SOAR vs SIEM: Understanding the Differences and Why You Need Both
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Introduction
In today‘s increasingly dangerous cyber threat landscape, organizations face relentless attacks from hackers seeking to steal data, deploy ransomware, and wreak havoc. With a cyberattack occurring every 39 seconds on average, effective cybersecurity tools are more critical than ever for protecting sensitive information and minimizing risk. Two of the most important weapons in the cybersecurity arsenal are SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation and Response) and SIEM (Security Information and Event Management). While both play key roles, they fulfill distinct functions.
SOAR platforms provide a force multiplier for security teams by automating and streamlining threat response workflows that would otherwise require time-consuming manual processes. SIEM, on the other hand, aggregates log and event data from multiple sources, providing real-time analysis and alerts that enable security analysts to spot potential threats and launch investigations. Though different in purpose, SOAR and SIEM are highly complementary, and most experts agree that a robust security operations center (SOC) needs both. In this article, we‘ll take an in-depth look at SOAR vs SIEM, exploring their features, differences, and benefits to help you understand how they can work together to strengthen your cyber defenses.
What is SOAR?
Security Orchestration, Automation and Response, or SOAR, is a category of tools that collect and leverage data to identify and remediate security issues at machine speed. SOAR platforms are designed to make security operations faster and more efficient by automating manual tasks and workflows. According to a recent survey, 79% of organizations with a SOAR solution reported a "significant reduction" in response times, while 75% said SOAR increased the efficiency of their security teams.
To detect and take action on threats, SOAR relies on two primary components:
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Security Orchestration – This component integrates internal and external data from multiple tools and systems to provide a unified view of potential threats. Orchestration is the "connective tissue" that enables SOAR to ingest data from and push actions out to a wide range of security tools. This capability is especially valuable for coordinating large-scale investigations that span many users, devices, and data sources.
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Security Automation – The automation component of SOAR uses machine learning and defined rules/playbooks to identify suspicious activities and policy violations, automatically alert relevant stakeholders, and trigger pre-defined response actions. For low-level, routine incidents, this automation can dramatically reduce "alarm fatigue" and allow human analysts to focus on higher-order tasks.
How SOAR Works With EDR
SOAR doesn‘t operate in isolation, but rather works in conjunction with other key security tools to maximize efficiency and protection. One of its most powerful force multipliers is Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR). EDR is an integrated platform that continually monitors end-user devices to detect and block cyber threats. By ingesting data from EDR, SOAR can automate and accelerate incident response when a threat is detected on an endpoint. For example, if EDR identifies malware on a user‘s laptop, SOAR can automatically isolate that device from the network, preventing lateral movement of the infection. This automation ensures rapid response while freeing up human analysts to perform the investigation.
What is SIEM?
Security Information and Event Management, or SIEM, is a tool that aggregates and analyzes activity from many different resources across your IT infrastructure. SIEM collects security data from network devices, servers, domain controllers, and more. It then identifies, categorizes, and analyzes incidents and events. By collecting logs and data from multiple sources, SIEM provides the holistic visibility needed for early detection of threats, and generates alerts to spur further investigation by security analysts.
Among its key functions, SIEM provides:
- Data Aggregation: SIEM aggregates data from many sources, including network and security devices, identity and access management applications, vulnerability management and governance tools, operating system, database and application logs, etc.
- Correlation: SIEM performs correlation analysis to link events that may initially seem unrelated, identifying patterns that can indicate a potential attack or vulnerability.
- Alerting: When SIEM detects an incident – either based on correlation rules/thresholds or external threat intelligence – it sends alerts to security analysts for investigation and response.
- Dashboards: Most SIEM tools provide customizable dashboards, visualization widgets, and reports to help analysts spot anomalies and emerging threats.
- Forensics & Analytics: SIEM platforms typically include incident management capabilities that allow post-breach analysis to identify the root cause, tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) used by attackers.
While SIEM and SOAR both play vital roles, there are important differences in how they work and the capabilities they provide. Let‘s examine some of the key distinctions:
4 Key Differences Between SOAR and SIEM
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Threat Investigation Process
One of the primary differences between SOAR and SIEM is how they handle the threat investigation process. When SIEM detects suspicious activity, it generates an alert and presents the relevant information to a human analyst, who must then decide whether to initiate an investigation. With SOAR, many of these investigation and response steps are automated based on predefined rules and machine learning. If SOAR detects a known threat, it can trigger automatic containment and remediation without waiting for human decision-making. This automation allows SOAR to handle a high volume of low-level threats, while still escalating more complex incidents to human analysts. -
Human Involvement
Another key difference is the level of human involvement required. While SIEM collects and correlates security data, it still relies heavily on human analysts to interpret that information, make decisions, and initiate responses. With SOAR, many of these tasks are automated, dramatically reducing the need for human intervention in routine security workflows. For organizations looking to boost efficiency and reduce the burden on short-staffed security teams, SOAR‘s automation capabilities are a major advantage. -
Monitoring Requirements
Because SIEM is heavily dependent on human actions and decisions, it requires frequent monitoring to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks. Security teams must continually watch SIEM alerts to react quickly when a potential threat is detected. With SOAR, this requirement for constant vigilance is greatly reduced. SOAR can automatically respond to many threats without human supervision, while only surfacing the most critical issues for manual review. This allows security teams to take a more proactive, strategic approach. -
Alert Fatigue
Both SOAR and SIEM are designed to identify potential security incidents and send alerts to human analysts. However, they differ in the volume and type of alerts generated. Because SIEM tools ingest massive amounts of log data and apply correlation rules, they can trigger a high volume of alerts, many of which turn out to be false positives. Over time, this torrent of alerts can overwhelm analysts and lead to "alert fatigue," where real threats get missed among the noise. SOAR, on the other hand, generates fewer alerts because it automates responses to common threats and known false positives. This ensures that the alerts that do reach human analysts are high-quality and actionable.
Benefits of Using SOAR and SIEM Together
While the differences between SOAR and SIEM are significant, it‘s important to understand that these two technologies are highly complementary. When used together, SOAR and SIEM form a powerful combination that maximizes efficiency, speeds response times, and enhances overall security. According to Gartner, "By year-end 2023, 30% of organizations with a security team of more than five people will use SOAR tools in their security operations, up from less than 5% today."
Some of the key benefits of using SOAR and SIEM together include:
- Faster, More Efficient Security Operations
By ingesting alerts and data from SIEM, SOAR can automate time-consuming incident response workflows. This allows security teams to handle a higher volume of incidents without getting bogged down in manual processes. SOAR‘s automated playbooks can execute actions at machine speed, ensuring faster containment of threats. The combination of SIEM‘s powerful detection capabilities and SOAR‘s rapid response automation enables organizations to mount a fast, efficient defense against an ever-growing barrage of cyber threats.
- Significant Time and Cost Savings
The automation and orchestration capabilities of SOAR deliver major efficiency gains for security operations. By some estimates, SOAR can automate up to 80% of repetitive incident response tasks. This frees up significant time for security analysts to focus on threat hunting, policy refinement, training, and other high-value activities. For organizations facing the global cybersecurity skills gap, SOAR is especially valuable as it allows them to accomplish more with limited resources. Together, SIEM and SOAR help organizations maximize their security ROI.
- Earlier Threat Detection and Reduced Risk
SIEM excels at collecting log data from disparate sources and identifying potential threats. This broad visibility is key for spotting external attacks, insider threats, and risky behavior that could jeopardize security. By leveraging SIEM data, SOAR can take instant action on those threats, shutting down attacks before they can spread or cause damage. This potent combination of early detection and rapid, automated response dramatically reduces an organization‘s risk exposure.
The Future of SOAR and SIEM
As cyber threats continue to evolve and intensify, SOAR and SIEM will only grow more essential. Gartner predicts that "by 2025, more than 40% of the work of security operations will be replaced by SOAR solutions, up from 15% in 2021." As for SIEM, Markets and Markets expects the global market to reach $5.5 billion by 2025, up from $3.6 billion in 2020.
Going forward, we can expect to see SOAR solutions leverage more sophisticated machine learning and AI to streamline and accelerate incident response. On the SIEM side, a growing emphasis on cloud-native platforms will boost scalability while making it easier to ingest the rising tide of telemetry from cloud workloads and SaaS applications.
Conclusion
In the never-ending battle against cyber threats, SOAR and SIEM are two of the most powerful tools in our arsenal. Though each plays a distinct role, they form a symbiotic relationship – SIEM collecting and analyzing log data, and SOAR leveraging that data to automate and orchestrate rapid incident response. Together, SIEM and SOAR enable organizations to detect and respond to threats faster, while making more efficient use of human resources in the SOC.
Ultimately, SOAR and SIEM share the same goal – to protect sensitive data and minimize cyber risk in an increasingly dangerous threat landscape. By understanding how these two technologies complement each other, organizations can build stronger, more resilient cybersecurity operations.
