How SOAR Complements Threat Actor Profiling for Better Security

Cybersecurity teams need access to every available tool if they hope to stop threat actors from launching successful attacks. Two such tools are threat actor profiling and Security Orchestration, Organization, and Response (SOAR). Both are better when they are utilized together.

SOAR actually complements threat actor profiling by turning profile insights into coordinated automated defensive actions. To understand how it works, we need to start with a more comprehensive look at threat actor profiling.

A Structured Threat Intelligence Process

DarkOwl is a well-known player in the cybersecurity industry. Both threat actor profiling and SOAR platforms are in their wheelhouse. They explain threat actor profiling as a structured threat intelligence process designed to get inside a cyber criminal’s head. Its goal is to provide actionable insights into a thread actor’s motivations, intentions, methods, and capabilities.

The goal is reached in three stages:

1. Identification – Threat actors and their potential attacks are identified by scouring the dark web and traditional internet for data.
2. Categorization – Gleaned data is categorized to help analysts make the best use of information without being overwhelmed.
3. Analysis – Categorized data is analyzed to help security experts understand their adversaries. Security experts also use the data to identify those threat actors most likely to target their organizations.

Building a profile takes time. But as it is developed and more data is added, the actionable insights drawn from it are more accurate. As time goes on, threat actor profiling becomes gradually more beneficial.

5 Key Elements

Also note that threat actor profiling is built on five key elements. Each one plays a different role in generating the actionable insights security experts are after. Here they are:

1. Threat Identification – Threats need to be identified as individuals, criminal organizations, state-sponsored groups, etc.
2. Structured Models – Structured models offer a visual representation of relationships between adversaries, capabilities, infrastructure, and victims.
3. Intelligence – Threat actor profiling generates both operational and tactical intelligence through strategies like Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) and Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs).
4. Context – All data must be looked at in context to provide actionable insights. Profiling considers a variety of environmental information to create context.
5. Monitoring – Because threat actors never sleep, profiling is an ongoing process requiring continuous monitoring. Any changes in circumstances must be factored into a profile.

With threat actor profiling goals and elements in place, it is time to look at how SOAR can be integrated to complement what it offers.

The Key Is Automation

SOAR offers its own benefits to cybersecurity. Its ability to complement threat actor profiling is rooted in automation. Automation’s capabilities are observed in three ways:

1. Data Integration – SOAR platforms can integrate threat actor profile data into their own systems. The information can influence a SOAR playbook to initiate an automatic, pre-defined response to an emerging threat.
2. Data Enrichment – SOAR complements threat actor profiling with AI-powered data enrichment. SOAR can automatically correlate alerts with threat intelligence profiles to both reduce response times and mount more effective countermeasures.
3. Efficiency – Through automation, SOAR makes analysts more efficient by handling repetitive tasks. Analysts can focus on more advanced investigative tasks while SOAR monitors and updates threat actor profiles.

Threat actor profiling is fast becoming one of the most important tools cybersecurity experts rely on to stay ahead of their adversaries. It is one of those tools that can be very effective despite such a narrow focus. But it’s also a tool that can be complemented nicely by SOAR.

Using the two together is important enough that companies like DarkOwl are aggressively pushing it. That says something important to IT security experts unsure of either one.