What is Security Orchestration?

As the cyber threat landscape continues to evolve, organizations must put new systems and processes in place to combat threats. Over the last few years, security automation orchestration – combined with automation and response – has become a successful solution. Security orchestration helps organizations increase security operations efficiency with improved incident response processes.

Most people understand what security automation is, but what about security orchestration?

Orchestration is defined as “harmonious organization” or “the planning and coordination of the elements of a situation to produce a desired effect.” That sounds important, but how does this relate to cybersecurity?

In cyber security, orchestration involves the connection and integration of various security tools and systems to power automation and streamline processes.

What is Security Orchestration?

Essentially, security orchestration brings together the tools and systems you already have and makes them work together to better serve your security operations. When you leverage technological integrations with your existing tools in this way, you can implement sophisticated security defenses using both internal and external resources.

Some of the ways security orchestration works include:

• Gathers comprehensive data

• Standardizes security processes

• Provides information to power automation

• Provides security analysts with complete alert context

• Uses all available tools and resources together to better defend against threats

Benefits of Security Orchestration

Improve SecOps Efficiency 

Given the increase in data breaches and cyberattacks that occur worldwide, automation is a “must-have” element in your SOC. However, enterprises can’t rely solely on automation. This is because security orchestration makes automation possible.

Orchestration connects your tools to improve your organization’s security intelligence. Informed security intelligence improves your operation’s efficiency by using automation for repetitive tasks and human decision-making for higher-level threats. When orchestration and automation work harmoniously, security analysts can be more efficient at triaging alerts.

Enhance Context

By centralizing operations into a single interface, SecOps teams better understand the state of security throughout the organization. Orchestration enhances context and enables better and faster decision-making by bringing information together. Organizations may also reduce MTTR by enabling analysts to view breaches and threats that occur in real-time. The ability to quickly catch and shut down attacks can stop data breaches in their tracks before they impact the organization.

Automation supported by orchestration can also be used to perform tasks like comparing files to signatures of known threats and reviewing previous incidents. Additional context sheds like on where threats are coming from, which can help your team better prepare for and defend against threats.

Handle More Alerts with Your Existing Staff

SecOps efficiency improves with automation supported by orchestration. SecOps teams can eliminate tedious and manual tasks to successfully handle all of their security alerts. Nearly 90% of all SecOps incident response tasks can be automated to some extent. Every step automated in the investigation process allows your team to handle more alerts and reduce MTTR.

It’s important to note, though – no matter how hard we try, it’s impossible to rely on a solely automated solution. It’s necessary to keep humans in the loop to investigate and understand new threats as they emerge. Replacing your team with a fully-automated solution isn’t possible, so security orchestration extends the abilities of your existing team.

Reduce Management Complexity

Enterprises need an intricate network of tools and systems to manage advanced threats. Gone are the days when organizations rely on one security solution. Instead, SecOps teams must now handle dozens of security vendors and numerous security touchpoints.

Orchestration works with your existing security infrastructure to make the management of security operations a breeze, regardless of how many systems or vendors you use. Plus, coordinating your tools actually increases their value and allows you to leverage all of their capabilities fully.

Security Orchestration, Automation and Response

Security orchestration is typically adopted by SOC teams with a Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) platform. SOAR platforms provide a centralized location for security teams to manage security incidents and automate security processes across different security technologies. 

When you integrate different security tools and technologies and automate security processes, security orchestration can help organizations improve their security posture, reduce the risk of security incidents and protect their critical assets.

Security Orchestration in Modern SOAR

Modern SOAR platforms take it a step further. To make security orchestration more approachable for overworked SOC teams, low-code options have been introduced. Low-code SOAR platforms allow SecOps teams to automate and orchestrate beyond conventional security use cases. Security teams can use security orchestration and security automation together to improve incident response processes through streamlined workflows and prioritized alert management. 

These tools make it possible for your team to:

• Centralize security operations

• Reduce MTTD and MTTR

• Standardize and scale processes

• Deliver insightful security metrics

• Gain insights into threats in real-time

• Do more with your existing staff

Security orchestration plays a critical role in the security operations center. Analysts need visibility across the entire tech stack and consistent support for countless processes. Security orchestration, via a low-code SOAR platform, can ingest and enrich security alerts at machine speeds. 

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Swimlane (en-US) authored by Ashlyn Eperjesi. Read the original post at: https://www.swimlane.com/blog/security-orchestration/