Security Automation 101

The Cybersecurity Lifecycle: How Torq Automates Detection, Response, and Recovery

By Torq

September 5, 2025

7 Minute Read

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The cybersecurity lifecycle is the foundation of how security teams protect, detect, and recover from threats. From asset discovery to post-incident recovery, the lifecycle defines the processes organizations rely on to safeguard data and systems.

But here’s the challenge: While the lifecycle provides a roadmap, operationalizing it in modern SOCs is messy. Disconnected tools, alert fatigue, and endless manual tasks slow down response times and create gaps that attackers exploit.

By automating every stage of the cybersecurity lifecycle, Torq Hyperautomation helps SOCs move from fragmented processes to a unified, orchestrated defense — enabling consistent, real-time protection at scale.

What Is the Cybersecurity Lifecycle?

The cybersecurity lifecycle is the continuous process organizations follow to protect their digital assets, detect and respond to threats, and recover from incidents while improving defenses over time.

Most teams align it to five phases from NIST — identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover — run as an ongoing loop rather than a one-time checklist. The goal is resilience: understand what matters, harden it, spot threats fast, contain them, and restore normal operations while learning from every incident.

Because threats and environments change daily, the cybersecurity lifecycle is iterative: Metrics like MTTD/MTTR, tabletop exercises, red/purple-team findings, and audit results continuously refine each phase, tightening controls, improving detection logic, and streamlining response and recovery.

The 5 Stages of the Cybersecurity Lifecycle Explained

1. Identify: This stage is about visibility. Teams inventory assets, perform risk assessments, and uncover vulnerabilities. Without strong identification, blind spots remain — and attackers exploit what you don’t see.

2. Protect: Once risks are known, organizations deploy defenses: access control, encryption, segmentation, endpoint hardening, and security awareness training. The goal is to minimize the attack surface and prevent intrusions.

3. Detect: Here’s where SIEM, EDR, and XDR platforms generate alerts and identify suspicious activity. Effective detection relies on real-time monitoring, correlation, and threat intelligence to separate signal from noise.

4. Respond: After detection, SOCs must investigate, contain, and remediate incidents quickly. This includes triaging alerts, isolating systems, revoking access, blocking malicious domains, and notifying stakeholders.

5. Recover: The final stage focuses on resilience. Teams restore systems, minimize downtime, and feed lessons learned back into earlier phases — closing the loop for continuous improvement.

Challenges Modern SOCs Face at Each Cybersecurity Lifecycle Stage

Frameworks like NIST make the cybersecurity lifecycle look clean and sequential. But in practice, SOC teams know it rarely plays out that way. Each stage introduces friction — often because of disconnected tools, overworked analysts, and manual, error-prone workflows. Here’s where things break down.

Identification Challenge: Fragmented Asset Discovery

Most organizations rely on a patchwork of vulnerability scanners, CMDBs, and cloud-native tools to inventory assets. The result? Fragmented, incomplete visibility. Shadow IT, unmanaged endpoints, and ephemeral cloud resources slip through the cracks. Attackers thrive on these blind spots, while security teams spend valuable time reconciling spreadsheets rather than closing risks.

Protection Challenge: Uneven Policy Enforcement Across Environments

Policies don’t always travel well in hybrid environments. An IAM control enforced on AWS may not exist in Azure. Endpoint protection might be strong for corporate laptops, but nonexistent for contractors. This creates policy gaps that attackers can exploit while IT and security teams argue over ownership. Without automation, achieving consistent “Protect” controls is nearly impossible at scale.

Detection Challenge: Alert Fatigue from Noisy Systems

SIEMs, EDRs, XDRs, and threat intel feeds generate millions of alerts — but few are truly actionable. Analysts face alert fatigue, struggling to separate signal from noise. False positives clog queues, while real incidents get missed or delayed. Detection is no longer about generating alerts; it’s about enriching them with context and automating the next step — something traditional stacks rarely do.

Response Challenge: Manual, Slow, and Siloed

SOC bottlenecks become most painful during incident response. Analysts must manually triage, pivot across tools, request approvals, and loop in IT or DevOps teams. Every handoff adds hours (or days). Containment delays give attackers more dwell time, increasing breach impact. The gap between detection and remediation remains one of the SOC’s weakest links.

Recovery Challenge: Inconsistent and Poorly Documented

Recovery is supposed to restore operations and strengthen defenses. But in practice, it’s often inconsistent, rushed, and under-documented. Teams restore systems but fail to validate patches. Playbooks aren’t updated. Post-mortems rarely translate into better workflows. This leaves organizations vulnerable to repeat incidents — essentially relearning the same lessons after every breach.

How Hyperautomation Transforms the Cybersecurity Lifecycle

Traditional SOC operations often stop at dashboards, rules, and manual scripts — leaving analysts bogged down by repetitive work and inconsistent processes. Security Hyperautomation acts as the connective tissue across your entire security stack, orchestrating end-to-end action, eliminating bottlenecks, enriching data in real time, and triggering the right responses instantly.

With Torq Hyperautomation, every stage of the cybersecurity lifecycle becomes faster, more reliable, and easier to scale.

Identify with Context

Automated asset discovery and inventory: Torq integrates with CMDBs, vulnerability scanners, and cloud-native tools to maintain always-current visibility of assets and exposures.

Risk mapping: Assets are automatically tagged with ownership, business impact, and compliance requirements, giving context for prioritization.

Protect at Scale

Policy enforcement at scale: Torq continuously checks and enforces guardrails across IAM, cloud, and endpoint tools — ensuring least-privilege access, encryption, and network segmentation.

Configuration drift detection: Changes in cloud or endpoint configurations automatically trigger workflows to roll back or alert.

Detect Smarter

Real-time, enriched alerts: By connecting SIEM, EDR, and threat intelligence sources, Torq ensures every alert is automatically enriched with context (geo-IP, reputation, past incident history) before analysts ever see it.

Correlation at scale: Related events are automatically linked, reducing alert sprawl and helping analysts spot multi-stage attacks.

Respond Faster

No-code containment playbooks: Torq automatically executes safe but decisive actions like isolating compromised hosts, revoking tokens, resetting user accounts, or blocking malicious domains.

Risk-gated autonomy: Tier-1 threats are remediated fully autonomously, while higher-risk actions require one-click analyst approval — all with complete audit trails.

Recover and Improve

Closed-loop validation: Torq automatically triggers rescans and patch checks to confirm remediation is successful.

Compliance-ready reporting: Every workflow logs artifacts, timestamps, and outcomes, generating structured evidence for frameworks like SOC 2, NIST, HIPAA, and SEC guidelines.

Continuous improvement: Metrics like MTTR, suppression rate, and automation coverage are tracked to refine detection and response over time.

Example Scenario: Phishing Attack Detected in Microsoft 365

Identify: Torq ingests CMDB and Entra ID data, flagging the targeted finance user as high-risk due to elevated privileges.
Protect: Torq validates IAM and mailbox configurations, checking for risky changes like forwarding rules.
Detect: Defender flags a phishing email. Torq enriches the alert with Recorded Future, WHOIS, and VirusTotal intelligence to confirm the domain is malicious.
Respond: Torq quarantines the phishing email, revokes active sessions, resets the user’s password, isolates the endpoint, and alerts the SOC via Slack.
Recover: Torq triggers targeted rescans, validates remediation, and auto-generates a compliance-ready incident report with full timeline and audit trail.

Example Scenario: Impossible Travel Detection in Okta

Identify: Torq ingests identity data from Entra ID/Okta and builds user login baselines (geo, device, session history).
Protect: Torq enforces identity guardrails (MFA, conditional access) and flags high-value accounts for closer monitoring.
Detect: A new login event shows physically impossible travel. Torq enriches it with Defender telemetry and IP reputation data.
Respond: Torq challenges the user in real time. If denied or unverified, it forces a password reset, revokes sessions, isolates risky devices, and alerts the SOC.
Recover: Torq validates the remediation with rescans, updates the user’s login history, and generates a compliance-ready audit record.

The Future of the SOC: Hyperautomated Cybersecurity Lifecycles

Legacy approaches to the cybersecurity lifecycle break down under modern attack speed and scale. Hyperautomation gives SOCs the orchestration layer they’ve been missing — one that unifies tools, eliminates silos, and ensures every lifecycle phase flows seamlessly into the next.

With Torq, organizations can:

Accelerate MTTR by automating detection → response → recovery.
Reduce analyst burden by eliminating repetitive triage.
Continuously improve security posture through closed-loop remediation.
Scale effortlessly without adding headcount.

The future of the cybersecurity lifecycle is not more dashboards or rules — it’s an autonomous, adaptive loop that evolves as fast as attackers do.

Torq makes that future real today. See all the ways Torq makes the SOC more efficient for security teams.

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FAQs

What is lifecycle management in cybersecurity?

Lifecycle management is the continuous governance of the cybersecurity lifecycle — identify, protect, detect, respond, recover — run as an IT security lifecycle program and measured against a cybersecurity maturity model.

What are the 5 C's of cybersecurity?

The five C’s in cybersecurity are confidentiality, integrity, availability, compliance, and continuity. Teams use them to guide control selection and resilience decisions across the cybersecurity lifecycle.

What are the 5 stages of the cybersecurity lifecycle?

The five stages of the cybersecurity lifecycle are identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover. Organizations run this IT security lifecycle continuously and track progress with a cybersecurity maturity model.

What are the 4 phases of a cyber attack?

A cyber attack lifecycle includes reconnaissance, initial access/exploitation, lateral movement, privilege escalation, and actions on objectives. This sequence aligns with the cyber kill chain.

What are the 5 phases of the cyber kill chain?

In the five-phase cyber kill chain, attacks progress through reconnaissance, delivery/weaponization, exploitation, installation with command-and-control, and actions on objectives. Mapping detections and playbooks to these stages helps close gaps earlier.

Ready to automate everything?

“Torq takes the vision that’s in your head and actually puts it on paper and into practice.”

Corey Kaemming, Senior Director of InfoSec

“Torq HyperSOC offers unprecedented protection and drives extraordinary efficiency for RSM and our customers.”

Todd Willoughby, Director

“Torq saves hundreds of hours a month on analysis. Alert fatigue is a thing of the past.”

Phillip Tarrant, SOC Technical Manager

“The only limit Torq has is people’s imaginations.”

Gai Hanochi, VP Business Technologies

“Torq Agentic AI now handles 100% of Carvana’s Tier-1 security alerts.”

Dina Mathers, CISO

“Torq has transformed efficiency for all five of my security teams and enabled them to focus on much more high-value strategic work.”

Yossi Yeshua, CISO

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AI AI SOC Autonomous SOC Hyperautomation Security Automation 101

What is an MSSP SOC? The Future of Cybersecurity for Modern Businesses

By Torq

September 3, 2025

7 Minute Read

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Running a modern Security Operations Center (SOC) is harder than ever. Between nonstop alerts, talent shortages, and the rising sophistication of attacks, even large enterprises struggle to maintain 24/7 coverage. That’s why Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) are becoming the backbone of enterprise cybersecurity.

An MSSP SOC delivers enterprise-grade 24/7 security monitoring, threat detection, and incident response for multiple clients through a single, centralized platform. It gives organizations the power of a fully staffed, modern SOC — without the cost, complexity, or burnout that often come with running one internally.

For businesses, that means enterprise-grade protection without the overhead of building an internal SOC. For MSSPs, it’s a scalable opportunity to deliver differentiated, automation-driven security services that grow with every client onboarded.

This blog shares how MSSP SOCs work, why they’re transforming cybersecurity, and how Torq HyperSOC™ helps both managed security providers and their customers reach new levels of speed, accuracy, and resilience.

The Core Components of an MSSP SOC

An MSSP SOC operates as the nerve center of outsourced cybersecurity. It combines people, processes, and technology into a single operational framework that continuously monitors, detects, and responds to threats in real time.

Key services and functions include:

24/7/365 monitoring: Around-the-clock visibility is the defining feature of an MSSP SOC. By leveraging advanced SIEM solutions, EDR, and XDR tools, MSSPs monitor endpoints, networks, and cloud environments for malicious activity every second of the day — something that’s both cost- and resource-prohibitive for most internal teams.
Incident response and containment: When a threat is detected, the MSSP analysts immediately take action to contain and remediate it. They isolate affected systems, remove malware, reset credentials, and coordinate directly with client IT teams to restore normal operations.
Threat intelligence and proactive defense: Modern MSSPs hunt for threats. By correlating global threat intelligence feeds with real-time telemetry, they identify active attack campaigns, compromised credentials, and new vulnerabilities before they’re exploited.
Vulnerability management and compliance: An MSSP SOC also handles vulnerability scanning, patch prioritization, and compliance management, ensuring clients meet frameworks like ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA. This proactive oversight reduces exposure and simplifies audit readiness.

Why Businesses Choose an MSSP SOC

Cost-effectiveness: Running an in-house SOC can cost millions annually once you factor in salaries, training, licensing, and infrastructure. An MSSP SOC distributes these costs across multiple clients, providing enterprise-grade coverage at a fraction of the expense — and with predictable, subscription-based pricing.

Access to specialized expertise: Cybersecurity talent is scarce and expensive. Partnering with an MSSP instantly connects your organization to a team of certified analysts, threat hunters, and incident responders who live and breathe security every day.

Scalability and flexibility: MSSP services include elastic security coverage, scaling services up or down as your business grows or threat volumes spike. Whether your environment operates on-prem or across hybrid and cloud-based environments, MSSPs deliver flexible security solutions that strengthen overall security posture.

More efficient incident response: An MSSP SOC is built to minimize dwell time. Dedicated incident response specialists and automated triage workflows mean that verified threats are contained within minutes, not hours or days.

Advanced technology and tooling: MSSPs provide access to advanced security stacks — SIEM, EDR, IAM, UEBA, and threat intel platforms — without requiring large upfront investments. Clients benefit from cutting-edge protection while MSSPs handle the integration, updates, and ongoing management.

Why MSSPs Choose Torq HyperSOC™

Traditional SIEM tools and SOAR systems often struggle to keep pace with growing alert volumes and complex cyberattacks. That’s why leading MSSPs are turning to Torq HyperSOC™ to deliver next-generation managed security service capabilities.

“Organisations don’t want to buy cyber services from companies that only scratch the surface; they want to work with certified specialists who live and breathe cybersecurity, providing valued insights and advice that is tailored to their business and risk profile… [For Kyocera Cyber’s AI-driven M-SOC offering], joining forces with Torq is key to this, as their platform helps ensure our proprietary architecture is best-equipped to offer peace of mind to customers.”

– Andrew Smith, Chief Information & Strategy Officer at Kyocera Cyber

Built for multi-tenancy: Serve hundreds of customers through a unified platform with shared automations, tenant isolation, centralized visibility, and precise access control.

Agentic AI and Hyperautomation: Torq replaces static automation with agentic AI and Hyperautomated workflows that continuously adapt based on threat context. Instead of following a fixed playbook, it reasons, prioritizes, and acts autonomously.

No-code/low-code workflows: Security teams can deploy custom AI workflows in minutes. This accelerates MSSP onboarding and reduces time to value.

Dynamic case management: HyperSOC cases evolve automatically as new data flows in, maintaining context across the entire incident lifecycle.

Real-time response: Torq connects with your existing MSSP stack (SIEM, EDR, IAM, and XDR) to execute real-time actions. Whether isolating endpoints or revoking compromised tokens, responses are immediate and measurable.

Native integrations: With 300+ integrations, Torq brings fragmented tools under one roof. MSSPs gain unified visibility, simplified orchestration, and effortless scalability.

Operational efficiency: By automating 80–90% of repetitive SOC workloads, MSSPs using Torq improve detection-to-response times, reduce false positives, and dramatically increase analyst productivity, without increasing headcount.

What Businesses Gain with MSSPs Using Torq

If you’re a business choosing an MSSP, not all providers are equal. An MSSP powered by Torq HyperSOC™ delivers measurable advantages:

Faster incident resolution: AI-driven triage and response slash dwell time.
Consistent quality: Standardized workflows ensure reliable, compliant responses.
Full transparency: Real-time dashboards and audit-ready case logs provide clear visibility.
Reduced false positives: Smarter correlation ensures analysts focus only on genuine threats.
Continuous learning: The system improves over time — analyzing new attack patterns and optimizing workflows for stronger proactive defense.

HWG Sababa Delivers 24/7 Value with Torq

European MSSP HWG Sababa used Torq Hyperautomation to transform their managed SOC operations into measurable customer value. When HWG Sababa’s in-house automation framework couldn’t keep pace with their growth, the team adopted Torq. The results were immediate. Years of legacy automations were rebuilt in just weeks, and SOC efficiency surged — with Torq now automatically managing more than half of all monthly alerts, accelerating response by up to 95% for high-priority incidents.

By automating repetitive Tier-1 tasks and streamlining alert investigation and containment, HWG Sababa’s analysts reclaimed valuable time to focus on advanced threat hunting and proactive defense. Torq also enabled the MSSP to extend automated response actions to the customer side — executing critical containment and remediation even when clients lacked 24/7 internal teams. Each automation saves five to fifteen minutes, adding up to hours recovered daily and days of productivity gained each month for customers.

Torq now serves as the backbone of HWG Sababa’s managed SOC operations, powering quantifiable ROI, continuous improvement, and a clear competitive edge. As HWG Sababa’s Head of Innovation, Marco Fattorelli, shares “Torq is the ideal solution for adding value to our managed SOC. By accelerating our automations and responses, Torq Hyperautomation helps us stay ahead of the curve — and the competition.”

MSSP vs. In-House SOC: Finding the Right Fit

Criteria	In-House SOC	MSSP SOC
Cost	High upfront and ongoing investment	Subscription-based, predictable pricing
Staffing	Requires full internal team	Access to expert analysts instantly
Coverage	Limited to business hours or regions	24/7 global monitoring
Scalability	Slow, resource-dependent	Rapid, elastic expansion
Technology	Complex tool management	Managed and unified by MSSP
Ideal for	Highly regulated or large enterprises	Mid-size to enterprise customers seeking agility

The New Standard for Managed SOCs

Today’s cyber threats move faster than ever. Your security operations center needs to keep pace. Whether you’re an MSSP SOC scaling to serve more customers or a business looking to outsource security for agility and resilience, Torq HyperSOC™ provides the foundation for AI-driven, rapid response managed security services.

See how leading MSSPs use Torq to transform their security operations and deliver better outcomes across every managed client.

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FAQs

What is an MSSP in SOC?

An MSSP in SOC (Managed Security Service Provider in a Security Operations Center) delivers managed security services like security monitoring, threat detection, and incident response on behalf of multiple clients. Instead of maintaining an internal SOC, organizations outsource their security operations to an MSSP, which provides 24/7 coverage using advanced tools such as SIEM, EDR, and MDR.

An MSSP SOC acts as a centralized command center that protects businesses from cyber threats, improves security posture, and reduces operational costs while ensuring scalable, enterprise-grade defense.

What is an MSP vs MSSP?

An MSP (Managed Service Provider) focuses on general IT management, network maintenance, cloud management, and endpoint support. An MSSP (Managed Security Service Provider) specializes in cybersecurity, offering advanced security operations, detection, and incident response. While an MSP keeps systems running, an MSSP protects those systems from cyberattacks. Many MSSPs operate full-scale security operations centers (SOCs), using SIEM and threat intelligence to monitor and defend against evolving cyber threats continuously.

What are the key functions of an MSSP SOC?

An MSSP SOC provides 24/7 security monitoring, detection, incident response, vulnerability management, and compliance support. It acts as an organization’s outsourced security operations center, delivering continuous protection and improved security posture.

How does 24/7 monitoring work?

MSSP services use SIEM solutions, EDR, and MDR tools to collect and analyze network and endpoint data continuously. Automated correlation and human expertise work together to detect and contain critical threats before they escalate.

What is a SOC as a Service?

SOC-as-a-Service is a managed security service model where organizations outsource their entire security operations center to an external MSSP. It delivers 24/7 security monitoring, threat detection, incident response, and compliance reporting through a subscription-based model.

With SOC-as-a-Service, companies gain access to elite SOC analysts, SIEM tools, and MDR capabilities without the cost or complexity of managing them in-house. It’s the most efficient way to strengthen your security posture, reduce false positives, and maintain continuous protection against evolving cyber threats.

How does an MSSP SOC use threat intelligence?

By combining global threat intelligence with real-time telemetry, managed security service providers identify emerging cyber threats, track malicious activity, and take proactive measures to defend client environments.

How does an MSSP SOC assist with compliance?

Managed security service teams monitor frameworks like SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA, providing continuous security information, reporting, and audit readiness for clients.

What are the main benefits of using an MSSP SOC?

The top benefits include cost savings, faster detection and response, access to elite talent, advanced security tools, and scalable protection — all without building and maintaining a costly internal SOC.

Ready to automate everything?

“Torq takes the vision that’s in your head and actually puts it on paper and into practice.”

Corey Kaemming, Senior Director of InfoSec

“Torq HyperSOC offers unprecedented protection and drives extraordinary efficiency for RSM and our customers.”

Todd Willoughby, Director

“Torq saves hundreds of hours a month on analysis. Alert fatigue is a thing of the past.”

Phillip Tarrant, SOC Technical Manager

“The only limit Torq has is people’s imaginations.”

Gai Hanochi, VP Business Technologies

“Torq Agentic AI now handles 100% of Carvana’s Tier-1 security alerts.”

Dina Mathers, CISO

“Torq has transformed efficiency for all five of my security teams and enabled them to focus on much more high-value strategic work.”

Yossi Yeshua, CISO

Get a Demo

AI Security Engineering

Building an AI-Native Culture: How We Ran an AI Hackathon That Stuck

By Konstantin (Kostya) Ostrovsky

August 28, 2025

6 Minute Read

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Konstantin (Kostya) Ostrovsky is the Chief Architect at Torq, where he leverages over 18 years of experience in software engineering and architecture. He specializes in cybersecurity, with a background that began with writing Windows Kernel Drivers. Konstantin is also a frequent speaker at software engineering conferences globally.

At Torq, our goal is to be at the cutting edge of technology — both in how we build our products and in how we work day to day. We adopted GitHub Copilot early, rolled out org-wide access to ChatGPT, Claude, and Cursor, and coached PMs and engineers on promptcraft, coding with copilots, and fast iteration.

However, simply providing AI tools or just talking about them isn’t enough. While they might seem intuitive at first, mastering the art of working with AI takes time and practice. It’s a process of learning the tricks and developing an intuition to get the most out of them.

To accelerate adoption, we ran a single-day AI Hackathon designed to turn curiosity into muscle memory — what we call “vibe-coding”: to rapidly and intuitively build cool, product-related features using AI.

How We Ran the AI Hackathon

We gave teams permission to “vibe-code” — move from idea to working prototype in hours — without the friction of day-to-day priorities. The goals were simple: use as much AI as possible, build something useful or delightful, and learn repeatable patterns you can bring back to your sprint.

Sourcing and Filtering Ideas

We opened the floor to everything — product features, internal back-office tools, developer experience (DX) improvements, or anything else our teams could dream up. In a week, we collected nearly 40 ideas. We sat down with our colleagues from the Product Management team, who helped us filter the list by half, prioritizing ideas that were both fun to work on and valuable to our product roadmap. The R&D team selected the remaining ideas focused on internal tooling, DX, and other engineering priorities.

Forming Teams

With the list narrowed to 20 projects, we asked our engineers to vote for the ones they’d most like to work on. They could choose any project that interested them, even outside their usual domain. We voted on a few favorites and assembled balanced squads of 3-4 people, intentionally mixing collaborators who don’t often pair.

To help with this, I even vibe-coded a small Hackathon organization app. It optimized team assignments to ensure most engineers were placed on a project they had either suggested or voted for.

Creating the Atmosphere

HR and Finance went all-in: banners, shirts, an endless supply of food and drink, and an afterparty to keep the energy high. In true Hackathon fashion, it was also a competition. A jury of four well-respected representatives from different Torq departments awarded prizes to the top three teams, and a “Crowd Favorite” was crowned from a company-wide vote.

The Hack Day

Energy was high across offices, including Warsaw, where one new engineer who joined Torq the day before was able to contribute significantly and even took second place.

Everyone worked extremely hard and had a ton of fun. I was tracking the token usage on our AI tools, and the activity screen in Cursor and the buzz in the office showed teams working as late as 3am. Interestingly, some of the most active AI tool users were our Product Managers and Team Leads, not just the engineers.

The Big Demo

The next morning, teams got five minutes each to give either a presentation, PoC, or live demo in our preview environment. Some were fully functional projects that were live in our preview environment. The teams’ achievements were mind-blowing. The sheer volume of work, business value, and innovative concepts presented was astonishing. Projects that would normally take weeks were demoed after just 24 hours of focused “vibe-coding.” These weren’t production-grade solutions, but they gave everyone a powerful glimpse of what’s possible when leveraging AI tools effectively.

After the winners were announced, I sent a survey to all participants. The results were unanimous: Everyone had a fantastic time and found the experience incredibly valuable.

How It Went

Start planning early. Looping in the Product team upfront gave us well-thought-out problem statements and tasks, so teams hit the ground running.

We crowdsourced the roadmap. We asked everyone to submit ideas and vote. Ownership increased and teams landed on projects they actually cared about.

Encourage experiments. We explicitly allowed people to try new tools and approaches. The creativity and velocity that followed was off the charts.

Show the score. Mid- and end-event stats (such as progress, token usage, and demos shipped) got everyone pumped up, sparked friendly competition, and kept momentum high.

Next time, we’ll be sure to balance scope across teams. We’ll pre-size projects with a simple complexity rubric and right-size them at kickoff so every team tackles a comparably challenging task.

Want to Run an AI Hackathon at Your Company?

Here’s some tips and best practices I’ve learned from launching this initiative at Torq:

Pick a single day.
Open the funnel for ideas and filter for impact.
Let people choose what they want to work on, then balance teams.
Remove friction (e.g., tools, data, environments).
Timebox. Demo. Celebrate.
Ship the best two or three ideas into a productionization lane.

The cost was minimal for tokens, swag, and food. The ROI showed up immediately: reusable code, better AI workflows, and teams that left with confidence, not just curiosity.

So, what’s the key to driving AI adoption? For us, it was turning conversation into action. Torq’s AI Hackathon provided tangible proof of what our teams could accomplish, transforming abstract potential into mind-blowing demos. It’s the ultimate accelerator, compressing weeks of learning and experimentation into a single, high-energy day.

The challenge is to carry that momentum forward, integrating these new vibe-coding workflows into our regular sprints. This is how a one-day event becomes the foundation for a long-term, AI-native culture.

Love the idea of vibe-coding, AI Hackathons, and building the future of security automation? We’re looking for engineers, PMs, and problem-solvers who want to push the boundaries of AI-native development. Check out Torq’s Careers page and join us in shaping the future of security.

See Job Openings

Ready to automate everything?

“Torq takes the vision that’s in your head and actually puts it on paper and into practice.”

Corey Kaemming, Senior Director of InfoSec

“Torq HyperSOC offers unprecedented protection and drives extraordinary efficiency for RSM and our customers.”

Todd Willoughby, Director

“Torq saves hundreds of hours a month on analysis. Alert fatigue is a thing of the past.”

Phillip Tarrant, SOC Technical Manager

“The only limit Torq has is people’s imaginations.”

Gai Hanochi, VP Business Technologies

“Torq Agentic AI now handles 100% of Carvana’s Tier-1 security alerts.”

Dina Mathers, CISO

“Torq has transformed efficiency for all five of my security teams and enabled them to focus on much more high-value strategic work.”

Yossi Yeshua, CISO

Get a Demo

AI AI SOC Autonomous SOC Hyperautomation Use Cases

Automating MITRE ATT&CK Analysis with Torq Socrates

By Bob Boyle

August 26, 2025

8 Minute Read

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MITRE ATT&CK has become the de facto SOC framework for classifying adversary behavior — and for good reason. It gives SOC teams a common language to describe threats, uncover gaps, and fine-tune detection logic. But let’s be honest: mapping real-world activity to ATT&CK tactics and techniques is still a time-consuming grind.

For analysts, this usually means bouncing between logs, enrichment sources, and documentation, trying to match cryptic telemetry to the right tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). It’s slow, inconsistent, and vulnerable to human error. In high-volume environments, it just doesn’t scale.

MITRE ATT&CK has become a program in itself. But to use it daily across threat hunting, education, or red/blue teaming, you need automation. Torq Socrates, our agentic AI for autonomous investigation and triage, doesn’t just assist analysts. It acts on their behalf, analyzing cases in real time and automatically mapping findings to the MITRE ATT&CK framework with full context.

Manual MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

Here’s what traditional triage often looks like:

You receive an alert, maybe an endpoint flagged a suspicious PowerShell command.
You parse the logs, pull related observables, and try to reconstruct what happened.
You cross-reference those behaviors with MITRE’s matrix to find matching techniques.
You paste your findings into the case record, update the timeline, escalate if needed.

Even if you know the MITRE ATT&CK Framework like the back of your hand, this takes time, 30 to 60 minutes or more per case. That adds up fast. And worse, every analyst does it a little differently, leading to inconsistent documentation and uneven detection tuning downstream.

How Socrates Automates MITRE ATT&CK Analysis

The real challenge with MITRE ATT&CK isn’t understanding it — it’s operationalizing it at scale. SOC teams need to move from enrichment to action, and the only way to do that consistently is through automation.

That’s exactly what Torq Socrates delivers. By ingesting alert telemetry, mapping to tactics and techniques, and automating workflows, Socrates bridges the gap between ATT&CK theory and real-world impact, turning what was once a manual grind into a 30-second process. Users can extend or create their own MITRE-aligned workflows in minutes using Torq’s no-code/low-code environment.

Here’s how Socrates applies the MITRE ATT&CK framework in every case it touches:

Ingests case data: Socrates automatically parses alerts, logs, user inputs, and contextual artifacts from across your integrated toolchain.
Identifies patterns across incidents: Socrates compares TTP fingerprints over time, helping teams correlate seemingly unrelated cases or surface persistent attacker behaviors.
Summarizes behaviors: Using natural language processing (NLP), it identifies key actions and patterns (e.g., command execution, credential access, lateral movement).
Maps to ATT&CK: Socrates aligns those behaviors to tactics and techniques from the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
Annotates the case: It logs its reasoning, links evidence, and updates the timeline with MITRE-aligned insights.
Takes action: Based on policy, Socrates escalates, auto-remediates, or closes the case.

Torq Socrates operationalizes the MITRE ATT&CK framework end-to-end

Torq Workflow: Create MITRE ATT&CK Layer from TTP List

Socrates makes it easy to map TTPs to MITRE ATT&CK in every case automatically. But what if you want to go one step further, turning that mapping into a visual layer for deeper analysis or reporting?

This workflow takes any list of TTPs, whether generated by Socrates, entered manually, or ingested from another system, and automatically builds a shareable ATT&CK layer in both JSON and SVG formats. It’s especially useful for purple team exercises, threat hunting retrospectives, or briefing stakeholders with a visual snapshot of attack coverage.

Here’s what the workflow does:

Ingests a list of Tactics and Techniques from the triggering case.
Enriches input by expanding Tactics into associated Techniques using MITRE’s dataset (if Techniques aren’t provided directly).
Builds a unique list of all Techniques and Sub-techniques.
Generates two output formats: a JSON file for MITRE ATT&CK Navigator, and an SVG image for visualization.
Attaches the outputs directly to the case timeline for easy access and sharing.

The result is a fast, fully automated way to move from raw TTPs to a structured, visual MITRE layer. Just plug this workflow into any investigation where visual context helps drive decisions, and let Torq handle the rest.

Socrates vs. Manual Triage: A Side-by-Side Look

Consider a privilege escalation case triggered by suspicious endpoint behavior. A manual investigation typically takes 30-60 minutes, including log parsing, tactic identification, and evidence documentation.

With Socrates, the entire process is completed in approximately 30 seconds:

Detected behavior: Suspicious PowerShell execution via endpoint telemetry.
MITRE ATT&CK technique identified: T1059 – Command and Scripting Interpreter.
Evidence collected: PowerShell command logs with encoded payload execution, network activity to known malicious IPs.
Automated response recommendation: Endpoint isolation via integrated EDR, notification sent to IAM team for compromised credentials.
Outcome: Accelerated incident response, standardized classification, clear audit trails, and significantly reduced analyst workload.

Manual Approach:

Parse endpoint telemetry
Decode command strings
Match to MITRE techniques
Draft summary and tag case
Escalate and notify IR team
Time spent: ~45 minutes

Socrates Approach:

Auto-ingests alert + context
Detects suspicious use of net localgroup administrators
Maps to T1069.002 – Permission Groups Discovery: Domain Groups
Updates case, isolates host, triggers IAM sync
Time spent: ~30 seconds

Benefits of Automated MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

When Socrates handles MITRE mapping:

Threat classification is consistent across cases, shifts, and teams
Detection tuning improves because you’re measuring coverage by tactic and technique
Cross-case correlation gets easier, especially for threat hunting recurring attacker behavior
Audit and reporting get simpler with standardized documentation
Purple teaming and validation are enhanced by visual, real-time ATT&CK layer generation
Behavioral pattern recognition strengthens your defense posture, as Socrates identifies recurring techniques and stealthy attack strategies across historical cases, supporting more proactive threat hunting and detection refinement.
Visual MITRE ATT&CK heatmaps provide strategic insight, showing which techniques are detected, underutilized, or missed entirely. These insights directly support:
- Purple team planning and retrospective analysis
- Stakeholder and executive briefings
- SOC maturity assessments and coverage evaluations
- Detection engineering prioritization

SOCs that rely on MITRE but analyze it manually leave speed and quality on the table. Socrates gives you full fidelity, with none of the manual effort.

Beyond MITRE ATT&CK: Expanding the Impact of Socrates

Torq Socrates extends its automation beyond MITRE ATT&CK, providing:

Real-time threat enrichment: Socrates enriches every case with live intelligence from integrated sources like VirusTotal, WHOIS, and threat intel feeds, automatically attaching file reputation, IP context, domain history, and known indicators. Analysts gain instant clarity without needing to pivot across tools.

Auto-generated case summaries: Using natural language processing, Socrates produces concise, human-readable case summaries that distill the who, what, and how of each incident, accelerating analyst understanding and review. It’s like having a built-in security note-taker.

Policy-driven remediation: Whether isolating a compromised endpoint, resetting credentials, or disabling user access, Socrates follows automated remediation workflows tailored to your policies. Responses are swift, consistent, and fully auditable.

Seamless analyst handoff: Each case maintains complete context, timeline, and linked evidence, making it easy to escalate or reassign without losing momentum. Transitions between analysts — or even shifts — are frictionless and informed.

Comparing Traditional vs. Torq-Powered MITRE ATT&CK Operations

Capability	MITRE-Agnostic Approach	Torq-Enabled Implementation
Tagging Alerts & Cases	AI or rule-based tagging of detected activity	Torq HyperSOC auto-tags cases with relevant tactics, techniques and sub-techniques based on telemetry and case artifacts
Playbooks / Response	ATT-aligned automation workflows	Templates and playbooks auto-map TTPs, run responses, and visualize ATT layers in JSON/SVG
Continuous Validation	Ongoing technique simulation or control tests	Torq continuously processes detection signals in real-time, enforcing ATT‑aligned workflows per incident
Case Enrichment	Contextual enrichment of alert data	HyperSOC enriches cases with intel, process metadata, threat info, and correlates to prior incidents with same TTPs
Coverage Mapping	ATT matrix dashboards	Visual heatmaps showing TTP coverage across cloud and network based on past case tagging and incident mapping
AI / LLM-Powered Automation	NLP for enrichment and tagging	Torq’s LLM engine ingests guidance and framework documentation to enhance accuracy in triage, tagging, and team notifications
Customization	Scripted solutions	No-code/low-code builder to create custom ATT&CK workflows

Operationalize MITRE ATT&CK at Scale with Torq Socrates

MITRE ATT&CK mapping has long been a necessary but burdensome part of security operations. Torq Socrates changes that by fully automating the process, from parsing telemetry and identifying techniques to enriching cases, generating visual layers, and triggering policy-driven responses. It transforms MITRE from a static reference into a dynamic, real-time engine for smarter, faster, and more consistent security.

With Socrates, SOC teams no longer waste time on repetitive analysis or inconsistent tagging. They gain precision, speed, and visibility at scale, allowing them to focus on proactive defense, strategic initiatives, and continuous improvement.

MITRE ATT&CK doesn’t have to be a manual grind. With Torq Socrates, it becomes your SOC’s most powerful automation ally.

See Socrates in Action

Ready to automate everything?

“Torq takes the vision that’s in your head and actually puts it on paper and into practice.”

Corey Kaemming, Senior Director of InfoSec

“Torq HyperSOC offers unprecedented protection and drives extraordinary efficiency for RSM and our customers.”

Todd Willoughby, Director

“Torq saves hundreds of hours a month on analysis. Alert fatigue is a thing of the past.”

Phillip Tarrant, SOC Technical Manager

“The only limit Torq has is people’s imaginations.”

Gai Hanochi, VP Business Technologies

“Torq Agentic AI now handles 100% of Carvana’s Tier-1 security alerts.”

Dina Mathers, CISO

“Torq has transformed efficiency for all five of my security teams and enabled them to focus on much more high-value strategic work.”

Yossi Yeshua, CISO

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Integrations Security Engineering Use Cases

Architecting a Production-Grade Anti-Phishing Defense System with the NVIDIA NeMo Agent Toolkit and NIM

By Konstantin (Kostya) Ostrovsky

August 26, 2025

11 Minute Read

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Konstantin (Kostya) Ostrovsky is the Chief Architect at Torq, where he leverages over 18 years of experience in software engineering and architecture. He specializes in cybersecurity, with a background that began with writing Windows Kernel Drivers. Konstantin is also a frequent speaker at software engineering conferences globally.

Phishing attacks have evolved significantly in recent years, rendering traditional, rule-based defenses ineffective against sophisticated threats. Organizations now require dynamic, context-aware defenses that understand and adapt to complex threats in real time.

Torq has delivered a production-grade anti-phishing solution leveraging a multi-agent system built on NVIDIA’s advanced AI infrastructure and the NVIDIA NeMo Agent Toolkit open source library. This initiative provides enterprises with adaptive, scalable security designed to handle evolving cyber threats.

Why Torq Built on NVIDIA AI

Today’s phishing threats are engineered to bypass even the most sophisticated rule-based detection systems. They exploit context, urgency, and behavioral nuance in ways that traditional security architectures were never designed to handle.

Torq set out to solve this problem not with another static filter, but with a dynamic, production-grade product built on a multi-agent system that works like a modern SOC: distributed, specialized, and collaborative. To do that, we needed a framework built for a modular, efficient AI platform that could scale, adapt, and be trusted in real-time enterprise environments.

That’s why we’re collaborating with NVIDIA and built this system using their NeMo Agent Toolkit and NVIDIA NIM microservices.

The NeMo Agent Toolkit enables rapid development of complex, multi-agent workflows using intuitive YAML-based configuration, plug-and-play tool integration, and support for custom large language models. Through built-in profiling and telemetry, developers gain complete visibility into agent performance, latency, and cost, making it ideal for both development and production deployments.

The NeMo Agent Toolkit works side-by-side and around existing agentic frameworks, customer enterprise frameworks, and simple Python agents. It complements any existing agentic framework or memory tool you already use, allowing you to easily integrate your existing code base into the framework.

With NVIDIA NIM, we get high-performance, containerized inference endpoints for the latest AI models from NVIDIA and the community. It’s what lets us serve different LLMs for different tasks, optimize for latency and throughput, and swap in newer models as threats evolve.

Together, these technologies let us build an autonomous decision-making engine that’s explainable and built for production from day one.

Inside the Torq Phishing Defense Architecture with NVIDIA

The multi-agent phishing defense architecture comprises specialized AI agents working collaboratively. Each agent addresses specific aspects of email analysis, mirroring the workflows used by human security operations teams for comprehensive threat assessment.

The Torq Phishing Defense architecture with NVIDIA includes:

SecurityAnalystAgent: Acts as the system’s first touchpoint, ingesting raw email data and parsing it into headers, body content, and attachments. Based on the email’s contents, each element is routed to the appropriate specialist agent for deeper analysis, effectively kicking off the investigation workflow.
HeaderAnalysisAgent: Focused on the metadata and dissects email headers to detect spoofing or forgery. It verifies SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records, tracks anomalies in the mail relay path, and identifies mismatches between sender fields and the authentication records.
ExternalResourcesAgent: Hunts for malicious links, cross-referencing URLs against both external threat intelligence sources (like VirusTotal) and internal threat databases. Each URL is scanned and ranked by risk score. File attachments, both unprotected and password-protected, are also scanned using 3rd party vendors to detect malware. Often, phishing emails contain password-protected files with the password casually embedded in the email’s body. This is easily detected by a human, but requires a lot of engineering effort to extract and detect. Nowadays, thanks to LLMs, we can easily identify passwords and perform proper scanning on password-protected assets.
ScreenshotAnalyzerAgent: The email is rendered in a sandboxed environment, and then a screenshot is taken. We then use VLMs with image analysis support to identify any potential signs of a phishing email, such as broken logos, mixed font colors, and other indicators that a trained expert could only identify in the past. Nowadays, we can achieve that using out-of-the-box foundational models or models fine-tuned for phishing email data.
ContentClassifierAgent: Uses a LLM to analyze the email’s tone, urgency, and intent. It flags psychological manipulation cues (like fake deadlines or impersonation), often hidden from traditional filters.

Example prompt snippet:

# Social Engineering Tactics:

– Urgency and time pressure (“Act now!”, “Limited time!”, “Expires today!”)

– Authority impersonation (pretending to be from banks, government, IT support, executives)

– Fear-based manipulation (account suspension, security breach, legal action threats)

– Emotional appeals (charity scams, personal emergencies, romantic deception)

– Curiosity exploitation (mysterious packages, secret information, exclusive offers)

– Trust exploitation (fake testimonials, false credentials, friendship pretense)

# Content Analysis:

– Requests for sensitive information (passwords, SSN, account details, verification codes)

– Suspicious links or attachments mentioned in the text

– Generic greetings vs. personalized communication

– Grammar, spelling, and language inconsistencies

– Mismatched branding or logos mentioned

– Unusual payment methods (gift cards, cryptocurrency, wire transfers)

# Behavioral Indicators:

– Instructions to bypass security measures

– Requests to keep communication secret

– Pressure to act without verification

– Unusual communication channels suggested

– Requests to download software or click links

– Inconsistent sender identity or story

# Technical Red Flags:

– Shortened URLs or suspicious domain names mentioned

– Requests to disable security software

– Instructions to enable macros or run executables

– Phishing kit indicators (template text, placeholder content)

– URL analysis for typosquatting or suspicious domains

# Language Pattern Analysis:

– Inconsistent tone or writing style

– Translation artifacts suggesting non-native speakers

– Copy-paste indicators from legitimate sources

– Formatting anomalies or HTML artifacts

– Mixed font styles or encoding issues

VerdictAgent (The SOC Lead): Compiles all findings, weighs conflicting signals, and delivers a contextual risk score with a clear explanation. Acting as the decision-making layer, it mimics a senior analyst’s judgment to determine whether the email poses a threat. In addition to a verdict, it also provides the reasoning behind the decision and the investigation.

This sophisticated logic requires a powerful, reliable execution engine. The NVIDIA NeMo Agent Toolkit provides:

Framework-agnostic orchestration: Integrates existing Python libraries and agents seamlessly. Using it allows us to build multi-agent flows with ease.
YAML-driven workflows: Uses declarative YAML files for defining agent behaviors, workflows, and model configurations and prompts, simplifying deployments.
Built-in profiling and evaluation: Offers detailed telemetry to optimize latency, performance, and resource usage. This is extremely handy during the development phase. Using the profiling and evaluation data helps to select the right model for the job, either a cloud-hosted one provided by one of the vendors or a locally running one powered by the NVIDIA NIM containers.

Complementing the toolkit, NVIDIA NIM delivers high-performance, containerized inference endpoints for model flexibility. Using NIM containers allows easy, single-click model swaps without infrastructure complications.

Orchestration in Practice with config.yaml

At the center of this phishing defense system is a declarative NeMo Agent Toolkit configuration file that defines every component of the multi-agent architecture within a single YAML file. This makes the system highly extensible, developer-friendly, and production-ready.

The NVIDIA NeMo Agent Toolkit enables this orchestration by configuring each tool, model, prompt, and agent as composable, callable components. Here’s a conceptual breakdown of how it all comes together.

1. Tools and Agents Defined as Functions

The YAML configuration begins by defining individual tools: custom Python functions, API lookups, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines. These are then mapped to specialized AI agents like HeaderAnalysisAgent and URLScannerAgent. Each agent uses a specific LLM and toolset to complete its role within the overall phishing analysis.

2. LLMs Powered by NVIDIA NIM

Two distinct LLMs are served via NVIDIA NIM containers: one for general reasoning and ReAct-style logic, and another fine-tuned for phishing content classification. With just a few lines of config, you can swap out or upgrade models.

3. VerdictAgent as the Final Judge

The workflow culminates in the VerdictAgent, implemented as an agent that reviews the results of the investigator agents to complete the analysis. It generates a verdict based on the assessment results generated by the investigative agents, summarizing their conclusions and calculating a risk score based on their findings.

Here’s what makes this approach powerful:

Modularity: Each agent is an independent component, making updates and testing seamless.
Flexibility: Swapping models, tuning prompts, and adding or removing tool logic are a matter of changing the agent’s configuration in the configuration YAML.
Explainability: The VerdictAgent aggregates signals from diverse sources, enabling human-readable reports and confidence scoring.

Spear-Phishing Detection in Action

By utilizing NVIDIA’s rich LLM ecosystem, Torq delivered a system uniquely capable of identifying high-risk spear-phishing campaigns targeting executives. These attacks typically include password-protected malware attachments with credentials shared in the email body. While traditional tools overlook this context, the AI agents in the system understand intent and behavior.

The results speak for themselves: LLM-based security systems dramatically outperform traditional rule-based engines, reducing incident response times from hours to under ten minutes for critical threats. These systems also demonstrate superior resilience against AI-generated phishing attacks, maintaining accuracy even when sophisticated rephrasing techniques are employed — showing only a 3-4 percentage point decline compared to 5-9 points for traditional models.

Perhaps most importantly, intelligent event correlation tackles alert fatigue head-on, reducing alert volume by up to 87% while ensuring security teams can focus on genuine threats rather than managing false positives.

Real-World Impact

Leveraging Python as a unifying language, the NeMo Agent Toolkit for rapid development, Torq was able to build an agentic AI-based phishing email detection feature quickly. This effectively addresses advanced phishing tactics, including password-protected malware attachments. It understands the nuanced context within phishing emails, resulting in:

Accelerated incident response: Agents collaboratively analyze threats, drastically reducing the mean time to respond (MTTR) up to 92% faster compared to manual investigation.
Fewer false positives: Context-aware agents ensure precise detection, minimizing alert fatigue.
Stronger threat correlation: Agents correlate seemingly unrelated phishing attempts, uncovering hidden threat patterns and bolstering overall security posture.
7-15x More Effective at Catching Missed Phishing Emails: Our initial testing shows that our product is able to detect a significant number of malicious emails that have already been scanned and deemed “safe” by traditional gateways like those in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.

Building AI Security That Learns and Scales

Phishing threats continue to evolve, demanding smarter, adaptive solutions. The collaboration between NVIDIA and Torq shows how multi-agent AI systems can redefine phishing defense.

Customers can plug our advanced phishing detection feature directly into their Torq workflows; it is available as a Step in their Builder’s Toolbox. This feature enables real-time analysis of emails, attachments, URLs, and headers using multiple specialized AI agents, delivering highly accurate threat detection without manual tuning. By embedding this capability into automated workflows, security teams can rapidly identify and mitigate phishing attempts while continuously adapting to new threat patterns.

See how AI-driven security operations transform detection, response, and scale across your entire environment.

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Ready to automate everything?

“Torq takes the vision that’s in your head and actually puts it on paper and into practice.”

Corey Kaemming, Senior Director of InfoSec

“Torq HyperSOC offers unprecedented protection and drives extraordinary efficiency for RSM and our customers.”

Todd Willoughby, Director

“Torq saves hundreds of hours a month on analysis. Alert fatigue is a thing of the past.”

Phillip Tarrant, SOC Technical Manager

“The only limit Torq has is people’s imaginations.”

Gai Hanochi, VP Business Technologies

“Torq Agentic AI now handles 100% of Carvana’s Tier-1 security alerts.”

Dina Mathers, CISO

“Torq has transformed efficiency for all five of my security teams and enabled them to focus on much more high-value strategic work.”

Yossi Yeshua, CISO

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AI AI SOC Autonomous SOC Hyperautomation Research

AI SOC Market Landscape 2025: Torq Leads With Hyperautomation

By Dallas Young

August 25, 2025

5 Minute Read

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The SACR 2025 AI SOC Market Landscape Repor t just dropped, and Torq was named one of the “most feature-rich platforms” on the market.

Not because we bolted a chatbot onto triage. But because we’ve built an AI SOC platform modern security teams actually need: an AI-native, execution-first infrastructure that operationalizes intelligence at scale.

And that platform works.

Other Vendors Build Features. Torq Builds the Foundation.

According to Francis Odum and Rafal Kitab from Software Analyst Cyber Research’s survey of 300+ CISOs:

Enterprises are battling over 3,000 alerts per day, across 28+ tools
40% of alerts go uninvestigated
61% of teams have ignored alerts that turned out to be critical
The average investigation time is 70 minutes
Meanwhile, phishing breaches succeed in under 60 minutes

The takeaway is that you don’t need another AI assistant. You need a system that executes. The winners in the AI SOC space won’t be the ones with the flashiest chat UI — they’ll be the ones that reduce MTTR, scale across fragmented environments, and adapt faster than threats evolve.

That’s Torq.

AI is Only as Useful as Where It Lives

Francis Odum and his team break the AI SOC market into several architectural approaches: black-box overlays, workflow emulators, and Integrated AI SOC Platforms. Only a handful of vendors made that top-tier designation. Torq is one of them.

Here’s what that means in practice:

Agentic AI works inside your environment. It uses hundreds of APIs, headless modes, and Slack/Teams interactions to collect context and execute actions.
The platform is horizontally scalable, with active monitoring by engineering for peak load performance.
Time to full operation is measured in weeks.
- Day 1–3: Core setup and integrations
- Day 4–7: Early automation with templates
- Weeks 2–3: Advanced workflows and AI agent deployment
- Weeks 3–4: Full operational status

Why does that matter? Because AI on the outside can only suggest. AI on the inside can act. Agentic AI has massive potential, but it’s only as powerful as the system it operates in.

Most Vendors Promise Outcomes. Torq Delivers Infrastructure.

The AI SOC space is crowded. As the SACR report points out, most vendors are chasing the same three problems: alert triage, investigation acceleration, and co-pilot-style assistance. These are necessary, but not enough.

Unlike black-box platforms, Torq provides full visibility and control over every AI-driven decision.

1. AI decisions are explainable.

AI decisions are explained with the what, when, impact, key indicators, and next steps.

2. Human feedback is instantly integrated.

Human feedback or instructions written in natural language is instantly integrated.

3. Automation logic is entirely customizable via a visual no-code editor.

In the report, Francis Odum stated that Torq “exceeds expectations for features that AI SOC platforms typically bring.” That’s because we’re not just building features; we are the central nervous system of your security operations, designed to:

Consolidate fragmented workflows across identity, cloud, endpoint, and email
Trigger and scale real-time responses
Integrate agentic decision-making into every step
Operate in hybrid, cloud, and air-gapped environments

As Odum and Kitab note, integrated platforms like Torq are the only architecture that delivers both control and execution at scale.

Enterprise-Grade Infrastructure That Goes Beyond Detection and Response

The SACR report evaluated vendors across operational metrics that matter: investigation speed, alert validation, explainability, contextual enrichment, and performance at scale. Torq stood out because we’re operationally mature and built for enterprise SOCs and MSSPs.

Odum and Kitab’s deep dive surfaced more of Torq’s infrastructure-level advantages, including:

300+ out-of-the-box integrations
Hybrid, on-prem, and air-gapped deployment options
Support for BYOC (Bring Your Own Container)
Log storage, threat hunting, and artifact analysis baked in
Multi-tenancy, full governance, and deletion controls for MSSP and enterprise use
Support for all major compliance frameworks

Not Another Tool — A True Operating Layer

When the report highlighted Torq’s “broad capabilities” in the market, they weren’t just referring to feature count. They were pointing to depth — to a platform that can power CSPM, IAM, threat hunting, email security, incident response, and more, from a single, configurable foundation.

Modern SOCs aren’t one-size-fits-all. Whether you’re running an internal team or an MSSP serving 50 clients, you need a platform that:

Operates autonomously, not in isolation
Handles governance, not just generative reasoning
Executes decisions, not just recommends them

Torq’s Brittney Zec sits down with Francis Odum to get the low down on the SACR 2025 report.

Choose the Platform That Makes AI Work

There’s a lot of noise in this market. Most vendors are in the early innings — or worse, locked in pre-packaged black boxes that leave you with no customization, transparency, or control.

Torq’s take is simple: AI isn’t the product. AI is the engine. The product is the system that runs it. So if you’re still comparing AI SOC tools by which one has the slickest co-pilot or the prettiest chat interface, you’re playing the wrong game.

An autonomous SOC requires three key components: Hyperautomation, SOC-specific AI agents, and enterprise-grade security architecture.

You should be asking:

Does this platform give me executional control?
Can I modify logic and workflows without code?
Is the AI embedded — or sitting on the sidelines?
Can it handle my real-world scale, load, and compliance needs?
Can I trust what it does — and see how it got there?

If the answer isn’t “yes” across the board, it’s not built for where SOCs are headed.

Torq is. And now, thanks to SACR’s 2025 report, the industry knows it too.

Build the execution-first SOC the SACR report points to: transparent, scalable, and enterprise-ready. Read our Don’t Die, Get Torq Manifesto to learn more.

Get the Manifesto

Ready to automate everything?

“Torq takes the vision that’s in your head and actually puts it on paper and into practice.”

Corey Kaemming, Senior Director of InfoSec

“Torq HyperSOC offers unprecedented protection and drives extraordinary efficiency for RSM and our customers.”

Todd Willoughby, Director

“Torq saves hundreds of hours a month on analysis. Alert fatigue is a thing of the past.”

Phillip Tarrant, SOC Technical Manager

“The only limit Torq has is people’s imaginations.”

Gai Hanochi, VP Business Technologies

“Torq Agentic AI now handles 100% of Carvana’s Tier-1 security alerts.”

Dina Mathers, CISO

“Torq has transformed efficiency for all five of my security teams and enabled them to focus on much more high-value strategic work.”

Yossi Yeshua, CISO

Get a Demo

Hyperautomation Integrations Security Automation 101 Use Cases

Top Vulnerability Management Tools and How Torq Automates Remediation

By Torq

August 22, 2025

8 Minute Read

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Vulnerability management is a cornerstone of modern cybersecurity — but for many organizations, it’s also a source of frustration. Most vulnerability management tools are excellent at finding weaknesses, yet they stop short of closing the loop.

That leaves security and IT teams with an ever-growing backlog of findings, manual triage, and slow remediation cycles. Meanwhile, attackers aren’t waiting for your next patch window.

Close the loop with Torq Hyperautomation^TM. Use Torq to prioritize the highest-risk findings with real business context, remediate across patching and configuration tools automatically, and verify fixes in real time — reducing MTTR, shrinking exposure, and ending the backlog for good.

What Are Vulnerability Management Tools?

Vulnerability Management Tools

Vulnerability management tools are software solutions designed to identify, assess, and report security weaknesses in networks, systems, applications, and cloud environments.

The vulnerability management lifecycle generally includes:

Discovery: Finding assets and identifying vulnerabilities.
Assessment: Scoring and analyzing the risk of those vulnerabilities.
Prioritization: Determining which issues to fix first based on severity and business impact.
Remediation: Applying patches, configuration changes, or mitigations.
Verification: Confirming the vulnerability is resolved.
Reporting: Measuring performance to refine processes and increase efficiency.

The challenge? Even with great tools, scale, speed, and complexity make it hard to move from vulnerability identification to closure — especially without automation.

How Torq Automates Vulnerability Management

Most vulnerability management platforms excel at finding problems — but not at fixing them quickly. The result is a growing backlog of unresolved issues, missed SLAs, and heightened risk exposure. Torq delivers end-to-end, autonomous vulnerability remediation that not only identifies and prioritizes vulnerabilities but also orchestrates their resolution and verification at scale.

Built on Torq’s Hyperautomation platform, this approach connects every tool in your remediation chain — scanners, patching platforms, configuration managers, ITSM systems, and communications channels — into one coordinated, closed-loop workflow.

Automating Vulnerability Prioritization & Alert Enrichment

Raw scan results are noisy, and without context, it’s impossible to know which vulnerabilities truly matter. Torq automates this step by ingesting alerts from your vulnerability scanners (Qualys, Tenable, Rapid7, etc.) and enriching them in real time with:

Asset criticality from configuration management databases (CMDBs) and asset inventories to understand business impact.
Threat intelligence to flag vulnerabilities under active exploitation in the wild.
Business context such as asset owner, operating environment, and compliance relevance (e.g., PCI, HIPAA, SOC 2).

The outcome is dynamic, risk-based prioritization, ensuring that vulnerabilities with the highest likelihood and impact of exploitation automatically rise to the top of the remediation queue.

Orchestrating Remediation Workflows Across Teams

Finding vulnerabilities is one thing; getting them to the right people for remediation is another. Torq removes this bottleneck by:

Automatically routing tasks to the correct team: IT for endpoint patches, DevOps for container images, SecOps for misconfigurations.
Opening and tracking tickets in IT service management (ITSM) tools like ServiceNow, Jira, or Freshservice with full vulnerability details already included.
Triggering patch or config changes via SCCM, Ansible, Tanium, AWS Systems Manager, or other patching/configuration tools.
Notifying stakeholders in real time through Slack, Microsoft Teams, or email to keep everyone aligned.

This means no more manual handoffs, missed assignments, or confusion over ownership; remediation is assigned instantly and tracked from start to finish.

Continuous Verification & Closed-Loop Remediation

Vulnerability remediation doesn’t end when a patch is pushed — it ends when the fix is verified. Torq ensures that no remediation task is left incomplete by automatically:

Initiating a targeted rescan of the affected asset after remediation is applied.
Validating resolution against the original finding, ensuring that the vulnerability no longer exists.
Updating records across systems — closing tickets in ITSM, marking the issue resolved in your SIEM/XDR, and updating compliance dashboards.

With this closed-loop process, there are no lingering “open” vulnerabilities that have been patched but not verified, dramatically improving SLA adherence and compliance posture.

Building a Proactive, Scalable Vulnerability Management Program with Torq

Traditional vulnerability management is reactive — scan, report, repeat — leaving organizations chasing an ever-growing backlog of issues. Torq transforms this approach into a proactive, continuous, and scalable program that not only finds vulnerabilities faster but also remediates and verifies them without manual intervention.

Accelerating MTTR and Reducing Risk at Scale

Speed matters when it comes to vulnerabilities. Every hour a critical common vulnerability or exposure (CVE) remains unpatched increases the window of opportunity for attackers. Torq compresses mean time to remediation (MTTR) from weeks or days to hours or even minutes by:

Automating triage so the highest-risk vulnerabilities are prioritized instantly.
Orchestrating remediation directly across patch management, configuration tools, and ITSM systems.
Initiating real-time verification scans to confirm that vulnerabilities are truly fixed before closing them out.

The result is shorter exposure windows and a stronger overall security posture, all without adding headcount or burdening existing teams.

Empowering Security Teams with Autonomous Vulnerability Management

Vulnerability Management teams often spend the bulk of their time on repetitive, manual processes — parsing scan results, creating tickets, and chasing owners for fixes. Torq’s autonomous vulnerability management workflows eliminate these bottlenecks, allowing:

Analysts to focus on threat hunting, incident investigation, and security architecture improvements.
Engineers to spend more time on proactive hardening and less on reactive firefighting.
Leaders to gain real-time visibility into remediation progress and SLA compliance without chasing updates.

Why Hyperautomation is the Future of Vulnerability Management

Torq’s approach combines flexibility, scale, and intelligence into one unified platform:

No-code Security Hyperautomation for rapid deployment, allowing you to quickly build and adapt workflows without relying on development teams.
Frictionless architecture for integration with your existing scanners, patching systems, ITSM platforms, and security tools.
Cross-tool orchestration that unifies every stage of the vulnerability lifecycle — from detection to -remediation to verification — across all environments.
Real-time enforcement that triggers auto-remediation the moment a vulnerability is detected, not days later.
Enterprise-grade scalability capable of handling millions of assets and findings across global, hybrid, and cloud-native infrastructures.

With Torq, vulnerability management shifts from a reactive, report-driven process to a continuous, autonomous security function — one that reduces risk, enforces compliance, and scales effortlessly with your environment.

Vulnerability Management Tool Categories

Vulnerability Scanning and Assessment Tools

Function: These tools are the foundation of any vulnerability management program. They scan systems, networks, applications, and cloud environments to identify known vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and outdated software. Many also integrate with compliance frameworks to flag violations against standards like PCI-DSS, HIPAA, or CIS benchmarks.

Examples: Tenable Nessus, Qualys, Rapid7 InsightVM, OpenVAS

Strength: Provide broad and deep coverage, identifying vulnerabilities across thousands of assets at scale. They can run scheduled scans, agent-based assessments, and on-demand checks, ensuring visibility into the evolving attack surface.

Weakness: While they excel at discovery, most scanners simply export reports or feed results into dashboards. Without automated triage, these findings often overwhelm security teams, creating large backlogs and slow MTTR.

Software Composition Analysis (SCA) and Application Security Testing (AST) Tools

Function: Focused on the application layer, these tools identify vulnerabilities in source code, open-source libraries, third-party components, and APIs. They help developers and DevSecOps teams catch issues early in the software development lifecycle (SDLC) before they reach production.

Examples: Snyk, Checkmarx, Veracode, SonarQube

Strength: Critical for securing the software supply chain. They integrate into CI/CD pipelines, IDEs, and code repositories to ensure vulnerabilities are addressed during build time, not after deployment.

Weakness: The outputs from SCA and AST tools often remain isolated from broader security operations. If findings aren’t funneled into unified remediation workflows, they can be lost in ticket queues or delayed until the next release cycle.

Vulnerability Intelligence and Prioritization Platforms

Function: These platforms sit on top of scanner outputs, enriching raw vulnerability data with threat intelligence, exploitability context, and asset value. The goal is to move beyond “fix everything” lists and instead direct remediation efforts toward vulnerabilities most likely to be exploited in your environment.

Examples: Kenna Security (Cisco), VulnCheck, ThreatConnect

Strength: Prioritization platforms help teams make smart trade-offs, especially in large organizations with limited patching resources. They can correlate vulnerabilities with known exploits in the wild and align remediation with business-critical assets.

Weakness: While prioritization is a huge time-saver, it doesn’t actually close the loop. Many organizations still need separate workflows and manual coordination to assign, track, and validate fixes — leading to delays in actual remediation.

Patch and Configuration Management Tools

Function: These tools take action on vulnerabilities by deploying operating system and software patches, updating firmware, or enforcing secure configuration baselines. They’re essential for ensuring that identified weaknesses are quickly and consistently addressed.

Examples: Microsoft SCCM, Tanium, Ansible, Puppet

Strength: Directly resolves vulnerabilities by updating systems or locking down insecure settings. Many also support automation, allowing patches to be deployed across thousands of endpoints with minimal downtime.

Weakness: Without direct integration into vulnerability scanning and prioritization tools, patching efforts can become reactive or incomplete. IT teams may focus on routine updates instead of targeting the most critical vulnerabilities first, leaving high-risk exposures unpatched for weeks or months.

From Findings to Fixes — Automatically

The best vulnerability management tools surface what’s wrong; Torq makes it right. By orchestrating scanners, ITSM, patching/configuration platforms, and verification in a single, no-code workflow, Torq turns noisy findings into prioritized, automated remediation with audit-ready proof. The result is shorter MTTR, smaller attack surface, and fewer backlogs, all without adding headcount.

Ready to close the loop on vulnerability management? Get our Don’t Die, Get Torq manifesto to see how to turn vulnerability intelligence into instant resolution.

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Ready to automate everything?

“Torq takes the vision that’s in your head and actually puts it on paper and into practice.”

Corey Kaemming, Senior Director of InfoSec

“Torq HyperSOC offers unprecedented protection and drives extraordinary efficiency for RSM and our customers.”

Todd Willoughby, Director

“Torq saves hundreds of hours a month on analysis. Alert fatigue is a thing of the past.”

Phillip Tarrant, SOC Technical Manager

“The only limit Torq has is people’s imaginations.”

Gai Hanochi, VP Business Technologies

“Torq Agentic AI now handles 100% of Carvana’s Tier-1 security alerts.”

Dina Mathers, CISO

“Torq has transformed efficiency for all five of my security teams and enabled them to focus on much more high-value strategic work.”

Yossi Yeshua, CISO

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AI AI SOC Autonomous SOC Hyperautomation

You’re Just 90 Days Away From a Modern SOC

By Torq

August 21, 2025

6 Minute Read

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Forget drawn-out SOAR integrations, endless proof-of-concepts, and prolonged vendor lock-ins. Most cybersecurity teams have the tools — what’s missing is an integration platform and reliable guidance that can rapidly tie it all together and deliver tangible results.

Torq is designed precisely for that: we blend AI-native capabilities, no-code Hyperautomation, and unparalleled success enablement to transform your security operations into a fully autonomous, modern SOC within just three months.

Here’s a step-by-step timeline on exactly how Torq makes it happen.

What is a Modern SOC?

A modern SOC or next-gen SOC (Security Operations Center) is fast, flexible, and autonomous. It doesn’t rely on analysts manually chasing every alert or stitching together siloed tools. Instead, it blends:

AI-powered decision making
Real-time, automated triage and response
Integrated, end-to-end case management
No-code workflows anyone on the team can build

A modern SOC is scalable, sustainable, and proactive. And with Torq, it’s only 90 days away.

30 Days: Build the Foundation

During the first month, your primary focus will be laying the groundwork for SOC transformation. A dedicated Torq team, including a Customer Success Manager (CSM), Solutions Architect (SA), and Professional Services (PS) specialist, will collaborate closely with your team to establish the technical foundation.

You’ll begin by defining success criteria, aligning key stakeholders, configuring SSO, provisioning access, and prioritizing critical workflows such as phishing triage, endpoint detection and response (EDR), and cloud security alerts.

By the end of this initial phase, you’ll have launched your first production-ready automations, significantly reducing analyst workloads. Your team will also learn to navigate the Torq platform, interpret errors, and debug workflows. Integration with essential tools, including Slack, Jira, AWS, and Okta, will ensure a streamlined experience, enabling immediate operational efficiency and stakeholder alignment.

Key Outcomes:

Tier-1 analyst workload begins to decline
First automations deployed and delivering value
Platform familiarity achieved across the builder team
Stakeholder alignment on 90-day roadmap

60 Days: Optimize Processes and Introduce Socrates

In the second month, your automation initiatives will expand to cover advanced cybersecurity use cases, including identity and access management (IAM), threat intelligence enrichment, and monitoring suspicious user behaviors.

You’ll be introduced to Socrates, Torq’s AI-driven SOC Analyst, which orchestrates our team of AI Agents to manage Tier-1 alert triage and case enrichment autonomously. Socrates will help your team reduce noise and false positives by intelligently prioritizing alerts based on severity and context.

Throughout this period, your team will receive targeted training on modular workflow design, advanced automation logic, and effective case management practices. This training empowers your analysts to build, refine, and optimize automation workflows independently. By the end of the month, your SOC will experience faster response times, improved analyst productivity, and significantly reduced alert fatigue.

Key Outcomes:

Builder teams creating and optimizing workflows independently
Alert fatigue reduced through smarter case thresholds
Performance benchmarks established per use case
Socrates contributes measurable value in daily operations

90 Days: Achieve Full SOC Autonomy

By the third month, your SOC will transition fully into a proactive, autonomous model powered by Socrates, which will manage incident lifecycles from initial detection and triage through resolution and documentation. Analysts will shift away from manual, repetitive tasks to strategic oversight, focusing exclusively on high-priority incidents and deeper threat investigations. Performance metrics like MTTD and MTTR will be clearly defined and measurable.

As this transformative phase concludes, your team will finalize Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), ensuring scalability, sustainability, and continuous improvement within your SOC. We’ll work with you to present a detailed QBR that highlights your measurable achievements and clear ROI to executive stakeholders.

Ultimately, you’ll reach an operational state where 100% of Tier-1 alerts are autonomously handled, significantly enhancing your SOC’s agility, efficiency, and overall security posture.

Key Outcomes:

Up to 100% of Tier-1 alerts fully automated from triage to resolution
Strategic shift in analyst focus — from reaction to oversight
Clear ROI and automation impact communicated to exec stakeholders
Platform maturity with roadmap alignment

With Torq’s AI-powered Hyperautomated workflows, end-to-end case management, and real-time triage and response — any organization can achieve the promise of full SOC autonomy. This 90 day roadmap serves as a baseline, while Torq’s dedicated team of engineers, architects, and customer success managers work with you to build out a customized deployment strategy that fit your goals, environment and needs.

And if 90 days is too long, that’s fine too — just ask Carvana: “Torq Agentic AI now handles 100% of Carvana’s Tier-1 security alerts and has automated 41 different runbooks within just one month of deployment.”

See how more of Torq customers hit full autonomy in 90 days — or less.

Why Torq is Built for the Modern SOC

Multi-agent system: Torq’s multi-agent system performs autonomous triage, in-depth data enrichment, and automated logging and documentation, accelerating your security operations.

Low-code/no-code Hyperautomation: Torq’s intuitive, drag-and-drop and AI-powered automation builder with visual debugging enables quick, error-free workflow creation accessible to all skill levels.

Immediate integrations: Access 300+ pre-built integrations with security solutions (including SIEM, EDR, threat intelligence feeds, and IAM) that seamlessly connect your existing tech stack, ensuring instant operational value.

Comprehensive customer enablement: Dedicated, hands-on support teams provide guided enablement, weekly sessions, and strategic quarterly reviews tailored to your organization’s specific needs.

7 Core Capabilities of a Modern SOC — Solved by Torq

1. Threat Intelligence

A modern SOC is predictive, identifying threats before they strike by leveraging threat hunting, IOC correlation, and TTP analysis.

Torq automates threat hunting and threat intelligence enrichment across your SIEM, EDR, and threat intelligence platforms, surfacing actionable indicators and accelerating response across every workflow.

2. Continuous Monitoring

A true modern SOC operates 24/7/365, monitoring everything from cloud infrastructure to user behavior.

Torq seamlessly ingests signals across your entire attack surface and ensures nonstop alert intake, correlation, and escalation — without analyst burnout.

3. Proactive Cyber Threat Detection

Modern adversaries hide in plain sight, which is why your SOC must correlate signals across every tool.

Torq’s agentic AI and multi-tool integration capabilities enable proactive detection and response across SIEM, EDR, cloud, IAM, and beyond.

4. Incident Response Automation

Speed is everything in security operations — the longer an incident lingers, the more it costs.

Torq automates every phase of incident response — from alert triage to remediation — with AI Agents like Socrates executing workflows in seconds.

5. Post-Incident Review

Recovery from a breach isn’t enough — your SOC needs to learn, improve, and harden.

Torq automatically documents the full case lifecycle and feeds metrics into structured post-incident reviews, so your SOC evolves with every alert.

6. Reporting and Compliance

Today’s security operations center must deliver visibility and meet compliance requirements without manual effort.

Torq captures real-time data across all workflows and playbooks, outputs audit-ready logs, and maps metrics to standards like NIST, GDPR, and HIPAA.

7. Automation and Orchestration

Automation isn’t optional anymore — it’s how modern SOCs scale.

Torq’s drag-and-drop builder, 250+ integrations, and modular design let your team orchestrate workflows and auto-remediation without writing a single line of code.

Ready to Start Your SOC Autonomy Journey?

Torq is the only platform that can deliver a modern, fully autonomous SOC in just 90 days — and back it with expert support every step of the way.

Get the 90-Day Roadmap

Ready to automate everything?

“Torq takes the vision that’s in your head and actually puts it on paper and into practice.”

Corey Kaemming, Senior Director of InfoSec

“Torq HyperSOC offers unprecedented protection and drives extraordinary efficiency for RSM and our customers.”

Todd Willoughby, Director

“Torq saves hundreds of hours a month on analysis. Alert fatigue is a thing of the past.”

Phillip Tarrant, SOC Technical Manager

“The only limit Torq has is people’s imaginations.”

Gai Hanochi, VP Business Technologies

“Torq Agentic AI now handles 100% of Carvana’s Tier-1 security alerts.”

Dina Mathers, CISO

“Torq has transformed efficiency for all five of my security teams and enabled them to focus on much more high-value strategic work.”

Yossi Yeshua, CISO

Get a Demo

Security Automation 101

The Top Benefits of Security Automation for Modern SOCs

By Torq

August 20, 2025

8 Minute Read

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See how Torq harnesses AI in your SOC to detect, prioritize, and respond to threats faster.

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Security operations aren’t failing due to a lack of effort; they’re breaking under pressure. As hybrid cloud environments, SaaS tools, and identity-first architectures scale, they produce more telemetry and alerts than manual workflows can realistically handle. That’s why the benefits of security automation are more than convenience.

Security automation — and increasingly Hyperautomation — is transforming modern SOC operations. By converting repetitive, manual processes into intelligent, orchestrated workflows, teams can scale incident response, reduce alert fatigue, and dramatically cut mean time to respond (MTTR).

Here’s your guide to the benefits of security automation, how top-performing teams implement it, and how Torq Hyperautomation™ enables more resilient full-lifecycle security operations.

Benefits of Security Automation

Security automation uses technology to streamline and execute repetitive security tasks — alert triage, threat enrichment, and response — without manual intervention. This leads to faster detection and response times, reduced alert fatigue, and improved analyst productivity. Automation also strengthens an organization’s overall security posture and compliance readiness by standardizing actions and ensuring full audit trails.

But the real value of security automation emerges when you look at how it transforms the everyday challenges SOC teams face. Modern SOCs aren’t breaking down because analysts lack skill or effort — they’re overwhelmed by the volume, speed, and fragmentation of today’s threat landscape. That’s where automation steps in: not as a convenience, but as the only scalable path forward.

Faster MTTD/MTTR, Reduced Alert Fatigue

Every SOC leader knows the grind of manual triage: Open an alert, pivot to logs, enrich with asset/identity context, check threat intelligence, decide next steps, document. Repeat hundreds of times per day.

Security automation tools allows for:

Parallel enrichment: Automatically attaches ownership, geolocation, recent activity, and risk context the moment an alert is generated.
Deduplication and correlation: Related alerts are collapsed into a single case with ranked observables, reducing noise and saving time.
Automated decision routing: Events are triaged based on policy and risk — either fully automated, escalated to human-in-the-loop, or closed with evidence.

In Torq, this is modeled with workflows, triggers, and steps that enrich, correlate, and act, then persist everything to cases. Features like the Query Cases step help deduplicate or bulk-operate on related cases, cutting repetitive review to near zero.

Autonomous Case Management

Ticket-based systems fragment incident response. Automated security replaces this with a case-centric approach — a single narrative that unifies alert data, context, actions, and documentation.

Torq’s case model supports:

Auto-generated cases triggered by any tool
Attached indicators of compromise (IOCs), logs, verdicts, screenshots, and analyst notes
Dynamic updates to status and assignees (via Slack or Teams)
Case querying for deduplication and threat hunting

Analysts start with a coherent, enriched narrative, not a blank page — shortening MTTI and MTTR.

Full-Lifecycle Response

Many tools advertise “automation” that ends with a ping or a basic API call. True automated security must handle the entire detection-to-resolution lifecycle:

Detect/Ingest: Collect and correlate from SIEM, EDR, cloud, identity, or email
Enrich/Correlate: Layer in asset, identity, threat intelligence, drift, and activity context
Decide: Apply policy and risk posture
Respond: Block, quarantine, reset, rollback
Verify: Recheck controls, confirm success
Document: Auto-generate case timelines with all actions and evidence

Torq orchestrates that end-to-end flow with workflows and integrations, writing outcomes back to the case and ITSM, and generating an audit-ready trail by default.

Scalable, No-Code Deployment Across Cloud/Hybrid Environments

Even the best automation strategy fails if only a handful of developers can maintain it. Security automation has to be accessible. That’s why Torq makes orchestration no-code and low-code, enabling analysts, threat hunters, and responders to build and adapt workflows without specialized programming skills.

Torq’s workflow builder includes:

Drag-and-drop steps for branching logic, loops, retries, and error handling
Integration steps and webhook triggers for event-driven execution
Workspace and SSO controls for governed access, with credentials centrally managed
Reusable subflows and templates for fast rollout across teams/tenants

With Torq, teams kick off SSO, add integrations, and start building in hours — then reuse those patterns across use cases and environments.

Continuous Compliance and Audit Readiness

Instead of scrambling at the end of a quarter or audit cycle, Torq automatically documents every action taken — from detection through remediation — in real time. This ensures a defensible, evidence-backed trail that satisfies cybersecurity frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST, HIPAA, and SEC requirements.

By embedding compliance into daily workflows, teams reduce audit prep time from weeks to hours while proving consistent security effectiveness to executives, customers, and regulators.

All of these benefits lay the foundation for something bigger: the evolution from basic automation to full Hyperautomation and the rise of the autonomous SOC.

The Future of Security Automation: Torq Hyperautomation and the Autonomous SOC

The future of cybersecurity automation is being written in real time, and the direction is unmistakable. Macro trends are converging: data volumes double every few years, hybrid work pushes identity management to its limits, SaaS adoption fragments IT environments, and adversaries are turning to cloud-native tactics that move at machine speed. Traditional tools and linear workflows simply can’t keep up.

What’s next isn’t just automating individual tasks — it’s security Hyperautomation: Chaining automations together across the entire security lifecycle, guided by context, risk scoring, and organizational policy. Instead of responding to one alert at a time, Hyperautomation lets SOCs orchestrate enrichment, triage, containment, and compliance in a seamless, end-to-end flow.

Layered on top is the rise of agentic AI, which doesn’t just execute instructions but actively helps coordinate, summarize, and adapt workflows. AI agents will triage thousands of events simultaneously, escalate only what truly matters, and produce instant, audit-ready case narratives. The analyst’s role shifts from being “in the loop” for every click to being “on the loop,” supervising and validating higher-risk or novel incidents.

This is the foundation of the autonomous SOC, a model in which Tier-1 is handled end-to-end by automation, Tier-2 is pre-enriched and guided by AI, and Tier-3 analysts focus on strategic hunts, detection engineering, and adversary simulation. The SOC becomes not just reactive but proactive, anticipating risks, learning from every case, and continuously improving.

Torq Hyperautomation is built for this future. Torq bridges today’s security challenges with tomorrow’s fully autonomous operations with our event-driven, multi-tenant architecture, no-/low-code and AI-generated workflow builder, and Socrates, the AI SOC Analyst. It ensures teams don’t just keep pace with cloud-speed adversaries — they set the tempo.

So how do teams put this vision into practice today? The best place to start is with repeatable, high-volume use cases that deliver fast ROI.

Hyperautomation Use Cases that Deliver Fast ROI

From phishing response to impossible travel detection to cloud drift remediation, these Hyperautomation use cases show exactly how automation translates into measurable impact.

Phishing Investigation and Remediation

Ingest user-reported emails and email-security alerts.
Extract URLs/files/headers; run threat intelligence + sandbox + domain WHOIS.
If the risk is high, quarantine messages, reset the password/session, notify in chat, and open a case with a full timeline.
Verify success: Rescan mailbox, confirm blocks, and close with evidence.

Impossible Travel Detection

Trigger on successful login events from your identity provider.
Geolocate IP, compare to the user’s last location, compute distance/speed, and apply thresholds.
If suspicious: step-up MFA or force reset, notify user and SOC, and create an incident response case.
If the user confirms legitimacy, update baselines and close.

Cloud Drift Response

Watch for configuration changes (storage policies, public exposure, encryption).
Check against policy.
Auto-remediate or open a fix ticket depending on risk level.
Verify with a targeted recheck before closing.

All three share the same winning pattern: ingest → enrich → correlate → gated action → verify → document — and all are easily implemented in Torq. These examples highlight the “what.” Now let’s talk about the “why” — why SOC teams choose Torq as their security automation platform.

Why SOC Teams Choose Torq

If you’re evaluating security automation tools, use this checklist to differentiate true systems from demo-ware:

Event-driven: Can it respond in real time across tools like SIEM, EDR, cloud, identity, email, and chat?
Case-centric: Can it group observables, context, actions, and notes into one object?
Integration-first: Does it offer both prebuilt connectors and full API flexibility?
Governed AI: Can analysts ship flows safely and at scale with retries, approvals, and error handling?
Audit-ready: Does every run persist with full execution details and outcomes for compliance?

With Torq, the answer is yes — to all of it.

Torq replaces brittle, one-off automations with platform-level resilience thanks to:

Purpose-built security and IT workflows
Case-first operations for faster triage and resolution
300+ prebuilt integrations and universal API connectivity
RBAC, SSO, and secure workspace governance
Reusable templates and subflows that scale across teams and environments

It’s not just automation; it’s scalable, secure, and enterprise-ready Hyperautomation. These benefits show that security automation is no longer just about efficiency, but rather fundamentally rethinking how SOCs operate.

From Automation to SOC Autonomy

The future of the SOC is outcome-driven, not task-driven. An autonomous SOC doesn’t just execute; it thinks, verifies, and improves. Torq makes this future real by combining secure AI, case-based reasoning, and flexible orchestration into one platform that adapts to your environment.

You don’t need to rip and replace what works. You just need to connect it.

See how Torq Hyperautomation can cut MTTR and alert fatigue in under 90 days.

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FAQs

What is security automation?

Security automation is the automatic execution of previously manual SOC processes — triage, enrichment, response, and documentation — so humans focus on decisions and edge cases, not tedious, repetitive work.

What are the benefits of security automation with Torq?

Torq security Hyperautomation delivers faster detection and response by automating triage, enrichment, remediation, and documentation, reducing MTTR from hours to minutes. With 300+ integrations and no-/low-code and AI-generated workflows, Torq unifies siloed tools and enables SOCs and MSSPs to scale without adding headcount. By reducing alert fatigue, automating case management, and ensuring audit-ready reporting, Torq improves both security outcomes and operational ROI.

How does Torq handle complex incident scenarios?

Torq enables security teams to manage complex incident scenarios through customizable no-code/low-code, and AI-generated workflows. Torq ensures streamlined handling of vulnerability management cases by allowing teams to define multi-step processes that incorporate different tools and contexts. Analysts can create tailored workflows that adapt to specific incident types, ensuring a thorough and efficient response every time.

How does Torq help with compliance and regulatory requirements?

Torq is designed to simplify compliance by automating documentation and reporting processes. Every action taken during an incident response is logged, creating a full audit trail. This automated documentation ensures you’re always prepared for audits while significantly reducing the manual workload of compiling compliance reports.

How does Torq future-proof security operations?

Torq’s architecture is event-driven, API-first, and designed to adapt to new tools and threats. As organizations evolve cloud, SaaS, and identity-first strategies, Torq ensures workflows scale without rewrites. Combined with Hyperautomation and AI, Torq positions SOCs to shift to autonomous security operations — where Tier-1 is handled entirely by automation.

What role does AI play in Torq’s platform?

Torq embeds agentic AI in the SOC to summarize cases, triage events at scale, and guide analysts through complex investigations. Instead of just automating clicks, AI adds context and decision support — turning thousands of raw alerts into prioritized, narrative-driven cases ready for human review.

Can Torq replace legacy SOAR platforms?

Yes. Torq is built as a modern alternative to traditional SOAR platforms. Torq’s no-/low-code orchestration, 300+ integrations, and agentic AI enable faster deployment, broader use cases, and easier maintenance. Organizations migrating off legacy SOARs cut operational overhead and unlock new automation and orchestration opportunities.

How does Torq support proactive vulnerability management?

Torq automates vulnerability management end-to-end. From ingesting scanner results to correlating with asset inventories, routing risk-based workflows, and triggering remediation or ticketing, Torq accelerates patching cycles and ensures consistent, audit-ready handling of vulnerabilities across environments.

How is Hyperautomation different?

Hyperautomation is automation at system scale: Many coordinated automations, governed by policy, context, and (increasingly) AI. Torq’s platform was built for this model, connecting your entire stack and enabling autonomous security operations.

How fast can we start with Torq?

Torq customers typically light up SSO, add integrations, and publish first workflows within days of onboarding, then expand by cloning patterns across use cases and business units. Torq provides a dedicated team and guidance for SSO, integrations, and workflow triggers to accelerate setup.

Ready to automate everything?

“Torq takes the vision that’s in your head and actually puts it on paper and into practice.”

Corey Kaemming, Senior Director of InfoSec

“Torq HyperSOC offers unprecedented protection and drives extraordinary efficiency for RSM and our customers.”

Todd Willoughby, Director

“Torq saves hundreds of hours a month on analysis. Alert fatigue is a thing of the past.”

Phillip Tarrant, SOC Technical Manager

“The only limit Torq has is people’s imaginations.”

Gai Hanochi, VP Business Technologies

“Torq Agentic AI now handles 100% of Carvana’s Tier-1 security alerts.”

Dina Mathers, CISO

“Torq has transformed efficiency for all five of my security teams and enabled them to focus on much more high-value strategic work.”

Yossi Yeshua, CISO

Get a Demo

AI Hyperautomation Research Use Cases

Life in the SOC Sucks. Here’s How HyperSOC Can Save Us

By Patrick “PO” Orzechowski

August 19, 2025

7 Minute Read

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See how Torq harnesses AI in your SOC to detect, prioritize, and respond to threats faster.

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Torq Field CISO Patrick "PO" Orzechowski, SOC leader and expert

Patrick Orzechowski (also known as “PO”) is Torq’s former 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.

You know the scene. The low hum of the servers in the server room, the cold glow of the SIEM dashboards on a wall screen, and a flood of alerts that never ends. For security teams, the promise of being on the frontlines of digital defense often crumbles into a daily grind of alerts, tickets, and long shifts that leave even the best analysts exhausted. If you’ve ever felt like the job is more about being a cog in a perpetual motion machine than hunting actual threats — you’re not alone.

The good news? Security automation isn’t here to replace analysts. It’s here to make the job worth doing again by taking on the tedious work that burns people out and slows SOCs down.

Below are some of the most common pains in the SOC, and how Torq HyperSOC ™ can make a real difference thanks to advanced case management, Hyperautomated workflows, and a collaborative AI SOC Analyst.

The Seven Levels of SOC Hell (and How to Escape)

“In my opinion, working at a SOC was either a joke or absolute hell with little in between.”

– SOC analyst on Reddit

1. The Eternal Fires of False Positives

The Pain: A recent survey found that nearly 60% of SOC leaders and practitioners simply have too many alerts. You’re forced to chase ghosts — an IoT device beaconing to a Russian IP, a routine software update flagged as a command-and-control server. The system is designed to generate noise, and you’re the human filter.

The Torq HyperSOC Fix:

Automated enrichment adds context to alerts before they ever hit your queue, shutting down the noise at its source.
Automated scoring and filtering ensure you only see what really matters.
Known false positives are closed automatically.

The Result: The ghost alert from the IoT device is auto-closed with a ‘known benign’ tag, a silent monument to a waste of time that never happened. Your existence is no longer defined by chasing shadows — instead, your time is spent investigating and remediating real, critical alerts that arrive in front of you with enrichment and context baked in.

2. Shift Handoffs: The Art of Getting Screwed at 6:59 am

The Pain: Ah, the shift handoff — always leaves you spending more time piecing things together than moving cases ahead. The previous analyst leaves a few vague notes, a trail of breadcrumbs leading to nowhere, and you’re left to figure out where to go next with the incomplete investigation you just inherited. The system rewards individual survival, not collective success.

The Torq HyperSOC Fix:

AI-generated case summaries capture every step of the investigation.
Automated playbooks enforce consistency across shifts.
Socrates, the AI SOC Analyst, provides a clear, factual summary of the overnight events, stripped of human error or forgetfulness, ensuring consistency in perpetuity.

The Result: You arrive at your terminal to an AI-generated summary of every event that clearly shows where every investigation stands and every action taken, so you can get up to speed fast. It’s like having a personal scribe who never sleeps and never forgets.

3. Customer Interactions: Between a Rock and a Clueless Place

The Pain: You are the frontline dealing with customers who don’t know their own networks. You may be the final authority, but you’re forced to babysit interactions with customers who clog up the queue by opening priority one (P1) tickets for their own phishing tests.

The Torq HyperSOC Fix:

AI chatbots act as a faceless, tireless Tier-1 interface, deflecting the mundane back-and-forth.
Context-aware automation automatically suppresses and closes known test alerts, silencing the false alarms before they ever reach your queue and ensuring that your only interaction is with real threats.

The Result: The system identifies a simulated phishing attack and closes the ticket without you ever seeing it. The only time you’re involved is when a confirmed critical issue requires your attention.

4. Alerts Have Names, You Don’t

“Alert fatigue is killing us. We get hundreds of alerts daily and 90% are false positives… The worst part is the one time you ignore an alert, thinking “probably another false positive,” ends up being the real deal. Meanwhile, management keeps asking why we’re not investigating every single alert faster. Like yeah, let me just clone myself real quick.”

– SOC analyst on Reddit

The Pain: You feel like a cog in the machine. Your victories are anonymous, your failures are public, and you feel like you’re always one missed alert away from catastrophe. The system tracks tickets, but it doesn’t track you.

The Torq HyperSOC Fix:

Intelligent dashboards track analyst contributions, making your value visible to leadership.
Generative AI summarizes major incidents and assigns credit, giving you a name for your actions.
Efficiency and accuracy get measured, proving your worth beyond a simple ticket count.

The Result: You crack a complex credential stuffing campaign and, instead of a generic resolution, the AI-generated incident report lists your exact actions. You finally get credit for the work they do — and managers see the value you bring.

5. Death by Ticketing System

The Pain: The ticketing system can feel like a labyrinth designed to slow you down, a complex flow of queues and reassignments that delays real action. You’re trapped in a digital bureaucracy.

The Torq HyperSOC Fix:

Seamless integrations between your ticketing system and detection tools automates the flow of tickets and information.
Tickets are routed efficiently and instantly to the right queue.
AI summarization condenses log evidence into clean notes, eliminating the need for manual record-keeping.

The Result: A misclassified ticket that once took 45 minutes to reassign is now routed in 4 seconds. The system now serves you.

6. Burnout Is a Feature, Not a Bug

The Pain: The constant pressure, the endless stream of alerts, the cognitive fatigue of sorting the signal from the ocean of noise. The system isn’t just prone to burnout — it makes it practically inevitable.

The Torq HyperSOC Fix:

AI-driven triage drastically reduces the number of low-value alerts you have to touch.
Socrates handles 90% of Tier-1 grunt work and auto-remediates 9% of Tier-1 cases — freeing you for more interesting, creative security work.

The Result: A colleague, on the verge of breaking under alert fatigue, now has a system that filters out the low-value noise. Theis gives them breathing room and the bandwidth for engaging, higher-value investigations.

7. So Why Stay? (Or Why You Left)

The Pain: Over half of SOC analysts say stress on the job has made them consider walking away. The promise of a rewarding career became a reality of data overwhelm and endlessly copy-pasting data between windows — and they chose freedom.

The Torq HyperSOC Fix:

Automation doesn’t replace analysts; it removes the parts of the job that made it unbearable.
Automation gives you time to focus on genuine threats and your own career development.
AI empowers you to focus on high-level risk, not the mundane, repetitive tasks.

The Result: You almost left last year, but after Torq HyperSOC was implemented, you now have time to lead threat-hunting sessions. You’re still here — but now you’re a threat hunter, not a human alert filter.

Don’t Die: Get the Manifesto

The SOC grind is real. But there is a way to survive — by using Torq’s AI-driven HyperSOC to regain control. Let’s stop talking about alert fatigue and start redesigning the SOC to be more sustainable and, dare we say, human.

Find out how Torq HyperSOC combats the three core areas of unsustainable pressure in SOCs — across your people, your strategy, and your business impact.

Get the Don't Die manifesto to learn how HyperSOC solves SOC analyst challenges and pain points

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SEE TORQ IN ACTION

Ready to automate everything?

“Torq takes the vision that’s in your head and actually puts it on paper and into practice.”

Corey Kaemming, Senior Director of InfoSec

“Torq HyperSOC offers unprecedented protection and drives extraordinary efficiency for RSM and our customers.”

Todd Willoughby, Director

“Torq saves hundreds of hours a month on analysis. Alert fatigue is a thing of the past.”

Phillip Tarrant, SOC Technical Manager

“The only limit Torq has is people’s imaginations.”

Gai Hanochi, VP Business Technologies

“Torq Agentic AI now handles 100% of Carvana’s Tier-1 security alerts.”

Dina Mathers, CISO

“Torq has transformed efficiency for all five of my security teams and enabled them to focus on much more high-value strategic work.”

Yossi Yeshua, CISO

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Contents

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What Is the Cybersecurity Lifecycle?

The 5 Stages of the Cybersecurity Lifecycle Explained

Challenges Modern SOCs Face at Each Cybersecurity Lifecycle Stage

Identification Challenge: Fragmented Asset Discovery

Protection Challenge: Uneven Policy Enforcement Across Environments

Detection Challenge: Alert Fatigue from Noisy Systems

Response Challenge: Manual, Slow, and Siloed

Recovery Challenge: Inconsistent and Poorly Documented

How Hyperautomation Transforms the Cybersecurity Lifecycle

Identify with Context

Protect at Scale

Detect Smarter

Respond Faster

Recover and Improve

Example Scenario: Phishing Attack Detected in Microsoft 365

Example Scenario: Impossible Travel Detection in Okta

The Future of the SOC: Hyperautomated Cybersecurity Lifecycles

FAQs

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Contents

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The Core Components of an MSSP SOC

Why Businesses Choose an MSSP SOC

Why MSSPs Choose Torq HyperSOC™

What Businesses Gain with MSSPs Using Torq

HWG Sababa Delivers 24/7 Value with Torq

MSSP vs. In-House SOC: Finding the Right Fit

The New Standard for Managed SOCs

FAQs

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Contents

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How We Ran the AI Hackathon

Sourcing and Filtering Ideas

Forming Teams

Creating the Atmosphere

The Hack Day

The Big Demo

How It Went

Want to Run an AI Hackathon at Your Company?

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Manual MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

How Socrates Automates MITRE ATT&CK Analysis

Torq Workflow: Create MITRE ATT&CK Layer from TTP List

Socrates vs. Manual Triage: A Side-by-Side Look

Benefits of Automated MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

Beyond MITRE ATT&CK: Expanding the Impact of Socrates

Comparing Traditional vs. Torq-Powered MITRE ATT&CK Operations

Operationalize MITRE ATT&CK at Scale with Torq Socrates

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Contents

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Why Torq Built on NVIDIA AI

Inside the Torq Phishing Defense Architecture with NVIDIA

Orchestration in Practice with config.yaml

1. Tools and Agents Defined as Functions

2. LLMs Powered by NVIDIA NIM

3. VerdictAgent as the Final Judge

Spear-Phishing Detection in Action

Real-World Impact