What is Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response?
Security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) is a category of technology platforms that help security operations teams manage and respond to a rapidly increasing volume of security alerts and threats. SOAR integrates disparate security tools and processes to coordinate, automate, and streamline incident response workflows. It allows organizations to define standard workflows, automate repetitive investigative and remediation activities, and centralize response processes across multiple systems.
SOAR platforms bridge the gap between the large number of alerts generated by security information and event management (SIEM) solutions and the finite human resources available to investigate and resolve them. By codifying best practices and repetitive tasks into automated playbooks, SOAR improves response efficiency, enables faster mitigation, and reduces the impact of threats. Security teams can investigate more incidents, reduce dwell time, and conserve analyst time for more complex challenges.
Drivers of SOAR Adoption
Security teams face an overwhelming volume of alerts from various monitoring systems, many of which turn out to be false positives or low-priority events. Manually triaging and investigating each alert is time-consuming and often leads to alert fatigue, where critical incidents risk being overlooked. SOAR platforms help address this by automating alert correlation, enrichment, and prioritization, allowing analysts to focus on the most relevant threats.
Another major driver is the cybersecurity skills shortage. Many organizations lack enough trained personnel to handle the growing complexity and volume of security operations. SOAR mitigates this constraint by automating repetitive tasks and codifying expert knowledge into playbooks. This allows less experienced analysts to handle incidents more effectively and reduces reliance on hard-to-find senior talent.
Tool sprawl also contributes to the need for SOAR. Most environments use dozens of disconnected security tools that generate siloed data and require manual coordination. SOAR platforms integrate these tools into unified workflows, enabling centralized visibility and response. By orchestrating actions across systems, SOAR reduces the operational overhead of managing a fragmented security stack and increases the overall effectiveness of security investments.
Core Components of Modern SOAR Platforms
1. Orchestration Engines for Multi-Tool Coordination
A key feature of modern SOAR platforms is their orchestration engine, which enables the coordination and integration of multiple security tools. Orchestration eliminates data silos by allowing disparate products (such as firewalls, SIEMs, endpoint protection, and ticketing systems) to communicate through standardized APIs or connectors. This interoperability is critical for creating end-to-end automated workflows that span the entire incident response lifecycle.
The orchestration engine typically manages these integrations through prebuilt connectors or custom scripts, ensuring that data can be ingested, enriched, and actioned in near real time. By aggregating relevant context and executing commands across systems, orchestration engines empower security teams to apply consistent policies and responses while reducing manual intervention. This leads to increased operational efficiency and a measurable reduction in both incident response times and human error rates.
2. Automation Pipelines and Trigger Types
Automation pipelines are at the core of SOAR, enabling platforms to execute sets of predefined tasks automatically. These pipelines can be triggered by a variety of events, such as incoming alerts, log entries, or threat intelligence updates, and execute actions ranging from enrichment to containment with minimal human input. Common pipeline steps include data enrichment, severity analysis, and sending notifications to stakeholders.
SOAR platforms support different trigger types, such as scheduled intervals, user input, or event-based triggers. This flexibility allows security teams to tailor automation to their environment’s needs and threat landscape. Well-designed automation pipelines empower analysts to focus on higher-value investigative work rather than repetitive, time-consuming tasks, ultimately boosting incident response maturity and scalability.
3. Case Management and Incident Lifecycle Tracking
Effective SOAR platforms provide robust case management features, centralizing evidence, activity logs, and communications related to each incident. This streamlines the investigation process and supports collaboration across security, IT, and other relevant teams. The ability to track incident status, ownership, and progression is key for maintaining accountability and ensuring incidents are resolved efficiently.
Lifecycle tracking within SOAR enables teams to monitor and document every stage of incident handling, from detection and triage to investigation, containment, eradication, and recovery. These features enable organizations to demonstrate regulatory compliance and facilitate post-incident reviews. By consolidating all case-related information in one place, security teams can more easily learn from prior incidents and improve their response playbooks over time.
4. Playbook Architecture and Execution Models
The playbook is the backbone of SOAR automation, providing a structured, repeatable set of steps for handling specific incident types. Modern SOAR solutions support both graphical and code-based playbook editors, allowing flexible design, documentation, and version control of incident response procedures. Playbooks typically encode best practices and institutional knowledge, driving consistency across security operations.
SOAR platforms offer different execution models for playbooks, such as fully automated, semi-automated with analyst approval, or manual execution. This allows organizations to balance automation while retaining analyst oversight where required. The ability to branch or loop within playbooks enables dynamic responses based on investigation results. A mature playbook architecture results in faster incident triage, reduced risk of human error, and improved compliance with internal and regulatory standards.
Traditional SOAR vs. AI-Driven SOAR
Traditional SOAR solutions rely on static, rule-based automation where playbooks are manually created and refined by analysts. While this approach supports repeatable, consistent incident response, it often struggles to keep pace with the high volume and complexity of modern security threats. The static nature of traditional SOAR makes it challenging to adapt quickly to new attack vectors or to improve over time without significant manual tuning and ongoing maintenance.
AI-driven SOAR platforms leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence to enhance automation, decision-making, and response processes. These platforms can analyze historical incident data to recommend playbook improvements, automate triage by accurately categorizing alerts, and even suggest remediation steps. By incorporating AI, organizations can achieve faster, more adaptive incident response, reduce false positives, and continuously optimize their security operations with minimal manual intervention.
Key Advantages of Implementing SOAR
Implementing a SOAR platform provides a strategic advantage for security operations teams by automating routine tasks, improving threat response time, and increasing the overall effectiveness of security processes. Below are the primary benefits organizations can expect:
- Faster incident response: Automated workflows reduce the time needed to detect, investigate, and remediate threats.
- Improved analyst efficiency: SOAR minimizes repetitive manual tasks, allowing analysts to focus on complex investigations and strategic initiatives.
- Reduced alert fatigue: By filtering, enriching, and triaging alerts automatically, SOAR helps eliminate noise and ensures that only actionable events reach human analysts.
- Consistent and repeatable processes: Playbooks ensure that responses follow standardized procedures, reducing variability and improving response quality.
- Better collaboration across teams: Integrated case management and communication tools enhance visibility and coordination between security, IT, and compliance teams.
- Improved threat visibility: By aggregating data from multiple sources, SOAR platforms provide a unified view of incidents, aiding faster root cause analysis.
- Enhanced regulatory compliance: Automated logging and documentation of incident handling support audit requirements and streamline compliance reporting.
- Scalability of security operations: SOAR enables security teams to handle more incidents without proportionally increasing headcount.
SOAR vs. SIEM vs. MSSP
While security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR), security information and event management (SIEM), and managed security service providers (MSSPs) all support security operations, they serve distinct roles:
- SIEM focuses on centralizing and correlating log data for threat detection and compliance reporting, but often generates high alert volumes that can overwhelm analysts.
- SOAR takes those alerts and operationalizes the response process, automating enrichment, triage, and remediation to drive action.
- MSSPs provide outsourced monitoring, investigation, and sometimes response services, often leveraging SIEM and SOAR technologies to scale security for customers without dedicated internal teams.
While SIEM provides data, and MSSP offers expertise, SOAR is the engine that ties tools and human workflows together for rapid, repeatable incident response. A mature security organization may leverage all three. Using SIEM for detection, SOAR for response, and MSSP for augmentation or fully managed service.
Learn more in our detailed guide to SIEM vs SOAR (coming soon)
Key SOAR Use Cases
Operationalizing Threat Intelligence Feeds
Operationalizing threat intelligence involves ingesting feeds from external sources and integrating this data into incident enrichment, detection, and response workflows. SOAR platforms automate the correlation of threat indicators with events from internal systems, quickly highlighting potential matches and alerting analysts to emerging risks. This accelerates triage and ensures rapid action on the most relevant threats.
By automating the validation and application of threat intelligence, organizations minimize manual effort and ensure new indicators are proactively used throughout detection and response processes. SOAR playbooks can update blocklists, adjust firewall rules, or trigger further investigation when high-confidence indicators are detected.
Automating Phishing Triage and Remediation
SOAR platforms excel at automating the costly and time-consuming process of phishing email investigation and remediation. By integrating with email systems and threat intelligence sources, SOAR platforms can rapidly collect artifacts, perform reputation checks, and determine the legitimacy of reported messages. Automation dramatically reduces the workload on analysts and helps mitigate phishing campaigns before they escalate.
Once a phishing email is confirmed, the SOAR system can automatically quarantine the message, search for similar emails sent to other users, and block malicious domains or sender addresses. These automated actions reduce the organization’s exposure to credential theft, malware, and business email compromise, while providing detailed audit trails for compliance and post-incident review.
Streamlining Vulnerability Prioritization
SOAR platforms help organizations prioritize and remediate vulnerabilities by aggregating scan results from multiple tools and correlating findings with threat intelligence. This automation enables an objective, risk-based approach to vulnerability management, helping teams quickly identify exposures that are most likely to be exploited in current attack campaigns. Integration with asset inventories and configuration management tools further enhances context and prioritization.
Automated playbooks can route high-priority vulnerabilities directly to patch management teams or trigger containment measures for assets that cannot be immediately remediated. SOAR’s tracking and case management features allow organizations to monitor remediation progress in real time, escalating issues that remain unresolved, and documenting actions for compliance reporting.
Coordinating Incident Response Across Cloud Assets
As organizations adopt cloud infrastructure, incident response becomes more complex due to asset dispersion and differences across cloud provider platforms. SOAR platforms centralize response workflows by integrating with cloud APIs, asset inventories, and monitoring tools, enabling security teams to automate triage and containment actions across hybrid environments. Automation ensures swift, coordinated response regardless of the asset’s physical or virtual location.
SOAR playbooks can execute tasks such as isolating cloud workloads, revoking potentially compromised credentials, or collecting volatile evidence from ephemeral resources. By standardizing response across cloud and on-premises environments, organizations achieve faster resolution, reduced risk, and consistent enforcement of security policy in increasingly complex infrastructure landscapes.
Choosing and Evaluating SOAR Platforms
Criteria for Scalability and Deployment Models
When choosing a SOAR platform, scalability is critical. Organizations should evaluate whether a platform can handle increasing alert volumes, additional integrations, and complex playbook logic as the security operation matures. The platform must efficiently process large data sets and manage concurrent workflows without degradation in performance. Cloud-native SOAR solutions often provide elastic scalability, while on-premises deployments may require capacity planning and regular hardware upgrades.
Deployment flexibility is another key consideration. Some organizations require on-premises solutions for regulatory reasons, while others prefer cloud or hybrid deployments for ease of management and rapid feature updates. Evaluating vendor support for containerization, high availability, and disaster recovery features ensures the SOAR platform can maintain uptime and adapt to business continuity requirements as the organization grows.
Integration Depth With Existing Security Tools
A SOAR platform’s effectiveness depends on its integration depth with a wide range of existing tools. Deep integrations allow for advanced actions, such as pulling detailed user or endpoint data and executing direct remedial actions—going beyond superficial, read-only access. Robust API support, a library of prebuilt connectors, and extensibility through custom scripts ensure the platform can support diverse and evolving technology stacks.
The platform should also provide bi-directional integrations, enabling not just data collection but also precise execution of response actions across systems like ticketing, firewalls, endpoint detection, and cloud services. The ability to incorporate new integrations quickly, and maintain them as toolsets change, is essential for operational agility and the continued effectiveness of automated security workflows.
Learn more in our detailed guide to SOAR tools (coming soon)
Assessing Vendor Transparency and Ecosystem Maturity
Vendor transparency and ecosystem maturity are critical when assessing SOAR solutions. Transparent vendors provide detailed documentation, clear roadmaps, and accessible customer support channels. This openness helps organizations understand the platform’s capabilities, limitations, and the pace of new feature development.
A mature SOAR ecosystem is characterized by an active user community, a robust partner network, and a steady cadence of updates and enhancements. Vendors that foster collaboration through forums, shared playbook repositories, and frequent knowledge sharing are more likely to support customers as best practices and threat landscapes evolve. Mature ecosystems also offer access to third-party integrations, training materials, and certified consultants to help organizations maximize their SOAR investment.
Total Cost of Ownership for Enterprise Adoption
Total cost of ownership (TCO) encompasses both direct and indirect costs associated with adopting and running a SOAR platform. Beyond the initial licensing and subscription fees, organizations should consider infrastructure costs (in the case of on-premises deployments), implementation and integration expenses, and ongoing maintenance requirements. Additional factors include staff training, vendor support contracts, and the cost of developing tailored playbooks and integrations.
TCO should also be evaluated in the context of the value delivered, such as gains in analyst productivity, reduced incident response times, and improved regulatory compliance. Organizations need to assess whether the selected solution offers flexible pricing models that scale with usage and provide predictable costs over time. A comprehensive understanding of TCO ensures that SOAR investments deliver measurable, sustainable returns and reduce the long-term burden on security teams.
Best Practices for SOAR Success
1. Establish Clear KPIs and Measure Playbook Impact
Implementing clear key performance indicators (KPIs) is fundamental for measuring the impact of SOAR on security operations. KPIs such as mean time to respond, incident resolution rates, and analyst workload reduction provide objective metrics that drive continuous improvement. Regularly tracking these metrics helps organizations identify bottlenecks and evaluate whether automation is delivering tangible benefits or requires further tuning.
In addition to quantitative KPIs, qualitative feedback from operations staff is essential to measure the practical impact of new playbooks and automations. Gathering input on usability, workflow enhancements, and pain points uncovers opportunities to optimize automation logic and ensure that SOAR investments address real-world challenges faced by analysts. Together, KPIs and qualitative reviews guide data-driven decision making and ongoing SOAR program refinement.
2. Prioritize High-Value, Low-Complexity Automations First
When starting with SOAR, prioritize automations that offer high value without excessive complexity. These typically include repetitive enrichment tasks, automated alert triage, and basic remediation steps such as user containment or IP blocking. By targeting processes that are frequent and well-understood, organizations can realize quick wins and build trust in automation among security team members.
This approach also helps to minimize operational and integration risk, as simpler automations are easier to test, deploy, and refine. Early successes with low-complexity playbooks pave the way for more sophisticated use cases over time. As the organization’s familiarity with SOAR grows, more complex, multi-step orchestration can be tackled with greater confidence and organizational buy-in.
3. Maintain a Centralized Playbook Repository
A centralized playbook repository enables standardization and easy access to the latest versions of automation workflows. By storing, versioning, and documenting all SOAR playbooks in one location, organizations ensure analysts can quickly select appropriate responses for different incident types, reducing ad hoc solutions and maintaining process consistency. This centralization simplifies training, onboarding, and audit preparation.
Repository management should also include clearly defined ownership, change management processes, and regular review cycles. This ensures that the repository evolves in tandem with threat landscapes and organizational changes. With robust documentation and collaboration features, the repository fosters knowledge sharing and ensures that best practices are institutionalized across teams and shifts.
4. Regularly Review and Update Automation Logic
Continuous review of playbooks and automation logic is essential to keep SOAR configurations effective and relevant. Threat landscapes evolve rapidly, and static playbooks can quickly become outdated or contain logic gaps that attackers might exploit. Scheduled playbook reviews—incorporating recent incident data and analyst feedback—allow for early identification and remediation of shortcomings.
Updates should be systematically tested in staging environments before deployment to production to minimize the risk of unintended disruption. Incorporating an agile approach to playbook management helps SOAR programs remain flexible and proactive, ensuring that automations continue to deliver value and protect against emerging threats.
5. Foster Analyst Skills in Scripting and API Usage
The power of SOAR stems from its ability to orchestrate and automate across multiple tools and environments, often requiring custom scripts and API calls. Training analysts in scripting languages (such as Python or PowerShell) and API fundamentals greatly expands what can be achieved with automation, reduces dependence on prebuilt integrations, and enables faster adaptation to changing tools or requirements.
Organizations should invest in continuous skill development for SOC analysts, including hands-on practice with SOAR platform APIs, script debugging, and secure coding practices. This empowers teams to build and maintain tailored automations, enhances job satisfaction among analysts, and reduces time to value for new integrations and playbook updates.
6. Align SOAR Processes With Incident Response Frameworks
Successful SOAR implementations are closely aligned with recognized incident response frameworks such as NIST, SANS, or ISO standards. This alignment ensures that automation augments, rather than disrupts, established workflows for detection, containment, eradication, and recovery. By encoding framework steps into playbooks, organizations enforce policy compliance and increase confidence in automated response actions.
Such alignment also streamlines regulatory audits and reporting by providing clear documentation of incident handling processes, evidence tracking, and decision points. As frameworks evolve, SOAR playbooks can be easily updated to reflect new best practices, maintaining both operational effectiveness and compliance with industry expectations.
Beyond Traditional SOAR: Radiant Security’s Agentic AI Platform
Radiant Security is an Agentic AI SOC platform that automates alert triage, investigation, and response across the security lifecycle. The platform is designed to reduce false positives by roughly 90%, enabling analysts to spend more time on verified threats rather than manual triage. Radiant also aims to shorten investigation and response times (MTTR) and lower operational costs, while helping teams avoid the fatigue that often comes with high alert volume.
Key capabilities include:
- Agentic AI triage and investigation for all alert types, including previously unseen or low-fidelity ones.
- Transparent reasoning that shows how and why the AI reached its conclusions, helping analysts validate decisions and build trust.
- Integrated response with one-click, executable action plans that can be carried out manually or automated when appropriate.
- Log management with unlimited retention, delivered at a cost significantly lower than traditional SIEM platforms.
- AI feedback loop that allows teams to influence and adjust triage behavior using environmental context, improving accuracy over time.
Radiant provides a unified environment for handling alerts, investigations, response actions, and log data, with an emphasis on efficiency, clarity, and analyst control.
