Real Estate Firm boosts SOC efficiency with SOAR (Security Orchestration and Response)
Client: Confidential Real Estate and Property Management Firm (500+ Employees)
Industry: Real Estate and Property Management
The Challenge: The client’s Security Operations Center (SOC) was struggling with manual incident triage and repetitive response tasks. Security analysts were spending hours per day investigating alerts across multiple systems, including:
- SIEM (correlation alerts)
- Microsoft 365 security events
- Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) incidents
- Firewall and IDS/IPS alerts
- Phishing reports from users
Despite good visibility, response times were slow, and alert backlog continued to grow. Analysts frequently performed the same actions — gathering threat intelligence, isolating hosts, resetting credentials, or escalating to IT.
As a result, the firm experienced:
- High Mean Time to Respond (MTTR)
- Delayed containment of real threats
- Analyst burnout from repetitive manual tasks
The SOC needed a scalable automation framework to handle repetitive actions and allow analysts to focus on higher-value investigations.
The Solution: NSecurity Consulting Inc (NCI) introduced a Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) solution integrated with the firm’s existing SIEM, Workflow and endpoint tools.
Step 1: Identify High-Volume Use Cases
NCI began by reviewing alert categories and identifying repetitive, time-consuming workflows suitable for automation.
Key candidates included:
- Phishing email investigation and containment
- Malware detection and endpoint isolation
- Suspicious login validation
- User account lockout triage
- Firewall rule review and approval
Each use case was mapped to response actions, escalation paths, and required integrations.
Step 2: Design and Build SOAR Playbooks
Custom playbooks were developed for each high-volume incident type. Examples include:
Phishing Response Playbook:
- Extract indicators (URLs, hashes, senders) from reported emails
- Query threat intelligence sources (VirusTotal, MISP)
- Search SIEM and O365 logs for related activity
- Automatically quarantine malicious emails and notify affected users
Malware Detection Playbook:
- Retrieve endpoint alerts from EDR
- Enrich indicators via threat feeds
- Isolate infected hosts
- Open a ticket and notify IT operations
Suspicious Login Playbook:
- Validate login locations and device fingerprints
- Check against known travel schedules or HR data
- Prompt user verification or automatically force a password reset
Step 3: Integration with Existing Tools
The SOAR platform was integrated with:
- SIEM (for alert ingestion)
- EDR (for host isolation)
- Microsoft 365 (for mailbox actions and account management)
- Ticketing system (for automated case creation and updates)
- Threat intelligence APIs (for enrichment and scoring)
Step 4: Testing and Fine-Tuning
Each playbook was run in “audit mode” before going live. The SOC validated automation accuracy, fine-tuned conditions, and adjusted notification workflows to ensure minimal false positives.
Step 5: Analyst Enablement and Metrics Tracking
SOC analysts were trained to monitor playbook activity, review automated decisions, and handle escalations efficiently. Performance metrics were continuously tracked for optimization.
Key Benefits
- Accelerated Incident Response: Automated playbooks reduced containment and remediation time.
- Improved Consistency: Standardized responses eliminated human error and variability.
- Enhanced Analyst Productivity: Routine triage automated, allowing focus on critical alerts.
- Seamless Integration: SOAR connected with existing tools for centralized orchestration.
- Data-Driven SOC: Real-time metrics allowed continuous improvement and reporting.
Client Testimonial
“NSecurity Consulting helped us automate key parts of our SOC operations through SOAR playbooks. We’ve cut response times dramatically and our analysts can now focus on strategic threats instead of repetitive tasks.” – SOC Manager