Securing your systems, software, and staff is harder than ever. To remain one step ahead of the adversary, Cybersecurity Operations (CSO) teams must orchestrate a multitude of security tools and processes. But this type of security protocol is exceedingly difficult to accomplish. It places high demands on the experts who manage it. And it doesn’t always give them the capabilities they need. Here security orchestration is used as an integration of a messy collection of security tools and processes to automate tasks for smoother, more effective security operations.
While “Security Orchestration” might seem like a marketing buzzword, it is actually a useful technique that can streamline the process you’re currently using to protect your organization with multiple different security solutions. It refers to the software tools and systems that businesses use to intelligently automate their cybersecurity operations and processes.
According to the study by Rapid7, 2021, “Security Orchestration is a process of connecting systems and optimizing workflow, whatever the challenges may be. It eliminates the need to rework and manually forward tools in a discrete fashion, implementing automation in any given situation.”Let’s discuss Security Orchestration, the scope, and works in detail.
What is Security Orchestration?
In the past few decades, you may find huge differences in cybersecurity policies and techniques. As technologies change, so do cybersecurity technologies. It used to be a best practice for IT teams to rely on just a single security program on one device—but this is no longer true. Most IT teams now use multiple, complementary security tools on their devices and workstations, particularly because each tool covers different vulnerabilities and threat vectors.
As per the report of MarketsandMarkets, 2019, it’s important to have multiple security solutions in place. But when these different systems are used, they need to work together. That’s where security orchestration steps in. Security orchestration is a technology that allows the individual systems to communicate and cooperate thereby improving the overall effectiveness of your cybersecurity efforts.
The Infosec institute describes orchestration as “integrating disparate technologies and connecting security tools, both security-specific and non-security specific, in order to make them capable of working together and improving incident response.” With an orchestration of security solutions, businesses can incorporate all the solutions already in place into one streamlined system to manage things smoothly.
Here Security Orchestration Process includes:
Contextualizing and centralizing the incident response data
Reducing SOC caseloads.
Streamlining work processes to improve productivity and efficiency of all connected devices.
Organizing and integrating data in a more feasible and easier manner.
In other words, security orchestration allows organizations to prevent and manage cybersecurity incidents by integrating various security products into one system, automating tasks with workflows, and using an interface for human response. Generally speaking, security orchestration solutions are implemented in large corporations’ SOCs to support investigators with monitoring and incident detection. They can also be used on enterprise networks to protect IT infrastructure from cyberattacks.
Security Orchestration Vs. Security Automation:
Despite often being used almost interchangeably, security orchestration and automation are two very different things in the cybersecurity domain. Security orchestration refers to the process of maintaining a high-level view of changes and events within an environment so that appropriate responses are made at any given moment. By contrast, security automation is more about carrying out predefined plans as needed based on current conditions either for routine processes or triggered by changing data.
Security orchestration uses an array of cybersecurity processes and tools to create a well-rounded digital environment that can facilitate the implementation of several security operations. Automation is the means through which cyber operators are freed up from having to address smaller tasks and more technical approaches in order to improve team productivity.
Security automation allows SOC teams to automate multiple tasks with a single system or device. To automate multiple tasks, processes, and systems however security orchestration is needed. Security orchestrators are experts at managing the process of automating several different systems.
Automated security tools, both single- and multi-tiered have made significant progress in protecting networks. But without security orchestration, these resources can’t help in the security operation with greater efficiency.
Security Orchestration streamlines and optimizes the processes of repeatable tasks given the right conditions and proper implementation. Whereas security automation is a foundation requirement under some circumstances, however, process automation can be easily misinterpreted as something which simply applies to one aspect of most business operations.
How Does Security Orchestration Work?
According to the report of MarketandMarket, 2019, a security orchestration platform enables organizations to collect data from different sources that could be used in preventing cybersecurity-related incidents by bringing together multiple products and vendors under a single security platform which makes it easy to carry out operations without distractions.
Here are a few highlights of the biggest and the most important scope of security orchestration:
Contextualizing and centralizing the incident response data:
Security orchestration ships through the noise and provides analysts with context-rich data for deeper analysis in one central location. By integrating your security operations center ecosystem, the tool transforms rows of textual data into meaningful, context-rich detail. Security operations teams now have the information they need at their fingertips, reducing the amount of time spent gathering data and increasing the time spent on analysis, response, and remediation activities.
Reducing Security gaps & infosec caseloads:
Orchestration reduces infosec caseload because of the fact that you no longer have to spend so much time working out which security alerts matter, and which don’t. This tool automatically groups alerts into cases rather than leaving it up to you to work things out. Cases are then automatically distributed according to the most urgent demands on your attention.
Streamlining Security Process:
Security is one of the biggest concerns for any business, and that’s true of IT teams as well! With security orchestration tools, they can connect disparate systems and tools in order to consolidate redundant processes.
Improving Data Breaches:
A cloud-based security orchestration platform makes it possible to automate processes related to the detection, prevention, identification, and ultimately the remediation of any sort of attack on your network infrastructure. An orchestrated layer will also help detect new threats quicker and more accurately which in turn will result in mitigating security incidents sooner which results in better data safety overall.
How Can Securaa Help You?
The automated security orchestration solutions market size is projected to grow from USD 868 million in 2019 to USD 1,791 million by 2024, at a CAGR of 15.6 % 2019 to 2024. The major factors driving the market include the increasing number of critical infrastructure attacks, False Alarms, and Ransomware Incidents.
As an entrepreneur, keeping any business secure is a priority. There are always new technologies and hacking tactics that can pose potential threats to the infrastructure of your network infrastructure. Incorporating security orchestration ensures that antivirus software stays updated, detects dangers quickly, and has complete backups of all important files. Securaa helps businesses to integrate multiple management tools with the help of security orchestration strategies and cybersecurity operations into a single platform.
At Securaa, our team provides the ultimate security solution that allows one to monitor a threat in real-time. Our orchestration tool works by integrating data across an entire security operations ecosystem and allows your team visualize the different components as well as their related relationships involved in a given security event so that you’re all on the same page.
Wrapping Up!
In 2022, the security orchestration solution is going to become an absolute necessity for every organization. According to the Rapid7 survey, 2021, the biggest inhibitor for organizations not utilizing cyber security orchestration tools properly was their lack of in-house security expertise. After all, you can’t expect your employees to act as security experts when they’re accustomed to working with and developing products and services rather than thwarting hackers!
The scope and uses of security orchestration ]highlighted in this article will help you to understand how it helps to streamline and optimize the processes of repeatable tasks given the right conditions and proper implementation. If you are looking for a one-stop solution that will provide high-quality security, look no further! Securaa is able to provide an effective threat intelligence and security orchestration solution in a unified security platform.
SOAR technology enables businesses to collect inputs that are monitored by the security operations team. Alerts from the SIEM system and other security technologies, for example, can assist define, prioritizing, and driving regulated incident response actions by employing a combination of human and machine power. An organization can use SOAR tools to define incident analysis and response procedures in a digital workflow format.
Three main components of SOAR platforms are;
Security orchestration
Security automation
Security response
SOAR PlatformNOTE: There is something called playbooks, that plays a huge role to SOAR success. These playbooks are predetermined automatic operations that can be prebuilt or altered. To execute complex actions, many SOAR playbooks can be linked.
For example, if a malicious Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is discovered in an employee email and recognised during a scan, a playbook can be implemented that stops the email, notifies the worker of the prospective phishing attempt, and blacklists the sender’s Internet Protocol (IP) address. If necessary, SOAR technologies can also trigger follow-up investigative measures by security officers.
Figure 1: Malware analysis SOAR playbook sample (insert figure, flow chart, mechanism, process)
Best SOAR Playbooks 2022
For Ransomware: Use D3 XGEN SOAR
For Cryptojacking: D3 XGEN SOAR
Likewise, other SOAR platforms have their own playbooks, and more are on the way to hitting the market.
What Is Threat Intelligence Management (TIM)?
A SOAR Platform may feature Threat Intelligence Management, or TIM, in addition to security orchestration, automation, and response. Threat intelligence management (TIM) allows enterprises to gain a better understanding of the global threat landscape, predict attackers’ next movements, and respond quickly to stop attacks.
There Is A Difference Between Automation & Orchestration
Security automation is all about simplifying and streamlining your security processes, whereas security orchestration links all of your different security technologies so that they feed into one another.
Security automation and security orchestration are terms that are sometimes used interchangeably, yet the two platforms serve very different purposes. Security automation, for example, minimises the time it takes to detect and respond to recurrent occurrences and false positives, ensuring that alarms do not go unnoticed for long periods of time.
Security orchestration, on the other hand, enables numerous tools to react to crises as a group, even if the data is scattered across a wide network and multiple systems or devices. Security orchestration employs a number of automated actions to carry out a comprehensive, complex procedure or workflow.
Importance Of SOAR Platform
Using SOAR Platform is way more important than major companies realise. Organizations now face multiple cybersecurity challenges in an ever-growing and increasingly digital world.
The more complicated and vicious the attacks, the more corporations must devise an efficient and effective strategy for the future of their security operations.
SOAR is transforming the way security operations teams handle, evaluate, and respond to alerts and threats as a result of this need.
With an increasing volume of threats and alerts, and a shortage of funds to address them all, analysts are not only forced to decide which alerts to take seriously and act on, and which can be ignored; they are also frequently overworked, risking missing serious dangers and making a large lot of mistakes as they attempt to respond to threats and bad brokers.
SOAR platforms allow you to:
Integrate tools for security, IT operations, and threat intelligence. To reach a more thorough degree of data collecting and analysis, you can integrate all of your different security solutions, including ones from different manufacturers.
Helps you view everything in one location. Your security team has access to a centralized console that contains all of the information required to investigate and resolve events.
Accelerate incident reaction. SOARs have been shown to lower both the mean time to detect (MTTD) and the mean time to respond (MTTR) (MTTR).
Helps you avoid time-consuming tasks. SOAR significantly lowers false positives, repetitious procedures, and manual processes that consume security analysts’ time.
Helps Improve your intelligence. SOAR solutions collect and evaluate data from threat intelligence platforms, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, SIEMs, and other technologies, providing your security team with more context and insight.
Enhance your reporting and communication. Stakeholders may obtain all the information they need, including clear metrics that assist them to determine how to optimise procedures and minimise reaction times, when all security operations activities are pooled in one location and displayed in intuitive dashboards.
Improve your decision-making abilities. SOAR platforms are designed to be user-friendly, even for inexperienced security analysts, with features such as pre-built playbooks, drag-and-drop functionalities for creating playbooks from scratch, and automated alert prioritising.
There is numerous soar platform open source, such as Shuffle, SIRP, and much more. Even Securaa is one of them. Not all platforms provide free open source though.
SOAR Capabilities
There are lots of SOAR tools in the market promising the benefits, but not all are effective, so do look for the right SOAR tool;
Here are some of the qualities to look for:
Reports that are easily understood. This broad perspective enables you to immediately grasp what’s going on in the network, analyse problems, and decide what to do next.
Alerts are automatically queued and prioritised. Essentially, you want to know what things are most important to work on right away, without having to do considerable research.
Alert information has been organised. IP addresses, domain names, file hashes, user names, email addresses, and other pertinent data fields should be arranged so that security analysts can process them quickly.
Playbook creation and management are flexible and simple. Look for a system that includes both built-in playbooks and the ability to alter and develop your own using your preferred playbook editor.
Integration with the business tools that you employ. Firewalls, endpoint products, reputation services, sandboxes, directory services, and SIEMs are examples of security and infrastructure assets.
What are some examples of SOAR applications?
Before you start talking to vendors about SOAR platforms, one of the wisest things you can do is consider how your business will use the solution.
Typical use cases vary greatly depending on your sector. Here are some ideas to get you thinking about how you may apply SOAR in your own organisation;
Threat hunting: Security teams typically spend hours soar security tools each day responding with a flood of warnings, leaving little time for threat hunting, investigating, and brainstorming long-term changes.
In the financial services sector, for example, it has been stated that organisations are subjected to over 2,000 attacks every minute, with breaches and sensitive data theft tripling in the last five years. Many of those attacks might be addressed instantly with automation, freeing up bandwidth for security analysts to fix flaws and making it more difficult for hackers to access critical information.
Using automatic incident response to combat cyberattacks: The nature and severity of security events vary, and certain industries are suffering more than others.
For example, while phishing assaults are on the rise everywhere, the healthcare business has experienced a surge, with the majority of them directed at collecting credentials from people within hospital databases.
The retail industry is coping with unprecedented levels of ransomware assaults, and hackers are increasingly targeting susceptible factory floor control networks.
SOAR platforms can detect and investigate the sources of these types of threats autonomously.
Improving overall vulnerability management: A SOAR solution can ensure that your security team triages and handles the risk caused by newly identified vulnerabilities in your environment.
As a result, they may be proactive, obtaining more information on weak points and properly researching them, while also putting measures in place to prevent breaches or other assaults.
Penetration testing: According to eSecurity Planet’s 2019 State of IT Security report, about 40% of businesses do not undertake penetration testing consistently or at all.
SOAR solutions can automate tasks like asset detection scans, classification, and target prioritisation, allowing security teams to operationalize their penetration testing efforts.
Benefits Of SOAR
Meet fiscal requirements: The increasing quantity and variety of risks pose substantial budgetary challenges for businesses. With each new threat, a new protocol must be devised, which may need the hiring of additional personnel to handle the process.
With SOAR, each aspect of the approach is streamlined, and most of it can be automated, saving time and money.
Improve time management and efficiency: Because a SOAR strategy saves time, productivity increases. Team members who would ordinarily spend countless hours completing tasks that SOAR has automated can now devote their time to supporting other corporate goals.
Improve incident management: When hazards are dealt with more rapidly, businesses benefit as well. The SOAR architecture enables faster response times and more precise interventions.
Because fewer mistakes are made, less time is required to remedy problems.
SOAR can be configured to meet the specific demands