How To Maximize Your SOAR Investment

How To Maximize Your SOAR Investment

SOAR platforms are designed with one thing in mind – to triangulate data from different security tools to create a faster incident response. However, the success of your SOAR deployment depends much on the sum of its parts – its integration of applications.

Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) tools are typically designed for Security Operations Center (SOC) teams, consisting of security analysts, threat intelligence experts, alert analysts and incident responders all working to avert the next big security incident for their enterprise. They rely heavily on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), which offers a single interface for monitoring enterprise systems. If you have SIEM, then what is the role of SOAR?

SOAR is SIEM on Steroids

SOAR tools go a step further than SIEM platforms by incorporating AI, machine learning, automation, behavioral analytics and response into the mix. This surpasses even next-gen SIEM solutions in integrating with a broader range of security platforms and automating incident response. How important is the automation piece? Very. According to the Cisco 2018 Cybersecurity Report, organizations investigate only 56% of the alerts they receive, on average, because SOCs are notoriously understaffed. By automating incident response, companies can reduce the number of alerts ignored due to lack of resources.

Are you a SOC expert? Then listen up …

As a SOC expert, your world is imploding with self-propagating network threat vectors, encrypted malware, botnets and ransomware – just to name a few of them. You also deal with significant white noise – false positives that can lead security teams astray. In that case, it is important to identify what is most important to the SOC teams today so that you can integrate with the right technologies to accelerate threat identification and remediation.

Here are some things to look for:

• Monitor – gain visibility across the extended enterprise
• Threat intelligence – generate alerts with high relevance
• Classify, prioritize – able to identify alerts by priority, with clear escalation paths
• Quick remediation/mitigation
• Stay compliant

FireMon + SOAR = Continuous Visibility

Not all visibility tools are created equal. Some rely entirely on their integration with third-party platforms to capture snapshots of the network infrastructure periodically, not in real-time. FireMon’s Lumeta integrates with leading SOAR platforms to offer real-time and continuous visibility into your network infrastructure across both known and unknown networks, devices, routing and non-routing infrastructure, access paths, etc., regardless of the location of your assets. Whether on-premises, cloud, virtualized or hybrid, it will deliver 100% visibility.

FireMon + SOAR = Accurate, Actionable Threat Intelligence

Does your SOC team spend a lot of time worrying about the wrong risks? FireMon’s Security Manager and its platform components offer targeted threat intelligence about policy workflow, compliance validation and risk management. Along with related process automation, it ensures automated and laser-focused inflow of critical data that your SOAR tools can readily organize and report.

FireMon + SOAR = Faster Remediation

So how do we prioritize risks that need immediate attention? FireMon’s Risk Analyzer gives SOC teams insights into what their risk factors are, assign a priority score, and outline what remediation actions need to be taken to significantly reduce or eliminate these risks. Compare this with vulnerability solutions that assign priority based on the criticalness of the vulnerability and the importance of the asset, which can be very subjective. SOAR platforms zero-in on risks. With the FireMon integration, identified risks can be remediated while ensuring that there are no unnecessary policy changes and avoid misconfigurations.

FireMon + SOAR = Continuous Compliance

SOAR vendors today support a multitude of regulations. FireMon adds power to the compliance capabilities of SOAR tools by providing compliance visibility over time. FireMon’s real-time compliance assessments and automation of rule review, recertification and documentation take the guessing out of your compliance efforts.

Without effective integration with best-in-class security platforms, SOAR solutions can become yet another underused tool in the growing enterprise security arsenal. Find out how FireMon can accelerate enterprise security with SOAR so that your DevOps teams can quickly close security gaps.