The investment in security operations is at an all-time high. AustCyber’s ‘Australia’s Cyber Security Sector Competitiveness Plan’ shows spend on security operations makes up more than 40% of all cybersecurity spend ($1.58B in 2018), with cyber spending growth outpacing IT spending growth by nearly two to one.

Vulnerabilities are weaknesses in the security infrastructure that bad actors can exploit to gain unauthorized access to a private network. It is nearly impossible for security analysts to patch 100% of the vulnerabilities identified on any given day, but a vulnerability management plan can ensure that the highest risk vulnerabilities (those that are most likely to cause a data breach), will be addressed immediately.

If an individual wants to acquire information about cyber security, or cyber security tools in general, coming across SOAR is inevitable. Since the SOAR abbreviation is all over the place, the importance of it is also easy to recognize. What makes SOAR crucial for cyber security then? In order to answer this question, the full name of the tool should be addressed. SOAR stands for** Security Orchestration Automation and Response**.

Security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) tools are most commonly known for automating manual security operations processes in order to expedite security investigations or cyber response. For instance, Splunk’s SOAR technology, Splunk Phantom, is most commonly used to automate alert triage, phishing investigation and response, threat hunting and vulnerability management.