You know that -- Automation refers to replacing one or more manual tasks, which typically slow down incident response, with immediate reactions to security events identified across your environments. When you automate certain repetitive tasks, you actually reduce the burden of security operations and it helps you respond to threats more quickly—and more effectively.
Automation is a critical initiative for many security operations teams, who look to overcome resource constraints while keeping pace with evolving attackers and a growing volume of security alerts.
But not everything should be automated, because the human element of incident response isn’t going away any time soon. There are certain pieces or alerts which will require the judgment or intervention of human…
Instead, your security teams should focus on orchestrating the incident response processes so that your human security analysts can respond to threats as quickly and efficiently as possible.
For example, switching between an intrusion detection solution and an application where you need to take an action in the event of a breach can slow down the entire incident response process. To take full advantage of incident response orchestration and improve processes across multiple steps and toolsets, you should always look for IR solutions that can help you in unifying all your IR activities within a single solution, like AlienVault's USM Anywhere.
All such technologies comes under the category of SOAR - Security Orchestration, Automation and Response!
"These are technologies which enable organizations to collect inputs monitored by the security operations team. For example, thousands of alerts are coming from the SIEM system and other security technologies, then SOAR solutions are there where incident analysis and triage can be performed by leveraging a combination of human and machine power.
-
How SIEM and SOAR work together in Cybersecurity?
Many organizations rely both on SOAR and SIEM to drive their cyber security defense. That is because SIEM and SOAR do not contradict one another, yet they complement each other’s strengths and actually make each other better by collaborating:
SIEM
SOAR
The problem with SIEM is that it generates a lot of alerts, and many of those alerts are not real threats, meaning that they are false positives. This is where SOAR steps in to fill in the gaps, as SOAR is capable of recognizing false positives and telling apart real threats from false ones. This saves much of the analyst’s time, and with SIEM’s alert detecting capabilities and SOAR’s machine learning technology, it is obvious why these two technologies work so well together.
The Top SOAR vendors are:
-
Demisto
-
IBM
-
Palo Alto Networks
-
Siemplify
-
Swimlane
-
ThreatConnect
-
Splunk
-
Rapid7
-
Cyberbit
-
LogRhythm
What Incident Response Orchestration Can Do for You?
Incident response orchestration will look slightly different at every organization—that’s where the human element I mentioned earlier comes into play. When you gear up for IR Orchestration, there are a few key IR orchestration and automation capabilities you should look for.
• Prioritized Security Alerts
• Threat Context
• Automated Incident Response Actions
• Threat Intelligence Updates
• Bidirectional Response
All you want is to shorten the time between detection and response by centralizing your IR activities in one place.
These platforms actually add a layer of time-saving IR automation capabilities on the top of a foundation of essential security and compliance monitoring capabilities, which include asset discovery, vulnerability scanning, intrusion detection, behavioral monitoring, SIEM, and log management. I have mentioned all these things in the graphic given here.
-
Guys, It is a long piece to read and grasp fully, nonetheless you would have learnt a lot of finer points about IR Orchestration and why everything connects together.
Please let me know of what do you think about this in the comment section. You can also share with all if the information shared here helps you in some manner.
As you are truly interested in reading more of such high-quality posts on cybersecurity, you can always let me know by leaving your comments.
This Article Was Written & published by Meena R, Senior Manager - IT, at Luminis Consulting Services Pvt. Ltd, India.
Over the past 16 years, Meena has built a following of IT professionals, particularly in Cybersecurity, Cisco Technologies, and Networking...
She is so obsessed with Cybersecurity domain that she is going out of her way and sharing hugely valuable posts and writings about Cybersecurity on website, and social media platforms.
34,000+ professionals are following her on Facebook and mesmerized by the quality of content of her posts on Facebook.
If you haven't yet been touched by her enthusiastic work of sharing quality info about Cybersecurity, then you can follow her on Facebook:
Click Here to follow her: Cybersecurity PRISM