National Cyber Security Awareness month 2020 - The importance of SOAR

Ever since 2004, October has been established as the cybersecurity awareness month, and as a tradition, we dedicate a special blog each year to mark the occasion. The goal of National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM) is to educate and engage people about the ever-growing presence of cyber incidents and the malicious threat they pose to businesses and individuals alike.

The birth of NCSAM was prompted by the growing complexity of the cyber threat landscape. The world of cybersecurity has grown leaps and bounds, with many technologies reshaping the very core of cybersecurity.

As more and more devices become interconnected in our personal and professional lives, more threats are posed in ways we previously didn’t consider plausible. And this is why we take the opportunity to celebrate the national cyber security awareness month and talk about the most sought-after technology in recent years that has been making all the buzz - SOAR.

National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2020 Theme: Do your part, be cyber smart

Long gone are the days when setting up firewalls and purchasing the most expensive antivirus were enough to secure the premises of your organizations. Today, organizations need to crank it up a notch and bring their cybersecurity-savvy to the table if they want to steer away from the perils of cyber threats.

Having this in mind, the goal of NCSAM is to educate people about the dangers of the ever-present cyber threats that are becoming more prevalent and sophisticated with each passing day.

This year, the theme of NCSAM is, “Do Your Part, Be Cyber Smart,” and the message behind this theme is to encourage people to be more cyber-conscious and proactive toward cybersecurity protection.

“If You Can Connect It, Protect It,” is another message emphasized by NCSAM, stressing the importance of taking personal accountability as the cornerstone of enhanced cyber security protection. It also highlights the fact that each and every one of us plays a major role in making our online lives safer.

Furthermore, CISA (Cyber Security and Infrastructure Agency) and NCSA (National Cyber Security Alliance) have prepared a program spanning throughout October that focuses on enriching the cybersecurity knowledge:

• Week of October 5th (Week 1): If You Can Connect it, Protect It

• Week of October 12th (Week 2): Securing Devices at Home and Work

• Week of October 19th (Week 3): Securing Internet-Connected Devices in Healthcare

• Week of October 26th (Week 4): The Future of Connected Devices

Apart from boosting your knowledge from the activities organized by CISA and NCSA, you can also check out our extensive knowledge base. Rich in cyber security content, our knowledge base will definitely help you pick up a thing or two and take your cybersecurity savvy to the next level. Especially when it comes to learning about the new sheriff in cybersecurity town - SOAR.

National Cyber Security Awareness Month: Emphasizing the importance of SOAR

The main goal of the national cyber security awareness month is to educate the public on the most pressing issues and trends in the cybersecurity world and emphasize the importance of taking cybersecurity.

When we’re talking about the importance of cybersecurity, we can’t possibly exclude SOAR out of the equation. As cybersecurity threats become more sophisticated and complex, it becomes much more difficult to properly assess and deal with each and every one of them. This especially goes for bigger organizations that receive thousands of cyber threats every day.

This is why SOAR is welcomed in the cyber world, as a technology with the power to outshine even the most complex cyber threats. In short, we will reveal just how SOAR, with its AI-enhanced machine learning engine, fits into the cybersecurity puzzle.

The most prevalent cybersecurity problems

In recent years, SOAR is considered one of the most popular novelties in the cyber world. The reason why is that it directly affects some of the most prevalent problems that occur in the cyber world.

Namely, the most common problems in modern cybersecurity are:

• Too many alerts: One strategy that many hackers are using is bombarding the target with thousands of alerts, and while security analysts spend their time manually checking every alert, the real threat will have already done the intended damage. This is a major, major problem in today’s cyber world.

• Sophisticated and complex threats: It’s becoming increasingly difficult to identify cyber threats, and hackers are crafting new, smarter ways to penetrate cybersecurity barriers. Threats have become sophisticated to the point where (without the proper tools and knowledge) you don’t even realize that a cyber attack occurred.

• Poor incident response time: Given that there are too many sophisticated alerts, SOC teams can’t possibly respond to each and every one of these threats in a timely manner. That leaves SOCs with unattended alerts that may go unassessed for hours, days, and even weeks; potentially causing havoc within an organization.

• Skill security professionals shortage: Finding solid cybersecurity professionals is becoming an impossible task, as there is simply not enough qualified personnel to effectively respond to huge volumes of alerts. That’s why many SOCs are understaffed and can’t effectively carry out their SecOps, which ultimately yields poor results that negatively affect the entire organization.

We are not exaggerating when we say that alerts are growing smarter and leave no predictable patterns whatsoever. This means that every security professional must be up to the challenge to respond to these threats with supreme expertise backed by the right tools and the right team. Which is why SOAR is so appreciated, as a technology that fills the void created by the growing sophistication of modern cyber threats.

How SOAR resolves these problems

We covered some of the most prevalent problems that the majority of SOCs are dealing in today’s modern cybersecurity environment. Now, let’s see how our native Cloud SOAR solution helps nullify these problems:

• Automation for faster alert resolution: Cloud SOAR applies machine learning and automation to assess alerts without the need for human intervention. And through automation, Cloud SOAR can successfully neutralize alerts, providing immense help for analysts.

• Predicting threat patterns: Cloud SOAR can distinguish between real and false alerts by learning the patterns of cyber threats. And given that the majority of alerts are actually false positives, Cloud SOAR helps analysts focus their attention on threats that really matter instead of wasting their time going through false positives.

• 80% faster incident response time: By utilizing sets of predefined Playbooks and applying a series of manual and automated actions, Cloud SOAR can speed up the incident response time of a SOC by 80%, thus allowing analysts to have plenty of time to assess every alert in a timely manner.

• Ten times more effective SOC performance: Cloud SOAR allows SOC teams to do more with fewer resources. By relying on automation and orchestration, Cloud SOAR improves the internal collaboration among the SOC team and optimizes the workflows by allowing them to follow relevant KPIs on a customizable dashboard.

Furthermore, Cloud SOAR is extremely customizable and integrates seamlessly with over 200 of the most popular security tools. This allows SOC teams to implement SOAR and maintain the integrity of their conventional workflows at the same time.

If you want to do your part and honor the national cybersecurity awareness month as an avid cybersecurity learner, check out our SOAR Guide and learn more about the idiosyncrasies of SOAR and its limitless potential.