What Is SOAR? Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response Explained

SOAR stands for Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response. It is a category of security platform that connects an organisation's security tools, automates repetitive analyst tasks through predefined workflows called playbooks, and provides structured case management for incident response. SOAR emerged to solve a fundamental problem: security teams have too many tools generating too many alerts, and not enough analysts to investigate them all manually.

For mid-market security teams wrestling with alert overload and limited headcount, understanding SOAR, and whether you actually need a standalone SOAR platform, is a critical architectural decision.

How Does SOAR Work?

SOAR platforms sit at the centre of a security operations workflow, acting as the connective tissue between detection tools (like SIEMs and EDR platforms) and the actions analysts take to investigate and respond to threats.

The typical SOAR workflow follows this pattern:

1. Alert ingestion: the SOAR platform receives alerts from connected security tools (SIEM, EDR, NDR, email security, firewalls, cloud platforms)
2. Enrichment: the platform automatically enriches the alert with additional context by querying threat intelligence feeds, asset databases, user directories, and vulnerability scanners
3. Playbook execution: based on the alert type, a predefined playbook executes a series of automated actions: deduplication, severity scoring, indicator analysis, and initial triage
4. Decision point: the playbook either resolves the alert automatically (for known-benign patterns) or escalates it to an analyst with the enriched context attached
5. Response actions: for confirmed threats, the SOAR platform can execute containment actions across connected tools: isolating endpoints, blocking IP addresses, disabling user accounts, or quarantining emails
6. Case management: the entire incident lifecycle is tracked, documented, and available for post-incident review and compliance reporting

This workflow transforms security operations from a reactive, manual process into a structured, semi-automated one. The goal is to handle the predictable work automatically, freeing analysts to focus on the investigations that genuinely require human judgement.

What Are the Key Components of SOAR?

SOAR platforms comprise three core capabilities, each addressing a different operational challenge.

Orchestration

Orchestration is the integration layer. It connects the SOAR platform to the dozens of security and IT tools in an organisation's environment: SIEM, EDR, firewalls, email gateways, threat intelligence platforms, ticketing systems, identity providers, and cloud management consoles.

Effective orchestration means the SOAR platform can both read from and write to these tools. It can pull alert data from the SIEM, query the EDR for process details, check an IP against threat intelligence, and then push a block rule to the firewall, all within a single automated workflow.

The quality of orchestration depends on the breadth and depth of available integrations. Leading SOAR platforms offer hundreds of pre-built connectors, but real-world deployment invariably requires custom integration work for proprietary or niche tools.

Automation

Automation is the execution engine. Playbooks, predefined, repeatable workflows, encode the steps an analyst would take for common alert types into automated sequences.

A phishing investigation playbook, for example, might:

• Extract URLs, attachments, and sender information from the reported email
• Detonate attachments in a sandbox environment
• Check URLs against known malicious domain lists
• Query the email gateway for other recipients of the same message
• Calculate a risk score based on the combined findings
• If low risk: auto-close with a note to the reporter
• If high risk: quarantine all instances, block the sender domain, and escalate to an analyst with full context

The power of automation scales with playbook coverage. Organisations that invest in building playbooks for their most common alert types can automate 60-80% of initial triage, dramatically reducing the manual burden on their SOC team.

Response

Response is the action layer. When a threat is confirmed, the SOAR platform executes containment and remediation actions across connected tools:

• Endpoint isolation: quarantine a compromised device via the EDR platform
• Network blocking: add malicious IPs or domains to firewall block lists
• Account actions: disable compromised user accounts, force password resets, or revoke active sessions through the identity provider
• Email actions: quarantine or delete malicious emails from all recipient mailboxes
• Ticket creation: generate incidents in ITSM platforms with full context and timeline

Response also includes case management, tracking the full lifecycle of an incident from initial detection through investigation, containment, eradication, recovery, and post-incident review. This structured documentation is increasingly important for regulatory compliance under frameworks like DORA and NIS2, both of which are now in enforcement and require demonstrable incident response processes.

What Problems Does SOAR Solve?

SOAR addresses several interconnected operational challenges that plague modern security operations:

Alert fatigue: The average SOC receives thousands of alerts daily. Without automation, analysts must manually triage each one: a process that leads to desensitisation, missed threats, and burnout. SOAR automates the initial triage of predictable alert types, reducing the volume that reaches human analysts. For a deeper dive, see our guide on how to reduce alert fatigue.

Manual, repetitive triage: Analysts spend significant time on tasks that follow predictable patterns: checking indicators against threat intelligence, querying user directories, looking up asset information. These tasks are necessary but do not require human judgement. SOAR automates them.

Slow response times: When response actions require manual execution across multiple tools, logging into the firewall to block an IP, then the EDR to isolate an endpoint, then the identity provider to disable an account, mean time to respond (MTTR) increases. SOAR executes these actions simultaneously and in seconds.

Tool silos: Most security teams operate 15-30 different security tools. Without orchestration, analysts must manually pivot between consoles to gather context during investigations. SOAR centralises this context by pulling relevant data from all connected tools into a single investigation view.

Analyst burnout and turnover: The cybersecurity industry's turnover rate exceeds 25% annually, driven in part by the repetitive, high-pressure nature of SOC work. By automating the tedious tasks and allowing analysts to focus on complex investigations, SOAR can improve job satisfaction and retention.

SOAR vs SIEM: What's the Difference?

SOAR and SIEM are complementary but distinct categories that are increasingly converging.

| Capability | SIEM | SOAR | |---|---|---| | Primary function | Collect, correlate, and analyse log data | Orchestrate, automate, and execute responses | | Input | Raw logs and events from across the environment | Alerts from SIEM and other detection tools | | Output | Alerts and correlated incidents | Automated enrichment, triage decisions, and response actions | | Detection | Yes, correlation rules, analytics, ML models | No, SOAR acts on detections from other tools | | Response | Limited, some modern SIEMs include basic automation | Core capability, playbooks execute complex response workflows | | Case management | Basic in most SIEMs | Full incident lifecycle tracking | | Integration depth | Primarily inbound (log ingestion) | Bidirectional (read from and write to connected tools) |

In practice, SIEM detects and SOAR responds. Many organisations deploy both, with the SIEM generating alerts that feed into the SOAR for automated triage and response.

However, the market is converging. Microsoft Sentinel includes SOAR capabilities through Azure Logic Apps. Splunk acquired Phantom (now Splunk SOAR). Palo Alto Networks acquired Demisto (now Cortex XSOAR). The trend is toward unified platforms that combine detection and response rather than requiring separate tools for each.

This convergence raises an important question for mid-market teams: if detection and response are increasingly bundled, do you need a standalone SOAR platform at all?

Do You Actually Need a Standalone SOAR?

Standalone SOAR platforms: Cortex XSOAR, Splunk SOAR, Swimlane, Tines, are powerful tools. But they come with meaningful costs and operational overhead:

Licence costs: Standalone SOAR platforms typically cost £100,000-£400,000 per year for mid-market deployments.

Integration maintenance: Every connected tool requires an integration that must be built, tested, and maintained. API changes, version upgrades, and credential rotations create ongoing maintenance work.

Playbook development: Building effective playbooks requires understanding both the security workflow and the SOAR platform's automation framework. Many organisations hire dedicated SOAR engineers or engage professional services.

The paradox of automation: SOAR automates responses to alerts, but it does not reduce the number of alerts. If your detection tools generate high volumes of false positives, your SOAR playbooks spend most of their execution cycles triaging noise rather than responding to real threats. You are automating the wrong problem.

For large enterprises with diverse toolsets, complex multi-tier SOC structures, and dedicated automation engineers, standalone SOAR delivers clear value. The investment in playbook development pays off across thousands of daily alerts and dozens of integrated tools.

For mid-market organisations with 1-3 security analysts, the calculus is different. The integration overhead, playbook maintenance, and licence costs of a standalone SOAR may exceed the operational capacity of the team it is meant to help. A lean team needs automation built into the detection platform, not bolted on as a separate layer.

How SenseOn Replaces Standalone SOAR

SenseOn approaches the automation problem from the opposite direction. Rather than automating the response to high volumes of low-fidelity alerts, SenseOn eliminates the low-fidelity alerts in the first place.

The cross-domain correlation, cross-validation across supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and deep learning, filters out false positives before they become cases. Only threats validated by multiple independent AI methodologies reach the analyst. This eliminates the primary use case for SOAR-style triage automation: the vast majority of alerts that turn out to be benign.

Kingspan's experience illustrates this directly. Before SenseOn, their security team handled approximately 40 cases per day, a volume that would typically justify a standalone SOAR platform to automate triage. After deploying SenseOn, daily cases dropped to approximately 40 per month: a 97.5% reduction. At 40 cases per month, there is no alert fatigue to automate away. Each case is a genuine, pre-validated threat that merits analyst attention.

For the cases that do require response, SenseOn includes native automated response capabilities:

• Endpoint isolation: quarantine compromised devices directly from the investigation console
• Network containment: block malicious communications at the network layer
• Account actions: disable compromised identities and revoke sessions
• Automated enrichment: every case arrives with pre-correlated evidence from endpoint, network, and identity telemetry

These response actions are built into the platform, not bolted on through third-party integrations. There are no connectors to maintain, no playbooks to author, and no separate SOAR licence to procure.

The SOC automation guide covers this approach in more detail, including metrics for measuring automation effectiveness.

Key SOAR Metrics to Track

Whether you deploy a standalone SOAR or use a platform with native automation, these metrics help measure the effectiveness of your automation investment:

Mean Time to Respond (MTTR): The average time from alert detection to containment action. Effective automation should reduce MTTR from hours to minutes for common incident types.

Automation rate: The percentage of alerts that are fully handled by automated playbooks without analyst intervention. Mature SOAR deployments achieve 60-80% automation rates, though this depends heavily on the fidelity of the underlying alerts.

Playbook coverage: The percentage of alert types that have a corresponding automated playbook. Low coverage means analysts are still manually handling the majority of alert types.

Analyst time saved: The total analyst hours recovered through automation. This is the metric that most directly translates to ROI: if automation saves 20 hours per analyst per week, that time can be redirected to threat hunting, detection engineering, or strategic security initiatives.

False positive automation rate: The percentage of automated actions taken on alerts that turn out to be false positives. If your SOAR is spending 90% of its execution cycles auto-closing false positives, the more effective investment may be in improving detection fidelity rather than automating triage of noise.

Playbook failure rate: The percentage of playbook executions that fail due to integration errors, API timeouts, or logic errors. High failure rates indicate integration maintenance problems that erode the value of automation.

For further reading on building effective security automation, see our dedicated guide.

The Future of SOAR

The standalone SOAR market is at an inflection point. The major SIEM vendors have acquired or built SOAR capabilities. XDR platforms increasingly include automated response. The days of deploying a separate orchestration layer between detection and response tools are numbered for most mid-market organisations.

The underlying principles of SOAR, orchestration, automation, and structured response, remain essential. What is changing is the delivery model. Automation is becoming a feature of detection platforms, not a separate product category.

For mid-market security teams making architectural decisions today, the question is not whether you need automation, you do, but whether that automation should come from a standalone SOAR or from a detection platform that builds it in natively.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does SOAR stand for in cybersecurity?

SOAR stands for Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response. It is a category of security tools that connects disparate security products, automates repetitive analyst tasks through playbooks, and provides case management for incident response workflows.

What is the difference between SIEM and SOAR?

SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) collects and correlates log data to detect threats. SOAR takes action on those detections: orchestrating responses across tools, automating enrichment and triage, and managing the incident lifecycle. SIEM detects; SOAR responds. Many modern platforms now bundle both capabilities together.

Do I need a standalone SOAR platform?

Not necessarily. Standalone SOAR makes sense for large enterprises with diverse toolsets and complex workflows. For mid-market organisations, platforms like SenseOn build automation natively into the detection platform, eliminating the need for a separate SOAR product and the integration overhead it creates.

How much does a SOAR platform cost?

Standalone SOAR platforms typically cost £100,000-£400,000 per year for mid-market deployments, including licence fees, professional services for playbook development, and ongoing maintenance. The total cost of ownership also includes the analyst time required to build and maintain integrations and playbooks.

What are SOAR playbooks?

Playbooks are predefined, automated workflows that execute a series of actions in response to specific alert types. For example, a phishing playbook might automatically extract indicators from a reported email, check them against threat intelligence, quarantine the message, and block the sender domain: all without analyst intervention.