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Combining SOAR automation with SOC expertise helps organizations create a balanced approach to threat detection while maintaining the irreplaceable role of human insight.
The Role of SOAR Automation in Cybersecurity
The key role of Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) lies in its ability to streamline repetitive tasks and automate responses to cyber threats. Doing so allows organizations to identify and respond to potential threats much more quickly.
What SOAR Brings to the Table
Traditionally, security teams would have to manually handle repetitive, low-level tasks such as aggregating system logs and triggering alerts.
Unfortunately, this shifts their focus away from more complex tasks and reduces productivity. The mundanity of these tasks also increases the risk of human error, which means threats are more likely to slip through.
Today, organizations can use SOAR to collect threat data, send automated notifications, and orchestrate incident response processes. This helps streamline incident management and allows faster responses to security incidents. It is more comprehensive than Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), which collects and analyzes security event data.
Limitations of SOAR in Dynamic Threat Environments
SOAR relies heavily on learning known signatures and defined behavior patterns from previous threats. It then applies this information to new threats. This means that despite its benefits, it also introduces a number of constraints.
These constraints are especially apparent when organizations are dealing with threats that don’t follow predictable patterns or known signatures. Increasingly, attackers are using advanced threats to leverage sophisticated evasion techniques that do not follow known patterns.
The Power of SOC Expertise in Detecting Complex Threats
Human expertise is integral to any Security Operations Center (SOC) team. Analysts bring contextual understanding and critical thinking to cybersecurity, which SOAR alone cannot provide.
The Role of Contextual Judgment
SOC analysts use real-world insights to recognize advanced threats that evade automated detection. Many of these advanced threats are characterized by unusual behavior patterns.
For instance, analysts may decide to investigate an employee’s login at a strange time or from a different part of the world. Attackers may have intentionally set an attack to trigger late at night or over the weekend when there is less human oversight.
Adapting to Evolving Threat Tactics
SOC analysts have the flexibility and contextual awareness to respond to novel, evolving threats that would typically bypass SOAR’s pre-set responses. That means they can stay one step ahead of sophisticated threats.
Why CyberMaxx Combines SOAR with SOC Expertise
The discussion of human vs. automated threat detection is complex. CyberMaxx combines the advantages of both by using both SOAR alongside a skilled SOC team. This means it can take advantage of the complementary strengths of automation and human analysis in its security strategy.
Faster Detection with Reliable Human Oversight
CyberMaxx uses SOAR to automate simple tasks and trigger responses to low-level known threats. This maximizes efficiency and helps the organization to scale its security operations. In addition, CyberMaxx relies on its SOC analysts to verify alerts to minimize false positives and investigate more complex threats.
Combining SOAR with SOC enhances accuracy and reduces the risk of threats going unnoticed, allowing CyberMaxx to increase the effectiveness of its responses.
Scalability
Handling higher volume of incidents: as the number of security alerts and incidents increases, SOAR helps SOC Analysts manage higher volume of incidents without needing to proportionally scale up the team.
Adaptability
SOAR platforms can be tailored to the specific needs of an organization, allowing them to scale and adapt as threats evolve.
Real-World Examples: When SOC Expertise Makes the Difference
There are many real-life scenarios in which human expertise in a SOC security team has identified and stopped threats that SOAR alone would not catch.
Recognizing Behavioral Anomalies
Even if an organization has an automated advanced threat detection system in place, threats may be missed.
For example, a business consultant may have a history of accessing sensitive files during business hours. They occasionally accessed files in the early evening if they were working late. Because this behavior of accessing files outside of work hours isn’t completely new, the software did not flag it, and it remained undetected.
After a few weeks, a SOC analyst noticed that this behavior was becoming more frequent. The times the employee accessed the files also gradually got later and later into the evening. Upon further investigation, they noticed the employee was attempting to access files unrelated to their role. This included financial documents and employee personal records.
Upon further investigation, the SOC analyst realized that an attacker had infiltrated the network. They were trying to gain access to sensitive information about employees and sensitive financial information about the organization. Without further investigation by the analyst, this threat may not have been detected.
Rapid Adaptation to Emerging Threats
CyberMaxx’s SOC team is always ready to adapt its approach to novel threat tactics. This means it can respond to threats in ways that SOAR cannot anticipate.
For example, a SOC analyst could detect a phishing email targeting a high-profile executive within an organization. In this scenario, the attacker gained a significant amount of information about the executive by aggregating social media data. They also gathered information about sensitive internal projects through previous phishing campaigns.
While SOAR flagged the email as suspicious and quarantined it, it was unable to anticipate the next stage of the attack. The attacker called the executive and used deepfake audio to impersonate a business partner. They asked the executive to transfer money.
The executive was suspicious and called the SOC team to alert them of the call. After conducting a thorough manual review, the SOC team analyzed the emails flagged by SOAR. They determined that the attacker had used personal information from the email chain to target the executive and confirmed that this was a multi-stage social engineering attack.
The CyberMaxx Advantage: A Balanced Security Approach
CyberMaxx combines the speed of SOAR with the nuanced judgment of SOC experts. This provides many benefits for clients.
Maximizing Threat Detection and Response
CyberMaxx’s combined approach delivers higher detection rates and faster, more accurate responses for clients than using SOAR alone.
Its SOAR system carries out basic functions such as handling known attack patterns and automating workflows. Meanwhile, its SOC team monitors alerts from a range of security tools to identify more complex threats. This helps organizations maximize their threat detection and response capabilities.
CyberMaxx remains committed to adaptable security in today’s evolving threat landscape. Blending automation with human expertise helps the organization to effectively deal with today’s threats while staying prepared for future threats.
The Importance of SOC Expertise in Threat Detection
SOC expertise in threat detection is crucial for cybersecurity. Combining human expertise with SOAR automation highlights CyberMaxx’s commitment to adaptive, effective threat detection.