SOAR (security orchestration, automation and response) automates and orchestrates the workflows of security operations: playbooks model response processes as repeatable flows — from enriching an alert via queries in third-party systems to responses such as account lockout or host isolation.
The trigger is almost always overload: too many alerts meet too few analysts. SOAR takes over the repetitive steps so people decide where judgement counts.
How does SOAR work in practice?
An incoming alert — from SIEM or XDR, say — starts a playbook: it enriches automatically (who is the user? is the file known malicious? were there similar incidents?), makes rule-based pre-decisions and executes approved actions. Standard cases flow through, edge cases land with ready-made context at the analyst.
The value stands and falls with the playbooks: they encode the knowledge of the team. SOAR therefore sensibly starts with the most frequent, clearly decidable cases — phishing reports, known malware patterns, enrichment routines — and grows from there.
Typical SOAR playbooks
- Phishing triage: analyse the reported mail, check indicators, remove similar mails company-wide.
- Alert enrichment: pull in user, asset and threat intelligence context automatically.
- Containment: lock a compromised account, end sessions, isolate a host.
- Ticket and communication flow: document the incident, inform stakeholders.