SOAR
Security Orchestration, Automation and Response — a platform that automates repeatable SOC workflows (alert triage, enrichment, containment) using playbooks, reducing analyst toil on high-volume, low-complexity cases.
What is SOAR?
SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation and Response) platforms connect a SOC's tools — SIEM, ticketing, threat intelligence, EDR, firewalls — into automated playbooks that execute containment, enrichment, and notification actions without requiring analyst clicks for every step. A SOAR playbook triggered by a phishing alert might automatically extract the sender domain, query threat intelligence APIs, check delivery logs, isolate the recipient endpoint, and open a pre-populated ticket — in under 60 seconds.
SOAR reduces analyst toil on high-volume, low-complexity alert classes such as phishing reports, account lockouts, and known malware detections. This frees tier-two and tier-three analysts for genuine threat hunting and complex incident response. Alert-to-ticket mean time drops from hours to seconds for playbook-covered cases; MTTR (mean time to respond) falls proportionally.
Effective SOAR deployment requires detection quality upstream — automating responses to noisy, low-fidelity alerts creates false containment actions that frustrate users and undermine trust. AiRAT's approach: tune SIEM detection quality first, then build SOAR playbooks only for alert classes with precision above agreed thresholds. Every automated containment action logs a human-readable audit trail for compliance review.
Examples in production
Phishing response playbook
Inbound phishing report triggers SOAR: email headers parsed, URLs submitted to sandbox, domain reputation queried, identical emails across mailboxes quarantined, IOCs pushed to perimeter block lists, analyst ticket opened with evidence summary — all within 90 seconds of the initial report.
Account compromise containment
Impossible travel alert triggers SOAR playbook: session tokens revoked, MFA re-enrollment enforced, user notified, manager alerted, and incident ticket created with enriched context — without analyst intervention for the first three actions.
Explore further
Questions about SOAR
What is the difference between SOAR and XDR?
SOAR is a workflow automation layer that orchestrates actions across multiple security tools based on playbooks. XDR provides integrated detection, correlation, and response within a unified platform. XDR handles detection and correlation natively; SOAR automates workflows across disparate tools that may not share a data model. Many programmes use XDR for detection and SOAR for cross-tool orchestration.
What playbooks should a SOC automate first?
Prioritise high-volume, low-complexity, high-precision alert classes: phishing triage, known-malware IOC matches, account lockout enrichment, and compliance evidence collection. Avoid automating containment actions for alert classes with precision below 85% — false positives cause more damage than the automation saves.
Running a system that uses SOAR?
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