events that once represented real threats can be quickly resolved.

How Does SOAR Work?

SOAR solutions allow SOC teams to automatically collect the content needed to further investigate alerts generated from their ecosystem. Using a SOAR platform, all the tools and technologies required to provide the individual pieces of the puzzle can be seamlessly brought together to automatically respond to security alerts. The most appropriate response steps and actions are then executed by triggering various playbooks to suit different threats. While this ultimately ensures that all alerts are answered, it frees up valuable analyst time to have them work on higher priority or more complex and proactive tasks.

What Are the SOAR Benefits?

• SOAR enables SOC teams to do more with fewer resources, shortening the time from discovery of the breach to resolution, minimizing the risks from security incidents, and increasing the overall effectiveness and efficiency of SOC operations.
• SOAR solutions collect alarm data from each integrated platform and place them in a single location for further investigation.
• SOAR's case management approach allows users to research, evaluate, and perform additional relevant investigations from within a single case.
• SOAR integrates as a tool to host highly automated, complex incident response workflows, delivering faster results and facilitating defense.
• SOAR solutions include multiple "playbooks" in response to specific threats. Every step in a playbook can be fully automated or adjusted to continue with one click directly from some platforms, including interaction with third-party products for extensive integration.
• Simply put, SOAR integrates all the tools, systems, and applications in an organization's security inventory and then enables the SecOps team to automate incident response workflows.
• The primary benefit of SOAR to a SOC is that it automates and orchestrates time-consuming, manual tasks, including opening tickets without requiring any human intervention in a monitoring system like Jira – allowing engineers and analysts to use their specialized skills better.

SOAR and SIEM Differences

• SIEM cannot be used to consolidate people, processes, and technologies within a security operations center (SOC).
• SIEM runs correlations across all logs to generate alerts.
• SOAR may use third-party sources such as threat intelligence services and other external data sources.
• SOAR can integrate with other security, networking, and other IT components.