Gartner SOAR Adoption Rate Prediction: From 1% to 15% by 2020 - Why Should You Care?

In a recent report, Gartner predicted that SOAR adoption rates will rise from 1% to 15% by 2020. These findings highlight two key factors. Firstly, acceptable SOAR protocols are currently lacking in most corporations. Secondly, SOAR tools are gaining in traction and popularity as market validation occurs. The anticipated leap to 15% adoption in under two years is evidence of this.

SOAR tools are quickly emerging and will have a major impact on business.

What Exactly is SOAR?

The purpose of Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) tools are to allow companies to mitigate rising security threats quickly. Adopting SOAR tools will ensure that corporations are better prepared to identify and isolate potential threats before they become a serious issue. SOAR tools allow companies to be proactive as well as reactive in the fight against cybercrime.

Gartner defines SOAR as technologies that allow companies to collect all types of security threats, alerts, and data from various sources and analyze and respond to them in one place. Using SOAR tools, organizations can identify and eliminate duplicates and false positives, which allows security analysts to focus on real threats most efficiently. By leveraging human expertise and the time savings afforded by automation and orchestration, decision-making and reaction times can be significantly faster.

One of the main challenges in the cybersecurity industry today is detection of cyber threats. Dwell times are currently estimated to average six months. This means that malware and other malicious code can be entrenched in a company’s ecosystem, gathering information long before the unthinkable happens. Speed is of the essence when it comes to combating bad actors. SOAR tools allow companies to clearly define incident management and response as well as implement these processes at scale.

Why SOAR and Why Now?

Cybercrime is a pressing and rising problem, costing the global economy an estimated  $450 billion a year. As new technologies evolve to fight cyber criminals, so too do the tactics and agility of the perpetrators. The average company is simply unprepared to deal with this impending threat. Building a larger firewall will only cause the attacker to go out and look for a longer metaphorical ladder.

One only has to look at disastrous high profile cases like Equifax to see the implications of major hacking attacks. As attackers become better at finding new methods of cracking passwords or breaking firewalls, traditional security technologies are being left in the dust. Worse still, many security operations rely primarily on manually created documentation and outdated protocols, tools, and processes. Security teams that are ramping up investments against cybercrime are often dispersed and disorganized. They have a plethora of tools at their fingertips, but no cohesive way of using them to effectively eradicate the threat.

SOAR is proving to be a vital way of giving security professionals a roadmap to predict, prevent, and tackle threats effectively. Orchestration provides a vital conduit to unify security tools and their actions in common windows, automation allows repetitive tasks to be executed at machine speed, and incident management provides full visibility across the attack lifecycle.

SOAR Market Validation

Market validation is beginning to occur as SOAR tools are being increasingly adopted by key players. Microsoft's acquisition of Hexadite, Splunk's acquisition of Phantom, and IBM taking over Resilient Systems will help to speed up widespread adoption of SOAR as companies large and small follow in their footsteps.

Moreover, as more security organizations are faced with the challenges of limited resources and a lack of talent in cyberspace, there is a growing need to harness technology to automate and streamline workflows. Not only will SOAR tools help to resolve the talent gap, but their adoption will also reduce costs and expedite response.

Conclusion

If corporations around the globe keep dragging their heels in the fight against cybercrime, they run the risk of losing money and suffering reputational damage. SOAR tools allow for an effective way of fighting security threats through a central collection of intelligence that can be quickly transformed into action.

As has been showcased by multiple public data breaches and filled column inches, security threats are omnipresent. Organizing an efficient response through sophisticated tools that scale companies’ resources, improve response times, and automate mundane security tasks will be vital to thwart attackers.

About the author: Rishi Bhargava a co-founder of Demisto. A creative thinker and problem solver, Rishi has been building and managing successful enterprise products for many years. Making things “simple” is really hard. Rishi believes simplicity in every aspect will delight Demisto customers and has made it the guiding principle.

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