Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Security teams struggle to detect and respond to attacks across expanding environments. Cloud systems, digital initiatives, and IoT devices have created complexities where standard security fails. Meanwhile, attackers remain hidden while security staff drown in alerts without adequate visibility.

Legacy SOAR solutions emerged in an era of traditional, static on-premises networks with fewer sophisticated threats. But today’s cybersecurity landscape is dramatically different — attack surfaces rapidly evolve, threats are multifaceted, and cybersecurity talent is increasingly scarce. As organizations struggle with sprawling security stacks and burned-out SOC teams, legacy SOAR solutions reveal their significant limitations.

Patrick Orzechowski (also known as “PO”) is Torq’s Field CISO, bringing his years of experience and expertise as a SOC leader to our customers. PO is a seasoned security veteran with a deep understanding of the modern security landscape. You can find him talking to SOC leaders and CISOs from major brands at cybersecurity events around the world. Running a SOC isn’t for the faint of heart. I should know.

A security operations center (SOC) leader is the point person for an organization’s security operations. They run a team of security analysts, engineers, and other specialists. But what exactly do they do on a day-to-day basis? As the person managing the organization’s cybersecurity hub, the SOC leader has to navigate all the complexities that come with it.

When a cyberattack occurs, every second counts. Metrics like Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Respond (MTTR) are critical benchmarks in cybersecurity, helping organizations evaluate the effectiveness of their Security Operations Centers (SOCs). But what’s the difference between MTTD vs MTTR, and why do they matter?

If you’ve been in cybersecurity longer than five minutes, you know one thing: legacy SOC architecture isn’t just showing its age — it’s creaking under the weight of today’s threats. Cybersecurity analyst Francis Odum nailed it when presenting at Torq’s SKO 2025: “Legacy SOAR assumed everything starts in the SIEM. Now, teams connect automation directly to EDR, email, and identity systems.”.

Every day, analysts are buried under a mountain of low-value and often meaningless alerts. And they’re expected to triage, investigate, prioritize, and respond to all of them — faster, better, and with fewer people. With this comes cybersecurity alert fatigue, which can lead to missed threats, slower response times, and SOC analyst burnout. The good news is that SOC analysts don’t have to live like this anymore. Not if you have the right kind of AI working for you.

We live in a world where infrastructures reside entirely in the cloud, threats evolve faster than ever, and attackers never sleep. Manual security processes simply can’t keep pace. Cloud-native security automation is the critical solution for organizations to secure large attack surfaces.