What is SOAR?

SOAR platforms sit above individual security tools and coordinate actions across the security stack. A SOAR playbook might automatically enrich a phishing alert by querying threat intelligence feeds, extracting URLs, detonating attachments in a sandbox, checking email header authenticity, then either auto-closing the alert if benign or escalating it to a human analyst with a pre-built case containing all gathered evidence.

Orchestration is the integration layer: SOAR connects via APIs to SIEMs, threat intel platforms, ticketing systems (Jira, ServiceNow), EDR tools, firewalls, and cloud providers. Automation executes the repetitive steps analysts would otherwise perform manually. Case management tracks the full incident lifecycle.

Leading platforms include Palo Alto XSOAR, Splunk SOAR (formerly Phantom), and Microsoft Sentinel's built-in automation rules. At scale, SOAR handles thousands of alerts per day with no human touch for low-fidelity detections, reserving analyst time for complex investigations.