Today, an increasingly complex risk landscape, combined with dispersed IT environments consisting of numerous endpoints, has made threat detection and response challenging. Most companies depend upon network-connected devices, operating systems, and applications.
In this type of IT environment, maintaining consistent security controls is difficult. Adding to these IT security pain points is a global lack of cybersecurity expertise.
Security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) can help companies overcome cybersecurity challenges. Your company should adopt SOAR as part of your security strategy because it uses automation to optimize threat detection and response, closing the security skills gap.
Bridging the Cybersecurity Skills Gap
Cybercrime Magazine predicted that by 2025, the cybersecurity industry will have 3.5 million job openings. That forecast means that in the future, your company may be fighting to find the expertise necessary to solve your IT security problems.
However, adopting the right technology now can bridge security skill gaps while saving your company the expense of hiring salaried security experts. By deploying SOAR technology, your business can automate many IT security functions, including alerts, correlation, and enrichment.
For example, Cisco Managed Detection and Response (MDR) propagates blocked items, allowing for instant containment. Any signs of compromise are reported immediately so they can be blocked, hunted, and followed up on.
Elements of SOAR
SOAR is a solution stack of compatible software that allows organizations to orchestrate and automate different parts of security management and operations. The solution stack contains multiple elements that improve the accuracy, consistency, and efficiency of security processes and workflows by automating threat response.
Security Orchestration
Security orchestration leverages the different, compatible products for use within a solution stack to orchestrate the management and operations activities through standardized workflows.
Orchestration allows these security solutions to aggregate data from multiple sources, contextualize that data to identify potential weaknesses, and use risk modeling scenarios to allow you to automate threat detection, all automatically.
Security Automation
Security automation eliminates the need to perform manually many of the repetitive actions involved in the threat detection process.
Traditionally, security analysts within an organization would handle threat alerts, usually multi-tasking to evaluate alerts from numerous point solutions. Manually reviewing alerts increases the chances of human error, inconsistent threat response, and overlooking legitimate, high-severity threats.
SOAR automates the processes of:
- Gathering enrichment and intelligence on an event
- Performing common investigative steps to help triage events
- Consistently delivering on the orchestration and response of the incident response lifecycle
Security Response
Security response performs threat triage, containment, and eradication. The response method is tailored to the type and scope of the threat. Some threat responses can be automated for faster results, such as:
- Quarantining files
- Blocking file hashes across the organization
- Isolating a host
- Disabling access to compromised accounts
However, sophisticated cyberattacks require responses that can only be accomplished through security playbooks. Cisco MDR supports automation using defined investigation and response playbooks.
These playbooks contain overviews of known threat scenarios and best practices for responding to different types of threats. The role of security automation is to rapidly execute these playbooks.
Optimal Threat Detection and Response With SOAR
With SOAR, companies can investigate potentially malicious files by answering questions and performing tasks automatically. SOAR can answer questions, such as whether a file was quarantined or executed and where else the file has been seen on the network.
The answers to these questions provide contextual information to the investigator, aiding in determining the legitimacy, impact, urgency, and scope of the incident. The answers also determine appropriate response actions, which may include:
- Quarantining the host on the network
- Blocking the file hash across the network
- Blocking indicators of compromise (IOC)
Cisco MDR can detonate a potentially compromised file in a sandboxing environment and investigate the threat using available context related to connection, file, and source. Available threat intelligence information on the file can be retrieved and checked for occurrences of known IOC. Identification information on the host and username can also be collected.
Finding the Right SOAR Solution
As they recognize the importance of orchestration, more and more organizations are prioritizing effective integration between security technologies to enable rapid threat detection and response.
SOAR enables this orchestration.
Cisco Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is a leading SOAR solution with rich functionality and automation features. As a Cisco Premier Certified Partner, Dynamix can help your company strengthen its security strategy with Cisco MDR.
Find out if SOAR is right for you. Reach out to the Cisco experts at Dynamix.