The “nervous system” of cybersecurity: data, automation, and response to reduce risk
Today’s companies face a paradox: a greater number of security tools has led to greater complexity, data overload, and critical visibility gaps, effectively increasing the risk of breaches. The average Security Operations Center (SOC) is flooded with more than 10,000 alerts per day, with an estimated 30% not even reviewed due to volume and a high false-positive rate. This phenomenon, known as alert fatigue (“fatigue from alerts”), is one of the main causes of analyst burnout and directly contributes to failure to detect real threats.
This chapter will demonstrate how the integrated pair of SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) and SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response) platforms has become the indispensable command center for modern security operations. SIEM provides the unified visibility and threat detection needed to make sense of the deluge of data, while SOAR delivers the automation required to act on those insights at machine speed, directly addressing the operational and human-resources crises in cybersecurity.
We will examine how these platforms function as a central nervous system, ingesting and correlating critical telemetry from every corner of the modern IT environment: from endpoints (EDR), to cloud infrastructure (CNAPP), to the network perimeter (SASE), through to compliance and risk frameworks (GRC). This unification is the only viable way to obtain a holistic, risk-based view of the corporate attack surface.
The crisis of complexity and alert fatigue
Modern companies generate enormous volumes of security telemetry from a sprawling ecosystem of tools. SOCs are overwhelmed, with analysts spending up to 30% of their time chasing false positives. This data overload obscures real threats and leads to critical security gaps.
Relentless pressure and alert volume directly contribute to high burnout rates (70% of junior analysts leave the job within 3 years) and exacerbate the global cybersecurity skills shortage, which has reached a record 4.8 million unfilled roles. This human-capital crisis makes a technological force multiplier not just desirable, but essential.
A SIEM solution serves as the central brain of security operations. Its primary function is to aggregate, normalize, and analyze log data and events from across the entire IT infrastructure to provide a holistic view of an organization’s security posture. In an environment where information is fragmented across dozens of systems, SIEM creates a single source of truth, transforming raw data into actionable intelligence.
The power of a SIEM lies in its ability to ingest data from a wide range of heterogeneous sources. These include network devices such as firewalls and routers, servers, enterprise applications, cloud environments, and, crucially, other security tools. Every piece of telemetry, no matter how small, is collected in a central repository, providing analysts with the raw material needed for any investigation.
Once aggregated, data is normalized into a common format and analyzed. This is where SIEM demonstrates its true value. Using a correlation engine that applies predefined rules, statistical analyses, and, increasingly, advanced techniques such as User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) and machine learning (ML), the platform can connect seemingly unrelated events to identify attack patterns. For example, a SIEM can correlate a series of failed login attempts from an unusual geographic location (recorded by the firewall), followed by a successful login and a subsequent privilege escalation on a critical server (recorded by server logs). None of these events, taken individually, might be considered critical, but their sequence, identified by the SIEM, paints a clear picture of an intrusion in progress.
The value of SIEM translates into tangible business outcomes. First, it provides complete visibility across the attack surface, answering the fundamental question: “What is happening in our environment?” Second, it enables real-time threat detection, drastically reducing the time an attacker can operate undetected. Third, it facilitates post-incident forensic investigations by providing a centralized audit trail of all activity. Finally, it automates much of the data-collection work required for compliance reporting, supporting mandates such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS.
If SIEM is the brain that detects threats, the SOAR platform is the nervous system that executes the response. SOAR platforms act on the alerts and insights generated by SIEM to automate and orchestrate response actions, drastically reducing analysts’ manual workload and accelerating containment times.
How a SOAR platform works is based on three interconnected capabilities:
• Orchestration. This is the ability to connect and integrate the entire arsenal of security tools, enabling them to work in concert. A SOAR can communicate via APIs with firewalls, EDR systems, identity management platforms, and other tools, making it possible to execute actions on them from a single centralized console. This breaks down the technological silos that hinder a rapid and effective response;
• Automation. At the heart of SOAR is the use of playbooks. A playbook is a predefined workflow that automatically executes a sequence of actions in response to a specific type of alert. For example, a playbook for a phishing alert received from the SIEM could carry out the following actions without human intervention:
– extract URLs and attachments from the suspicious email;
– run the URL and attachment in a sandbox environment to analyze behavior;
– query threat intelligence platforms to verify whether the sender’s IP or file hashes are known to be malicious;
– if the threat is confirmed, automatically block the sender’s IP address on the firewall, delete similar emails from all corporate mailboxes, and create a ticket in the help desk system;
• Response. SOAR platforms provide a centralized hub for case management and collaboration. When an incident requires human analysis, SOAR presents the analyst with all enriched information and the actions already taken automatically. This enables the analyst to make faster, more informed decisions. The platform also documents every stage of the investigation, ensuring a standardized and auditable response process.
The primary value of SOAR is operational efficiency. It directly addresses the problem of alert fatigue by automating repetitive, low-value tasks, allowing analysts to focus on more complex threats. This translates into a drastic reduction in Mean Time to Respond (MTTR), a key metric for limiting the damage of an attack. Moreover, by enabling a smaller team to handle a larger volume of threats, SOAR offers a strategic solution to the sector’s skills shortage.
It is essential to understand that SIEM and SOAR are not alternative solutions, but complementary ones. They operate in a continuous, symbiotic cycle that forms the core of a modern, autonomous SOC. SIEM analyzes a vast universe of data to detect a potential threat, answering the question “What is happening?” SOAR takes this high-fidelity alert and answers the question “So, what do we do about it?”, executing the response at machine speed. This integration transforms security from a reactive, manual process in which analysts chase alerts into a proactive, automated paradigm in which threats are neutralized before they can cause significant damage.
Adopting an integrated SIEM/SOAR platform is no longer simply a technological upgrade; it is a fundamental strategic response to a traditional security operating model that has become unsustainable from an economic and human-resources standpoint. The digital attack surface has expanded exponentially due to cloud adoption, remote work, and the Internet of Things (IoT), leading to a sharp increase in security data and alerts. At the same time, the global cybersecurity skills shortage is worsening, making it impossible to hire enough analysts to manually process this flow of data. Existing analysts, in turn, suffer from severe alert fatigue and burnout, which reduces their effectiveness and increases staff turnover. As a result, organizations face a critical operational bottleneck. The only scalable solution is to automate detection (SIEM) and response (SOAR) processes so that they act as a “force multiplier” for the human team. For executives, investing in an integrated SIEM/SOAR platform is not merely a line item in the security budget; it is an investment in operational resilience, talent retention, and the scalability of the entire company.
Photo iStock / Jian Fan
