I blame my life-long work obsession with automation and avoiding repetitive drudgery on my first boss and mentor Danny in S3. He was horrified to see me doing the same thing over and over in a VAX code editor and introduced me to the magical world of macros. From that point onwards, I was a man on a mission to save us all as much time as possible in our working days.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) platforms are great tools for helping teams work smarter, faster, and more efficiently against security risks. But, used on their own, SOARs are far from perfect for meeting the full security needs of the modern organization.

SOAR — or security orchestration, automation and response — is a collection of processes, software and tools that allows teams to streamline security operations. SOAR platforms are a hot topic in the realm of cybersecurity these days, and with good reason.

Traditionally, most organizations have had siloed departments wherein teams’ activities are highly separated and the objectives within organizational structures are divided. This operational methodology has brought about friction – especially within the IT department, where developers and ITOps lack collaboration.