The Best SOC Tools in 2025: Legacy vs Modern Automation

By Torq

June 20, 2025

9 Minute Read

Security Operations Centers (SOCs) are evolving faster than ever. As cybersecurity threats grow more sophisticated and digital infrastructure expands across cloud, hybrid, and on-prem environments, legacy SOC tools like SOAR are falling behind. Static dashboards, siloed point solutions, and human-dependent processes simply can’t keep up.

Traditional SecOps tools are no longer enough. Modern tools must proactively detect suspicious activities using broad data sources (e.g., threat intelligence, vulnerability databases, etc.) and enable seamless collaboration across teams. Automation is the key SOC tool to scale detection and response efficiently.

Modern SOCs require automation-first platforms that enable proactive defense, seamless integrations, and high-scale responsiveness. Platforms like Torq — powered by Hyperautomation — represent the next generation of SOC architecture.

Read on for a breakdown of SOC tools, an exploration of the best tools of 2025, and how automation streamlines security operations.

What is a SOC Tool?

SOC Tools

SOC tools are technologies designed to help security teams detect, investigate, and respond to threats. They support incident resolution by collecting and analyzing data across IT and cloud ecosystems. Each tool plays a vital role in the SOC technology stack.

Today’s cybersecurity environments rely on dozens of integrated systems. While powerful, this complexity can create inefficiencies, increase SOC analyst fatigue, and lead to slower threat response times. This is where SOC automation platforms like Torq shine by orchestrating across all tools, streamlining workflows, and accelerating response.

5 Core Capabilities of Security Operations Center Tools

Modern SOCs demand tools built for the cloud’s dynamic, distributed nature. Here are five must-have capabilities your stack needs.

1. Continuous SOC Monitoring

Tools should provide always-on visibility across cloud, hybrid, and on-prem workloads, dynamically adapting to autoscaling and ephemeral infrastructure. Look for platforms that detect real-time anomalies, monitor traffic flows, flag malicious configurations, and help strengthen your cloud security posture with minimal manual effort.

2. Log Collection and Analysis

Log tools enable deep investigation by aggregating decentralized telemetry across services. They help correlate signals across layers, enhancing intrusion detection, root cause analysis, and threat attribution across sprawling cloud environments.

3. Threat Detection

The best detection tools are plugged into real-time threat intel feeds and vulnerability databases. This allows SOC teams to quickly spot indicators of compromise (IoCs), detect novel tactics, and stay ahead of emerging threats with precision.

4. Incident Response

Incident response platforms have prebuilt playbooks and customizable workflows to stop attacks quickly. They can block malicious IPs, isolate compromised assets, and auto-contain threats without human intervention.

5. Automation

Security automation is essential for modern SOCs to operate efficiently at scale. It streamlines repetitive tasks, accelerates incident response, and allows SOC analysts to focus on complex threats instead of manual workflows.

The Top 10 SOC Tools in 2025

Specific tools have emerged as foundational to operational success as the SOC landscape evolves. Below are ten must-have SOC software tools and technologies for any security team aiming to stay ahead.

1. Log Collection and Management

Log management tools like Splunk and Elasticgather security logs and telemetry from various sources, including endpoints, network devices, and cloud environments. Proper log management is foundational for threat detection, compliance monitoring, and forensic investigations, making it an indispensable part of the SOC infrastructure.

2. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

SIEM platforms provide essential SOC monitoring and event correlation capabilities, helping security teams quickly identify and respond to threats. They are the cornerstone for centralized security operations.

Common examples of SIEM tools include IBM QRadar, Microsoft Sentinel, Splunk Enterprise Security, LogRhythm, and ArcSight. This SOC software correlates data across multiple sources, providing comprehensive threat visibility and efficient event management.

3. Vulnerability Management

Vulnerability management platforms continuously scan and assess SOC network assets for vulnerabilities, prioritizing them based on severity and business impact. These platforms help SOC analysts proactively address critical issues before attackers can exploit them.

Rapid7 InsightVM, Nessus, Tenable, and Qualys are leading vulnerability management tools that provide actionable vulnerability data, enabling teams to patch vulnerabilities rapidly and effectively. Effective vulnerability management reduces organizational risk, maintains compliance, and prevents attackers from exploiting known weaknesses.

4. Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Extended Detection and Response (XDR)

EDR tools monitor endpoints, such as laptops and servers, enabling detection of malicious activities and automated response to threats in real time. Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions expand this coverage to networks, email, the cloud, and servers, delivering comprehensive security visibility.

EDR solutions like CrowdStrike Falcon and SentinelOne provide forensic capabilities and proactive threat-hunting features. XDR tools like Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR unify endpoints, SOC networks, and cloud security to offer a holistic view of the threat landscape.

5. Email Security

Email security tools work by performing detection and response across email, endpoints, and identity systems. They can quarantine malicious messages, remove harmful emails post-delivery, and correlate activity across systems to reveal the full scope of an attack.

Solutions like Proofpoint and Microsoft Defender provide real-time URL and attachment sandboxing, threat intelligence integration, and automated remediation of compromised accounts. These capabilities not only strengthen threat response but also support compliance by enforcing encryption, archiving, and access controls.

6. Threat Hunting

Threat hunting tools proactively search for signs of malicious activity that evade traditional detection methods. Platforms like Carbon Black and Cisco empower SOC analysts with advanced investigative capabilities to discover and neutralize threats before they cause significant damage.

7. Threat Intelligence

Threat intelligence tools gather and analyze external threat data, providing actionable insights into potential cyber threats. Platforms such as Recorded Future and Anomali enhance a SOC’s ability to predict, identify, and ensure a proactive response to emerging threats, keeping teams informed of global threat trends and attacker tactics.

8. Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

CSPM tools help identify, assess, and remediate misconfigurations and policy violations in cloud infrastructure. These tools continuously monitor cloud environments like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform to ensure compliance with internal security policies and industry standards.

CSPM solutions automatically detect configuration drift, enforce least privilege access, and reduce the risk of data exposure by alerting teams to insecure storage, open ports, or excessive permissions. By offering centralized visibility and continuous compliance assessment, CSPM enables SOC teams to secure cloud workloads at scale while responding faster to evolving risks.

9. Identity and Access Management (IAM)

IAM tools control and monitor user access to IT resources, ensuring only authorized individuals can reach sensitive systems and data. They encompass technologies like single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA), privileged access management (PAM), and identity governance.

In a SOC, IAM is essential for investigating incidents, detecting compromised accounts, and preventing unauthorized lateral movement, making it a cornerstone of a strong security posture.

10. Automation

At Torq, we call this Hyperautomation. Hyperautomation represents the next generation of SOC technology, combining advanced automation and artificial intelligence (AI) into a unified approach that fundamentally transforms traditional security operations.

Torq integrates seamlessly with existing SOC tools, orchestrating complex workflows across the entire security stack and significantly reducing repetitive, manual tasks. By leveraging GenAI and agentic AI, Torq Hyperautomation dynamically identifies, analyzes, and responds to threats in real time, delivering faster and more consistent incident responses.

This proactive, autonomous approach enables security teams to scale effectively, enhance operational efficiency, and improve accuracy across their security processes. Hyperautomation accelerates response times, reduces SOC analyst workload, and ensures more precise threat detection and remediation.

How Automation Transforms SOC Tools

Automation transforms traditional SOC operations by connecting disparate tools, streamlining workflows, and enabling rapid, automated responses. Here’s how:

Faster detection and response: Automation drastically reduces the time it takes to identify, investigate, and respond to security incidents. What once took hours or days now happens in seconds, minimizing dwell time and damage.
Increased SOC analyst efficiency: With Tier-1 alerts automatically triaged (and often auto-remediated) and routine tasks offloaded to automated workflows, SOC analysts can handle a higher volume of cases without burnout. Teams get more done with fewer resources, reducing the need to scale headcount just to keep up.
Effortless scalability: As threats grow in number and complexity, automation allows SOC analysts to keep pace without compromising performance. Whether your environment is expanding across clouds or adding new tools, automation scales effortlessly alongside.
Smarter use of human talent: SOC analysts are too valuable to be bogged down by repetitive tasks. Automation frees them to focus on high-impact investigations, strategic decision-making, and threat hunting, where human judgment and creativity matter most.
Reduction in alerts: Automated triage filters out low-priority noise, enriching and escalating only the alerts requiring attention. SOC analysts stay focused on real threats instead of drowning in false positives.

How Torq Hyperautomation Transforms the SOC

Torq HyperSOC™ is the first agentic, AI-powered SOC platform built for autonomous security operations. It transforms your SOC from reactive and overloaded to autonomous and high-performing.

Here’s how Torq makes it happen.

Seamless Integration with Your Entire Security Stack

Torq connects instantly to all your SOC tools — SIEM, EDR, CSPM, IAM, SaaS platforms, ticketing systems, and even homegrown apps — without custom code or complex deployments. Whatever you’re running, Torq plugs in and gets to work.

AI Agents That Work Like SOC Analysts

At the heart of HyperSOC is Socrates, Torq’s AI SOC Analyst and omniagent. Socrates orchestrates a team of specialized AI Agents purpose-built for tasks like enrichment, case management, user verification, and remediation. Together, they coordinate end-to-end case lifecycles with precision and speed.

Natural Language-Driven Automation

Security automation doesn’t have to be complex. With Torq, anyone on your team can trigger powerful workflows using plain English. Want to isolate a user, rotate credentials, or escalate a threat? Just ask — Torq handles the rest.

Hyperautomation at Enterprise Scale

Torq’s performance automatically scales to keep up, whether your environment is cloud-native, hybrid, or on-prem. It runs thousands of workflows in parallel, adapts to evolving threats, and ensures no alert slips through the cracks.

Built to Flex with Your Needs

Torq’s open architecture and robust APIs let you fully customize cases to fit your cybersecurity strategy. Build once, reuse anywhere, and adapt fast to new use cases — all without needing a team of developers.

Hyperautomation is the SOC Tool You Need Today

As cybersecurity challenges mount, traditional tools are no longer enough. Modern security operations centers require intelligent, automated, and scalable solutions that enable security teams to move faster, act smarter, and deliver better outcomes.

AI-driven Hyperautomation is that solution.

Torq brings Hyperautomation to life, enabling SOC analysts to move beyond fragmented processes and manual triage. Whether you’re a lean security team or an enterprise SOC analyst, Torq empowers you to detect, respond, and remediate with unprecedented speed and precision.

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SIEM vs SOAR vs Hyperautomation: What Actually Works for the Modern SOC

By Torq

June 18, 2025

11 Minute Read

Most SOCs standardized on SIEM and SOAR — yet the promise of end-to-end automation never materialized. SIEM gave SOC teams centralized log visibility and correlation. SOAR promised relief from repetitive tasks through orchestration. But as threats scaled in speed and complexity, and security teams faced mounting pressure with fewer resources, these tools started to show their limits.

According to Francis Odum’s AI SOC Market Landscape 2025 survey of 300+ CISOs, organizations now face an average of 960 daily security alerts, and over 3,000 daily alerts at enterprises with 20,000+ employees. The report describes a “tsunami of data” crippling SOCs, compounded by slow triage and limited response capabilities in legacy tools like SIEM and SOAR.

Hyperautomation is a fundamentally new approach built for the modern SOC. It doesn’t just connect tools or run playbooks. It combines real-time integrations, no-code workflow design, and agentic AI to create a fully autonomous, adaptable system for detection, response, and remediation.

The Evolving Landscape of SOC Tools

To understand why Security Hyperautomation is redefining modern SecOps, it helps to look at how we got here.

SIEM was built to tame the flood of security data, ingesting logs, correlating events, and supporting compliance mandates. It gave teams visibility but little action.
SOAR followed, aiming to reduce manual effort by automating response through structured playbooks and tool integrations. It promised efficiency but delivered rigidity.
Security Hyperautomation emerged when both began to crack under modern pressures, soaring alert volumes, hybrid cloud sprawl, analyst burnout, and the demand for real-time, intelligent response.

Legacy tools helped establish the foundation. But they weren’t designed for today’s threat landscape’s speed, scale, or complexity. That’s where Hyperautomation changes everything: bridging gaps, replacing brittle workflows, and enabling fully autonomous, AI-driven security operations.

Next, we’ll break down what each SOC tool delivers — and where they fall short.

SIEM: Built for Logging and Search, Not Speed

A SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) system collects, aggregates, and analyzes log data from across an organization’s IT environment. It centralizes visibility into security events, correlates data to detect potential threats, and supports compliance reporting.

SIEM platforms were built to give SecOps teams visibility. They ingest, normalize, and analyze data from firewalls, endpoints, servers, cloud apps, and more, centralizing logs into one place so teams can detect anomalies and satisfy compliance mandates.

SIEMs deliver:

Centralized log aggregation and historical data analysis
Rule- and pattern-based correlation for threat detection
Dashboards and reports for frameworks like PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and ISO 27001

For a time, this was enough. But, the threat landscape and the SOC have changed. Modern environments are real-time, distributed, and hybrid. Threat actors exploit vulnerabilities in hours, not weeks. Meanwhile, SIEM solutions are built around static detection logic, batch processing, and reactive triage. They’re not designed to orchestrate response or handle fast-moving, multi-vector threats.

And they come with challenges:

Configuration complexity: Fine-tuning SIEM systems requires deep expertise to avoid false positives and missed threats during setup.
Integration hurdles: SIEMs often struggle to seamlessly connect with diverse security tools, limiting visibility and operational efficiency.
Resource constraints: Deploying and managing SIEMs demands significant time, budget, and skilled personnel, often out of reach for lean teams.
Hidden costs: Data ingestion and storage can balloon unexpectedly as log volumes grow, straining budgets and infrastructure.
Data onboarding challenges: Normalizing and standardizing log data from disparate systems adds overhead and impacts detection accuracy.
Scalability limitations: As environments grow, many SIEMs can’t keep pace with increased data volume, causing performance bottlenecks.
Retention and compliance pressures: Meeting regulatory data retention requirements while controlling storage costs is a constant balancing act.

As a result, SIEM solutions often devolve into expensive search engines. They surface problems, but can’t solve them. Analysts still have to swivel-chair between tools, copy/paste IOCs, open tickets, and manually kick off an investigation or remediation. In a world that demands instant response, SIEMs stall at detection.

SOAR: Designed to Orchestrate, but Not Adapt

SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response) platforms were designed to help security teams streamline incident response workflows. They integrate across tools like SIEMs, EDRs, and ITSM systems to orchestrate tasks and enforce processes through playbooks.

SOAR platforms were introduced to close the gap between detection and action. They aimed to reduce repetitive work by connecting disparate tools and codifying workflows. With SOAR, SOCs could automate ticket creation, enrich alerts, or trigger containment through predefined playbooks.

SOAR brought value through:

Playbook-driven automation for common incident types (e.g., phishing, malware)
API-based integrations between SIEM, EDR, firewalls, and ITSM platforms
Structured response processes to reduce manual tasks and improve SLAs

However, SOAR platforms often introduce more challenges than they solve, including:

Strategic misalignment: SOAR tools often fail to support broader security maturity or align with long-term operational goals.
Cultural fragmentation: SOAR can reinforce IT silos by overlooking the human workflows and collaboration needed across teams.
Resource diversion: SOAR often pulls skilled analysts away from high-value tasks to maintain, tune, and troubleshoot playbooks.
Overhyped expectations: Many SecOps teams assume SOAR delivers full autonomy, only to face brittle workflows and limited intelligence.
Integration burdens: Connecting SOAR platforms with diverse tools frequently requires custom code and ongoing maintenance.
Vague success metrics: Measuring SOAR effectiveness is difficult without clear KPIs for response speed, coverage, or workflow impact.
Code-heavy and complex: Most SOAR platforms require Python or custom scripting for core functionality.
Fragile integrations: Workflows break easily when APIs shift or tools are updated, creating constant maintenance cycles.
Slow to iterate: Even small changes demand developer time, testing, and deployment, delaying improvements.

This means SOAR becomes a bottleneck instead of an accelerator. Analysts depend on engineers to build or fix automations. Workflows lag behind emerging threats. Rigid architectures can’t adapt to dynamic inputs or decision branches — if something unexpected happens, SOAR stops.

And perhaps most importantly, SOAR lacks contextual intelligence. It can automate known paths but can’t think, reason, or react to the unexpected. This lack of adaptability is a dealbreaker for hybrid and cloud-native SOCs facing high alert volume and constantly shifting attack surfaces. That’s why we believe SOAR is dead.

The SOAR is Dead Manifesto: Why Hyperautomation is What’s Next. Download the Manfesto

Hyperautomation: A New Model for a New Threat Landscape

Security Hyperautomation is the next evolutionary leap in cybersecurity operations. Born out of the limitations of legacy SIEM and SOAR tools, it addresses today’s most pressing SecOps challenges with a radically new approach: connecting every tool, every signal, and every action across the security ecosystem with no-code, intelligent automation.

Torq Hyperautomation^TM is an advanced approach to security operations that combines no-code automation, real-time integrations, and agentic AI to intelligently orchestrate detection, response, and remediation across the entire SOC. Unlike legacy tools, it adapts dynamically to changing threats and environments, eliminating manual effort, reducing response times, and scaling operations without added headcount.

It builds on the promise of SIEM and SOAR but goes further by automating the entire security lifecycle with:

Intelligent case management that anyone can build and adapt in minutes
Real-time integrations with any tool, across cloud and on-prem
Agentic AI that thinks and acts independently, not just executes instructions

Where SIEM and SOAR solutions struggle with flexibility, context, and scale, security Hyperautomation delivers speed, adaptability, and resilience.

What Makes Hyperautomation Different

Hyperautomation enables real-time action, responding as threats emerge rather than after tickets accumulate. It scales elastically across environments and data volumes without manual tuning. It blends no-code with full-code options so every role in the SOC can build and adapt workflows. Agentic AI adds contextual learning, adjustment, and autonomous execution. And it delivers true end-to-end automation.

Hyperautomation’s Strategic Value

Outcome-focused: Reduces MTTR, improves resilience, and protects reputation
Human-centric: Minimizes analyst toil and burnout
System-agnostic: Works with legacy and modern tools alike
Speed to value: Deploy in days, not months

Proven Benefits of Security Hyperautomation

10x faster ROI than traditional SOAR platforms
800% increase in workflow execution speed with less engineering effort
70x faster threat blocking through AI-led real-time response
Up to 30% lower operational costs, according to Gartner
Increased analyst retention, as SecOps teams spend less time on busywork
Self-optimizing systems, powered by continuous learning and feedback

SIEM vs SOAR vs Hyperautomation

Capability	SIEM	SOAR	Hyperautomation
Detection	Log-based correlation and rules	Dependent on SIEM or third-party tools	Real-time + contextual, across multiple data sources
Response	Manual investigation and action	Playbook-based, limited flexibility	Autonomous + adaptive based on live context
Remediation	None	Partial, often manual follow-up needed	End-to-end automation across tools and teams
Integration Complexity	High: Custom parsers and connectors needed	Moderate to High: Scripted connectors required	Low: Plug-and-play, no-code integrations
Analyst Effort	High: Alert triage, tuning, and investigation	Medium to High: Building and maintaining playbooks	Low: Intelligent workflows reduce manual effort
Adaptability	Low: Static rules and searches	Low to Medium: Brittle, slow to update	High: Dynamic workflows adapt in real time
Deployment Time	Months: Setup, tuning, scaling	Months: Playbook development, integrations	Days: Launchable without engineering bottlenecks
Use of AI	Static rules and logic	Scripted logic and decision trees	Agentic AI: Autonomous reasoning and execution

Why Hyperautomation Wins for Modern SOCs

Hyperautomation eliminates the wait time between detection and action. Analysts don’t need developers to build playbooks. No-code platforms mean workflows can be built, tested, and launched in minutes, not weeks.

That speed translates into fewer open incidents, shorter dwell times, and faster remediation. Instead of reactive incident response, teams operate proactively, automatically blocking threats as they emerge.

Agentic AI goes beyond predictive analytics or simple LLM prompts. It doesn’t just assist analysts — it acts on their behalf by:

Planning next steps based on live threat context
Making real-time decisions across toolsets
Executing actions independently and escalating when needed

Hyperautomation is already a proven replacement for SOAR, eliminating rigid playbooks and slow, code-heavy workflows. But it can also serve as a lightweight SIEM — or even a full SIEM alternative — by ingesting, storing, and analyzing raw logs and telemetry in real time. This enables advanced behavioral analytics, long-term visibility, and cost-effective detection and response without the overhead of traditional SIEMs.

How to Transition from SIEM/SOAR to Hyperautomation

Transitioning from a SOAR or SIEM to Torq Hyperautomation doesn’t require a ground-up rebuild; it’s about unlocking more value from the tools you already have. By layering intelligent, no-code automation over your existing stack, you can unify detection, response, and remediation into a seamless, high-speed workflow that eliminates manual lag and scales effortlessly with your environment.

You Don’t Have to Rip and Replace

Hyperautomation isn’t a forklift upgrade. It augments what you already have. Connect your SIEM, SOAR, EDR, and ITSM into the Torq ecosystem to maximize their value without rebuilding from scratch.

Connect What You Have. Automate What You Couldn’t.

With Torq’s plug-and-play architecture, you can quickly unify your environment without custom code or long dev cycles.

Ingest alerts from any major SIEM (Splunk, Sentinel, QRadar, etc.)
Trigger automation across SOAR platforms or manual legacy workflows
Enrich alerts with threat intel, asset data, and CMDB context
Initiate auto-remediation across cloud, endpoint, and identity systems

Building Automated Workflows for Detection → Response → Remediation

Whether your challenge is phishing, malware, or insider threats, Torq automates the entire lifecycle. Example use cases include:

Phishing: From user report to quarantine, user notification, and ticket closure
Malware containment: Auto-isolation via EDR, log enrichment, RCA reporting
Insider threats: Access revocation, HR sync, investigation kick-off

With Hyperautomation, your existing tools become part of an intelligent, adaptive system that moves at the speed of your threats, without adding engineering overhead.

Automate Everything That Matters

Legacy tools are reactive. SIEM and SOAR help you find threats and maybe start to respond. But the workflows are brittle, slow, and reactive. Tickets stack up, analysts burn out, and risk accumulates.

Hyperautomation is proactive. It’s built for the cloud era — fast, modular, and scalable. By replacing manual tasks with intelligent, real-time automation, SOCs reduce MTTR, eliminate noise, and gain control over their environment.

Analysts are empowered. Hyperautomation doesn’t just help you do more with less. It changes what’s possible. Analysts become strategists, platforms become ecosystems, and security becomes faster than attackers.

SIEM and SOAR made progress but can’t keep up with today’s threat volume, speed, and complexity. Alert fatigue, manual overhead, and slow response times cost teams more than just time. Hyperautomation creates a truly autonomous SOC, and the results speak for themselves: faster response, lower cost, less burnout, and security at the speed of your business.

Ready to upgrade your operations? Read the SOC Efficiency Guide to see how leading teams modernize workflows and crush MTTR.

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The Top 3 Hyperautomation Use Cases for Torq POCs

By Torq

June 16, 2025

5 Minute Read

Many organizations come to Torq when they’ve hit a wall with their legacy SOAR platform. The migration to Torq isn’t just a technology upgrade — it’s an operational overhaul. With Torq, enterprises have replaced hundreds of rigid playbooks in weeks, dramatically reduced time-to-value, and unlocked capabilities that legacy SOAR could never support.

The move to Torq is faster and smoother than you think,thanks to our intuitive workflow design, low-code flexibility, and hands-on migration support. If you’re considering a demo or a proof of concept (POC), these are the top three Hyperautomation use cases we’d start with — the ones that deliver instant value and set your implementation up for long-term success.

Hyperautomation: A SOC Must-Have

Hyperautomation is the current era of security operations — where every repetitive task, manual process, and alert-handling bottleneck gets replaced by scalable, intelligent automation. Unlike traditional SOAR, AI-driven Hyperautomation is agile, dynamic, and driven by real-time context.

In the SOC, this means:

Faster threat response: Alerts are triaged, investigated, and remediated automatically across EDR, IAM, email, and cloud systems.
Massive analyst efficiency gains: Your team spends less time on tedious Tier-1 tasks and more time threat hunting and improving security posture.
Lower operational costs: Hyperautomation eliminates tool sprawl, reduces alert fatigue, and streamlines workflows, making the SOC leaner and more effective.
Scalability: Whether it’s 10 alerts or 10,000, Hyperautomation responds at machine speed.
Immediate ROI: The impact is measurable within days: reduced MTTR, faster MTTD, and happier analysts.

Torq’s Hyperautomation platform makes it easy to deploy, customize, and scale automation across your environment without writing a single line of code.

1. Endpoint Detection and Response

EDR is one of the most common Hyperautomation use cases, and for good reason. Endpoints are often the first line of defense when threats bypass preventative controls. But while EDR platforms like SentinelOne, CrowdStrike, and Microsoft Defender continuously surface alerts, they still rely on analysts for response.

That’s where Torq comes in. By integrating your EDR tools with Torq Hyperautomation, you can:

Instantly isolate compromised hosts and cut off lateral movement
Trigger targeted endpoint scans, triage workflows, and auto-remediation actions
Correlate EDR alerts with identity, network, and threat intel context for smarter decision-making
Auto-generate detailed incident reports with full observability into root cause and system impact

EDR Hyperautomation in Action: Torq and SentinelOne

When SentinelOne detects a threat, it sends event data via webhook to Torq, which triggers a predefined workflow. Socrates, Torq’s AI SOC Analyst, evaluates the threat, retrieves asset details from CMDB, checks for correlated user activity, and executes the appropriate response. The compromised host is quarantined, impacted credentials are flagged, and a full report is auto-generated for the analyst.

Automating EDR response is one of the most powerful first moves in any Hyperautomation POC. It delivers instant value, dramatically reduces MTTR, and frees analysts from constantly chasing endpoint alerts across multiple consoles.

2. Email Security

Phishing remains the #1 attack vector — and one of the most common triggers for Tier-1 security alerts. These alerts are high-volume, high-noise, and easy to miss. Automating phishing response with Torq during a POC delivers fast, visible results that eliminate manual overhead.

Torq integrates with various email security platforms, including Microsoft 365, Gmail, Proofpoint, VirusTotal, Mimecast, Abnormal Security, Barracuda, and Cisco.

With Torq, you can:

Auto-quarantine suspicious emails
Lock user inboxes and enforce password resets for potentially compromised accounts
Extract, analyze, and enrich email artifacts like headers, links, and attachments
Launch phishing investigation playbooks

This automation dramatically reduces the mean time to remediate (MTTR) phishing attempts, and it’s one of the clearest, most repeatable use cases for proving the power of Hyperautomation.

Email Security Hyperautomation in Action: Torq and VirusTotal

Torq integrates with VirusTotal to enhance email threat analysis. A Torq workflow can monitor a designated mailbox (such as Outlook or Gmail), extract URLs, attachments, and header IPs from each message, and submit them to VirusTotal for threat scoring. Based on the results, Torq automatically categorizes the message as malicious, suspicious, or clean, updating labels, alerting stakeholders, and kicking off remediation.

What once took hours (or days) is reduced to seconds. Analysts can investigate real threats instead of triaging false positives. And you immediately prove Hyperautomation’s impact on everyday SOC volume.

3. Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Identity is the new perimeter. Many breaches are caused by compromised credentials, whether through phishing, MFA fatigue, or social engineering. Automating IAM workflows early in your POC helps you immediately reduce access-related risk.

Torq integrates with leading IAM providers, including Okta, Microsoft Entra ID, Ping Identity, Duo Security, JumpCloud, CyberArk, and Auth0.

Integrate Torq with your IAM, and you can:

Detect and respond to suspicious login behavior
Auto-disable accounts after anomalous activity
Automate user provisioning and de-provisioning
Trigger MFA resets and log analysis workflows

IAM Hyperautomation in Action: Torq and Okta

Here’s one way Torq and Okta work together: This workflow monitors for new MFA methods added in Okta, a common sign of account takeover. It checks the source IP with VirusTotal, asks the user to confirm the action, and if suspicious, auto-opens a Jira ticket, spins up a Slack message, and suspends the account if needed.

Integrating IAM with Torq at the start of your implementation reduces security risk and enhances operational efficiency by replacing slow, manual processes with scalable automation.

Fast, Scalable Results… In Days

These three use cases — EDR, email, and identity — are high-impact, high-speed proof of what AI-driven Hyperautomation can do for your SOC.

Our customers routinely:

Cut MTTR and MTTD across critical workflows
Eliminate repetitive Tier-1 analyst work
Prove ROI in days, not weeks

Start with what matters most. Let Torq show you how fast modern SOC can move.

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Squish the Phish: 6 Automated Phishing Response Strategies

By Torq

June 12, 2025

11 Minute Read

And rather than getting better at recognizing phishing emails, humans are seemingly getting worse, in part due to the increasing phishing sophistication and customization at scale that GenAI offers. According to Verizon’s 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report, people are falling for phishing attacks at an alarming rate, taking a median of just 21 seconds to click a malicious link and another 28 seconds to enter their personal data.

Of course, part of the solution lies in educating users to recognize and report phishing. But user education only goes so far — on average, only 3% of users report phishing emails. Strong anti-phishing education may increase that number, but you’re still fighting an uphill battle if you rely on end users as your primary means of defense against phishing.

Instead, modern security teams are turning to automated phishing response. By using security automation to detect and respond to phishing attempts, security teams can stop the majority of phishing messages before they ever reach end users.

Manual Phishing Triage: A Losing Battle for SOC Teams

Manual phishing investigation and response is a relentless, high-volume drain on SOCs. When a potentially malicious email is flagged — either by a security tool or a user — the clock starts ticking.

The analyst must first deconstruct the suspicious email: digging into email headers, verifying sender addresses, analyzing the message body for suspicious language, and identifying any potential Indicators of Compromise (IOCs), such as embedded links or file attachments.
Each potential IOC must then be manually validated. This initiates a tedious cycle of “swivel-chair” analysis, where the analyst copies and pastes information — IP addresses, domains, file hashes, etc. — out of the email and into various threat intelligence platforms and security tools. Juggling these multiple browser tabs and windows is essential to determine if an artifact is truly malicious, but each copy-paste and window hop wastes time while the risk of human error increases.
And this is all before remediation even starts. Once the threat is confirmed, the analyst must then take action to block the sender, initiate a search to delete the email from all other inboxes, and respond to the user who reported it.

This monotonous, repetitive process is not just slow — it’s dangerously error-prone. A single missed detail or misinterpretation can be the difference between a blocked threat and a full-blown incident.

Manual phishing triage and response workflows can take tens of minutes to over an hour for a single case. Multiply that by hundreds of daily alerts, and the challenge of keeping up becomes too big to ignore. However, with anti-phishing automation, all of the grind of phishing triage, investigation, and remediation disappears.

What is Automated Phishing Response?

Anti-phishing automation refers to technology that autonomously investigates, triages, and neutralizes suspected phishing emails. It is designed to replace the slow, repetitive, error-prone grind of manual phishing defense with a consistent machine-speed response that immediately isolates compromised inboxes, revokes access to malicious emails, blocks phishing URLs, and notifies users.

6 Hyperautomated Phishing Response Strategies and Tactics

Torq Hyperautomation™ integrates with several key partners to help organizations prevent and mitigate phishing attacks and avoid costly data breaches — which cost organizations an estimated $4.88 million in 2024. Below are six strategies for leveraging Hyperautomation to fight phishing across your entire security environment.

1. Perimeter Defense: Hardening the Email Gateway

Your first line of automated defense is securing the primary phishing entry point: the email inbox. The goal is to identify and block as many malicious emails as possible before they ever reach a user.

Torq partners with Secure Email Gateway (SEG) providers to enhance their detection accuracy and response by correlating data across leading SEG solutions like Abnormal Security, Microsoft, Proofpoint, Mimecast, and more. Torq then autonomously initiates remediation actions, such as removing malicious emails or adjusting email security controls.

Key tactics:

Filter messages based on multiple attributes: The days are long gone when simply scanning email for strings like “Nigerian prince” guaranteed that you’d catch the phishers. Simple keyword or domain name scanning won’t cut it. Effective anti-phishing automation evaluates every email based on multiple attributes — its content, the domain from which it originated, whether it contains an attachment, the type of attachment, and so on — to build a far more informed assessment than content analysis alone can provide.
Detonate attachments in sandboxes: For suspicious but unconfirmed email threats, automation can instantly “detonate” (i.e. download and open) attachments or links in a secure, isolated sandbox. By evaluating the content’s behavior in a safe environment, the system can detect anomalies or attack signatures that confirm the content is indeed malicious. At the same time, the original email remains quarantined from the user. Pending the results, the workflow can either safely release the back content to the user or block it definitively.
Block sender names and domains automatically: When a phishing attempt is confirmed, automation can instantly block the sender’s name and entire domain across the organization. This prevents subsequent waves of the attack from different accounts on the same infrastructure, disrupting the phisher’s campaign.

2. Identity and Access Control: Protecting Your People

Since credentials are the primary target of most phishing attacks, proactively protecting user identities is paramount. Torq does this by analyzing cloud-based user and entity behaviors to detect anomalies that could be indicative of phishing. And if a phishing attack does occur, Torq integrates with solutions, including Okta, Active Directory, JumpCloud, OneLogin, Ping, and Wiz, to prevent account takeover and limit an attacker’s access.

Key tactic:

Reset credentials automatically: Upon detecting a potential phishing compromise, automation should immediately trigger a security workflow to reset login credentials for impacted users. This includes logging the user out of all active sessions and forcing a password reset to instantly invalidate any stolen credentials.

3. Endpoint Security: Containing the Impact

If a malicious email makes it through and a user clicks a link or opens an attachment, the battle shifts to the endpoint (e.g. the user’s laptop or phone). Working with EDR providers like Crowdstrike, SentinelOne, Microsoft, and others, Torq can correlate endpoint data for a holistic view of a phishing attack’s scope and impact, then rapidly take action to contain and remediate any compromise on the device itself.

Key tactic:

Scan and quarantine affected endpoints automatically: The moment a user is linked to a confirmed phishing attack, automation should trigger the EDR solution to perform an immediate scan of their devices. If malware is found, the endpoint can be automatically quarantined from the network to prevent lateral movement while the threat is removed.

4. The Human Element: Empowering Users as a Line of Defense

Your employees are both a target and a potential ally. Torq’s chatbot integrations with communication tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and email make it quick and easy for users to report threats, providing them with instant feedback and education, and turning users into an active part of your security posture.

Key tactics:

Use chatbots for phishing reporting: Integrating chatbots into communication tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams gives users a simple, immediate way to report suspicious emails. These bots can then kick off automated security workflows based on the report, such as resetting passwords, revoking access, or initiating scans for malware. Chatbots can also provide educational resources and coaching to users on how to avoid phishing and improve their cybersecurity awareness.
Triage user-reported emails automatically: When a user reports a suspected phishing email, automation takes over. It can instantly extract key indicators (URLs, file hashes, headers), analyze them against threat intelligence, and provide the user with immediate feedback, confirming if the email was malicious and has been handled, or if it was safe.

5. Data Protection & Incident Response: Minimizing the Damage

When a breach occurs from a phishing email, the strategy shifts to understanding and minimizing the damage. Automation is critical for rapidly assessing the scope and scale of data loss and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements for notifications and reporting. Torq partners with providers like Microsoft, Crowdstrike, Varonis, and Symantec to automate these two important pieces of the phishing puzzle.

6. Continuous Improvement: Learning from Every Attack

A strong defense is one that constantly learns and adapts. Understanding the metrics after the fact can help prevent a phishing attack in the future. Torq partners with SIEM, SEG, and EDR providers to use data from past incidents to refine and improve your automated workflows and overall security posture.

Key tactic:

Quantify improvements with automated metrics: Use automation to analyze response times, workflow effectiveness, and incident severity. By leveraging AI in the SOC to automatically categorize incidents and create cases, you can ensure critical threats receive priority and gather insights to continually harden your defenses against future attacks.

Example Automated Phishing Alert Analysis Workflow in Torq

This Torq Hyperautomation workflow automates the initial triage of a reported phishing email. It instantly extracts and aggregates key artifacts like URLs, file hashes, and headers from Outlook messages and attaches to create a structured data set for deeper analysis, following these steps:

Alert trigger: The process begins the moment a potential phishing alert is received from a source like Microsoft 365.
Parallel data extraction: Torq immediately executes multiple tasks in parallel to deconstruct the email:
- URLs: It extracts all unique URLs from the email’s body and within any attachments.
- Attachments: It processes all file attachments to retrieve their details and corresponding file hashes.
- Headers: It retrieves the full message headers using the Microsoft Graph API.
Threat Validation: Torq then leverages integrations with various threat intelligence feeds, such as VirusTotal, to determine if the URLs, attachments, or information pulled from the email headers are flagged as malicious or benign. This helps quickly weed out false positives, or confirms the alert as a true malicious threat before a security case is even created.
Data consolidation and output: All extracted artifacts (URLs, file hashes, and headers) are automatically collected, combined, and formatted into a single, structured output, ensuring all necessary data is ready for the next step.
Initiate case management: If the alert is confirmed as malicious through third-party validation (or reaches a designated suspicious threshold), the structured output is then used to automatically create a new security case or escalate an existing incident with similar IOCs, often triggering a nested workflow for full case management and remediation.

Case Study: Lennar Cuts Phishing Resolution from Hours to Minutes

The security team at Lennar, one of the nation’s leading homebuilders, was swamped by phishing. They spent “hours and hours” remediating phishing attacks due to manual processes and the lack of flexibility and integrations in their existing XSOAR solution.

After switching to Torq Hyperautomation, the time it took Lennar to resolve a phishing attack dropped from hours to just minutes. This freed up their security experts to focus on more important work, like hunting for major threats.

Before we had Torq, we would do a lot of manual phishing remediation, which was a big time-taker. We would spend hours and hours. With Torq, we’ve significantly reduced the amount of time spent on phishing, which allowed us to further refine our other tools and alerts.
Daniel Gross, Senior Operations Analyst, Lennar

Read the full case study >

Win the Phishing War with Automated Phishing Response

Phishers are only going to get better at what they do, especially as they become more sophisticated in their use of AI. The only way for today’s stretched-thin security teams to keep up is with automated phishing response.

Anti-phishing automation eliminates the noise from low-level phishing alerts and frees up analysts to focus on more critical threats. It also enables immediate, consistent, and accurate phishing incident response, reducing human error and minimizing the potential impact of a breach.

A truly effective automated phishing defense relies on the ability to connect and orchestrate every tool in your security stack. With Torq’s limitless integrations, you can automate any phishing tool and process, creating a unified and automated response to neutralize phishing threats across your entire environment.

Want to make your SOC more efficient across the board? Get Torq’s Field CISO’s guide covering practical advice to overcome rising threats, lean teams, and budget scrutiny.

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No Blind Spots: Hyperautomate Your Attack Surface Management

By Torq

June 10, 2025

11 Minute Read

Modern enterprises face an increasingly complex and dynamic digital environment, making effective attack surface management (ASM) more critical than ever. The sprawling nature of digital assets, rapid cloud adoption, and evolving threat landscape mean new vulnerabilities and exposures continually emerge. Manual processes and legacy tools can’t keep pace, leaving security teams struggling to track and address threats proactively.

Torq Hyperautomation™ transforms attack surface management by continuously detecting, contextualizing, and remediating threats, ensuring your organization remains ahead of adversaries.

What is Attack Surface Management (ASM)?

An attack surface refers to all the potential entry points (physical, digital, and human) an attacker can exploit to gain access to an organization’s system or data. The larger the attack surface, the higher the exposure to threats.

Attack Surface Management (ASM) is a proactive cybersecurity strategy designed to continuously discover, monitor, assess, and reduce potential exposure across an organization’s entire digital footprint. It focuses on identifying all entry points an attacker could exploit — known and unknown — and mitigating risks before they can be leveraged.

An effective ASM program includes:

Continuous discovery of exposed assets: ASM tools scan all environments for internet-facing and internal assets — cloud services, domains, APIs, SaaS platforms, shadow IT, and forgotten infrastructure — and make persistent discoveries to account for dynamic infrastructure changes, workloads, and rapid application development cycles.
Monitoring for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations: Vulnerability management is fundamental to attack surface management. Once assets are discovered, ASM monitors them for known vulnerabilities, insecure configurations, unpatched systems, open ports, and any anomalies that could be exploited. It acts as an early warning system that catches issues before attackers do.
Prioritization of risks: Not all exposures carry equal weight. ASM contextualizes alerts with business relevance, threat intelligence, and asset sensitivity to help security teams focus on what matters most. This triage process ensures critical issues are addressed quickly, while noise is minimized.
Streamlined response: Effective ASM initiates action. By integrating with ticketing systems, IAM tools, cloud consoles, and security automation platforms like Torq, ASM can automatically remediate issues or trigger workflows for immediate response, improving speed and efficiency.

Challenges of Traditional Attack Surface Management

Several challenges complicate traditional ASM approaches:

Shadow IT and SaaS sprawl: Rapid SaaS adoption and shadow IT create blind spots, leaving assets untracked and unmanaged.
Ephemeral cloud infrastructure: Cloud environments constantly evolve, creating fleeting assets that legacy ASM tools struggle to monitor effectively.
Legacy tools miss context: Traditional tools lack the context to prioritize threats effectively, causing delays and inefficiencies.
Alert overload stalls response: High volumes of security alerts overwhelm analysts, leading to alert fatigue and slower incident responses.

3 Keys to Effective ASM

Attack surfaces are dynamic, growing, and constantly shifting. Manual methods can’t keep up. That’s why modern ASM must be:

Automated: Detect and respond without relying on human intervention.
Continuous: Monitor in real time, not just during scheduled audits.
Integrated: Feed into your broader security operations stack for full context and control.

This is exactly where security Hyperautomation can help. Torq Hyperautomation transforms ASM from a slow, manual, and reactive task into a real-time, intelligent, and scalable security practice by automating every step, from asset discovery to remediation. With Torq, security teams gain continuous visibility, instant context, and automated action across the entire attack surface — external, internal, and everything in between.

How Automated Attack Surface Management Works

Traditional attack surface management tools often stop at discovery. Torq’s Hyperautomation platform goes several steps further, turning visibility into action and action into measurable impact. It’s not just about knowing your risks; it’s about resolving them automatically, intelligently, and at scale. Here’s how it works.

Asset Discovery

Torq continuously ingests data from across your infrastructure: cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP), SaaS platforms (Okta, GitHub), asset inventories, and external ASM tools like SentinelOne, Rapid7, or Qualys. Whether it’s a cloud workload, a shadow IT application, or an unmanaged endpoint, Torq ensures it’s identified and accounted for. The platform dynamically updates its asset map as your environment evolves, providing complete, real-time visibility across internal and external attack surfaces.

Exposure Monitoring

Once assets are discovered, Torq automatically monitors them for known vulnerabilities, insecure configurations, open ports, identity exposures, and other signs of risk. These checks run continuously — not periodically — ensuring that risks are detected as soon as they appear. Torq’s integration with leading vulnerability scanners, CSPM tools, and threat intelligence feeds enables rich, multidimensional analysis of exposures from both inside and outside the perimeter.

Contextual Alerting

Torq enhances every alert with contextual data that matters, like asset ownership, criticality, geographic location, user identity, and recent activity. This enrichment turns raw alerts into actionable intelligence. Instead of treating all alerts equally, Torq prioritizes them based on business risk, reducing alert fatigue and surfacing what truly needs attention. Analysts don’t just receive more information; they get the right information at the right time.

Automated Remediation

Once a threat is confirmed, Torq automatically executes response playbooks tailored to the incident type, asset profile, and organizational policy. These playbooks can:

Disable vulnerable cloud resources
Revoke compromised credentials
Trigger ticketing workflows in Jira or ServiceNow
Notify the responsible owners or escalate to human analysts
Re-run validation checks to confirm resolution

Every action is logged, auditable, and fully customizable, enabling high-assurance, closed-loop remediation with minimal manual intervention.

6 Benefits of Hyperautomated Attack Surface Management

Real-Time Visibility Across All Environments

Modern attack surfaces span hybrid clouds, SaaS tools, endpoints, and shadow infrastructure. Torq’s continuously scans your internal and external environment, providing a live, unified view of all known and unknown assets. This real-time visibility eliminates blind spots and ensures security teams can track changes the moment they occur, not days or weeks later. Enhanced visibility supports ongoing risk assessment efforts, allowing teams to prioritize vulnerabilities effectively.

Reduced Risk from Shadow IT and Misconfigurations

Unmanaged SaaS applications, orphaned cloud resources, and misconfigured systems are some of the riskiest parts of any attack surface. Torq’s ASM automations immediately flag these issues, correlate them with business context (e.g., owner, function, sensitivity), and kick off appropriate remediation workflows.

Fewer False Positives Thanks to Contextual Intelligence

False positives waste time, drain resources, and increase the likelihood of real threats slipping through. Torq solves this by enriching alerts with contextual data, such as asset criticality, historical behavior, identity attributes, and network topology. Analysts are presented with actionable intelligence instead of raw signals, reducing noise and sharpening focus on what matters most.

Dramatically Shorter Time to Detect and Respond

Automated ASM eliminates the latency of human-driven detection and triage. As soon as a vulnerability or suspicious exposure is detected, Torq initiates real-time enrichment and response. Whether isolating a misconfigured asset or revoking exposed credentials, remediation begins instantly, cutting Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Respond (MTTR) by orders of magnitude.

Always-On Security Posture, Not Periodic Snapshots

Traditional ASM approaches rely on point-in-time scans that become outdated almost immediately. Torq replaces these snapshots with always-on automation, constantly monitoring your infrastructure, scanning for exposure, and triggering responses as needed. This 24/7 posture ensures your security surface evolves at the speed of your business.

Closed Loop from Detection to Resolution

Most ASM tools identify problems but leave resolution to manual processes. Torq completes the loop with intelligent, automated workflows that take action on validated exposures, revoking access, shutting down vulnerable services, notifying asset owners, and logging everything for audit and compliance. This full-cycle automation ensures exposures are resolved, verified, and documented.

Attack Surface Management Implementation: 4 Best Practices

1. Maintain continuous asset inventories: A complete, real-time view of your digital environment is foundational to effective ASM. Conduct continuous asset discovery and inventory updates to track new devices, applications, APIs, cloud resources, and shadow IT. This ensures your security team has an accurate understanding of all external-facing assets and can quickly spot unmanaged or vulnerable components before attackers do.

2. Integrate ASM with security stack: ASM should not operate in isolation. Connect it with your SIEM, vulnerability management, endpoint detection, and identity platforms to enable correlation and enriched context. This integration eliminates blind spots, improves visibility across environments, and empowers security teams to act on threats with unified intelligence.

3. Establish a strong vulnerability management process: Define formal, documented policies for identifying, prioritizing, and remediating vulnerabilities uncovered by ASM. Ensure roles, SLAs, and escalation paths are clearly defined. Integrate vulnerability data with your incident response workflows to speed up resolution and ensure no exposure goes unaddressed.

4. Automate notifications and remediation workflows: Reduce time-to-response and human error by implementing automated alerting and response playbooks. Use workflow automation to route findings to the right teams, trigger patching or access revocation, and track resolution status. Automation accelerates containment, improves coordination, and transforms ASM into a proactive defense layer.

How Torq Hyperautomation Powers End-to-End Attack Surface Management

Torq Hyperautomation integrates seamlessly into your security workflows:

Connects with external ASM tools (like Palo Alto, Crowdstrike, Microsoft) and internal asset inventories
Ingests and enriches alerts with detailed contextual data (identity, geography, asset ownership)l
Triggers automated playbooks for immediate remediation, revocation, alerting, or escalation
Reduces MTTR by integrating seamlessly with ticketing systems (Jira, ServiceNow), IAM solutions, and cloud providers
Continuously monitors post-remediation to confirm full resolution

Case Study: How Deepwatch Scaled Global Attack Surface Coverage with Torq Hyperautomation

For managed detection and response (MDR) providers like Deepwatch, delivering high-fidelity protection across a sprawling customer base means managing hundreds (if not thousands) of constantly shifting attack surfaces. But legacy SOAR platforms simply couldn’t scale with the speed, precision, or flexibility needed to keep up.

By adopting Torq Hyperautomation, Deepwatch transformed its security operations and delivered real-time visibility and response capabilities across global customer environments. The result: Over 90% automation of Tier 1 and Tier 2 alerts, faster onboarding for new clients, and dramatic reductions in both mean time to respond (MTTR) and operational overhead. “We’ve come from legacy SOAR to Hyperautomation, and what we’ve been able to build — the environment we now give to our analysts — I don’t think would have ever been achievable with legacy SOAR,” says Micah Donald, Sr. Director of Solutions Engineering, Deepwatch.

With Torq, Deepwatch automated the detection and remediation of exposed assets and vulnerabilities across internal and external attack surfaces without relying on slow manual scripting or disconnected tools. Torq’s low-code/no-code platform enabled Deepwatch analysts to build powerful workflows on the fly, integrate seamlessly with cloud infrastructure, and deliver precision response at scale.

From cloud complexity to shadow IT to ever-evolving customer demands, Deepwatch’s attack surface challenges mirror those of most enterprises today. Their success proves what’s possible when attack surface management is not just monitored but Hyperautomated.

“Torq helps customers get the biggest bang for their security buck, maximizing the value of their existing security investments.”.

– Micah Donald, Sr. Director of Solutions Engineering, Deepwatch

Real Security Use Cases Powered by ASM Automation

Attack surface management isn’t a standalone task — it’s the foundation that powers broader security operations. With Torq Hyperautomation, ASM becomes the connective tissue for dozens of high-impact use cases across your SOC.

Identity and access management (IAM): Torq cross-references exposed assets with identity data from Okta, Azure AD, or HRIS systems. When orphaned accounts or overprivileged identities are discovered on exposed systems, Torq can automatically revoke access, enforce MFA, or trigger re-verification workflows without analyst intervention.

Cloud security posture management (CSPM): Combine CSPM tools like Wiz or Prisma Cloud with Torq’s Hyperautomation to turn misconfiguration alerts into real-time action. Whether it’s shutting down an open S3 bucket, quarantining an untagged instance, or enforcing encryption standards, Torq ensures posture risks are remediated, not just reported.

Threat intelligence operationalization: Torq integrates with threat intel platforms to correlate known IOCs (e.g., IPs, domains, malware hashes) with your asset inventory. If a match is found, Torq can isolate the asset, create a high-priority case, and initiate a full threat hunting workflow.

Email and endpoint security: Attack surface blind spots often include email systems and endpoints. Torq bridges the gap by integrating with email security tools (like Proofpoint and Microsoft Defender) and EDRs (like CrowdStrike and SentinelOne). ASM alerts tied to phishing or endpoint anomalies can trigger dynamic playbooks for containment, notification, and root cause analysis.

Compliance and audit automation: Torq’s action across your ASM program is fully logged and auditable. You can automatically generate compliance artifacts showing asset inventory, exposure history, response timelines, and post-remediation validation, streamlining audits for security frameworks like NIST, ISO, or SOC 2.

Hyperautomate Your Attack Surface Management with Torq

Your organization’s attack surface evolves continuously. ASM tools help you discover new vulnerabilities, but Torq empowers you to automatically respond and remediate, significantly shrinking your risk. With Torq, your ASM strategy is always-on, automated, and agile.

Don’t wait to react. Don’t accept blind spots.

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FAQs

How does Torq's Hyperautomation™ enhance attack surface management compared to traditional methods?

Torq Hyperautomation™ transforms attack surface management from a static, manual process into a dynamic, automated capability. Traditional ASM often involves periodic scans and manual triage, which leave gaps in visibility and delay remediation. Torq eliminates these blind spots by continuously orchestrating real-time asset discovery, risk prioritization, and automated response across your existing security stack.

This allows security teams to instantly detect new exposures and take immediate action without human intervention. By replacing fragmented processes with intelligent, automated workflows, Torq significantly reduces response time, operational overhead, and risk of oversight.

Can attack surface management help organizations with compliance requirements?

Yes — effective ASM is an enabler of compliance. Regulatory frameworks like HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and ISO 27001 require organizations to maintain visibility into their digital environments and actively manage vulnerabilities. Torq supports this by automatically inventorying assets, tracking configuration changes, and documenting remediation efforts.

Compliance reporting becomes faster and more accurate, with up-to-date telemetry across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Torq also automates audit preparation through prebuilt workflows that map findings to compliance controls, helping security and GRC teams demonstrate ongoing adherence.

What industries benefit most from adopting advanced attack surface management strategies?

Industries with high-value data and strict regulatory requirements stand to gain the most from comprehensive ASM, including finance, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, and technology. These sectors often face sprawling digital footprints, complex supply chains, and increasing attack surface due to remote work and cloud adoption.

Torq tailors its Hyperautomation workflows to meet the unique operational and compliance demands of each industry, whether it’s protecting financial APIs, securing electronic health records (EHRs), or enforcing zero trust policies in distributed cloud environments.

How does Torq facilitate collaboration within security teams when managing the attack surface?

Torq breaks down silos between SecOps, IT, and cloud teams by providing a centralized automation platform that unifies threat detection, incident response, and asset visibility. Teams can collaborate on shared playbooks, receive alerts through integrated channels like Slack or ServiceNow, and maintain role-based access to workflows and data.

Torq’s automated workflows ensure consistent execution while allowing human oversight when needed, improving alignment and accelerating decision-making across teams. The result is faster response, reduced miscommunication, and a unified approach to attack surface defense.

SecOps Automation: How Lean Teams Can Achieve Enterprise-Level Security

By Torq

June 9, 2025

8 Minute Read

What Is SecOps Automation?

SecOps automation is the process using technology to streamline and automate the core workflows of security operations, including threat detection, triage, investigation, response, access control, and compliance reporting. It removes the manual work and alert fatigue that bog down security teams, enabling faster, more consistent, and more scalable operations.

While DevSecOps focuses on integrating security into the software development lifecycle, and ITOps automation targets infrastructure and IT service management, SecOps automation is laser-focused on protecting the business from threats.

Traditional SecOps Is Broken

Most security teams today are running on fumes. Threats are increasing, tools are multiplying, and analysts are stuck in an endless loop of triage and tuning as they face:

Too many alerts, not enough analysts: Security teams are drowning in noise. With limited headcount, it’s impossible to investigate everything, causing critical alerts to go unnoticed.
Poor tool integration: 51% of security leaders say their tools don’t integrate well, creating silos, manual handoffs, and slower response times.
Busywork over threat work: 46% of teams spend more time configuring and troubleshooting tools than mitigating threats. Another 59% say maintaining tools is the #1 inefficiency in their SOC.

It’s not sustainable — especially for lean teams.

Why Lean Teams Need SecOps Automation

Lean security teams are under pressure to deliver big results — without the benefit of big budgets, big headcount, or big enterprise infrastructure. They face the same volume of threats, alerts, and compliance requirements as a Fortune 500 but with a fraction of the resources.

SecOps automation bridges this resource gap. Deterministic automation workflows are ideal for the most common, repetitive, or predictable tasks, while non-deterministic workflows — augmented by agentic AI — enable understaffed SOC teams to handle more complex, multi-step security use cases more quickly and move towards an autonomous SOC.

SecOps automation significantly reduces manual overhead, accelerates threat response times, and empowers lean teams to run high-performance SOCs without the traditional overhead.

Five Ways Automated SecOps Helps Level the Playing Field

1. Phishing

Phishing is the most common form of cybercrime, with an estimated 3.4 billion spam emails sent daily. Each suspicious email requires triage, enrichment, investigation, and user outreach. Multiply that by dozens (or hundreds) of alerts a day, and you’re looking at full-blown burnout.

Automated SecOps turns phishing response into a self-contained workflow. From inbox monitoring and URL detonation to IOC lookups and automated takedowns, the entire lifecycle can be handled in minutes — not hours — without ever touching the analyst queue.

2. Threat Intelligence Enrichment

Threat intel is only useful if it’s fast, contextual, and operationalized — three things that don’t happen when analysts are manually switching between threat feeds and enrichment tools.

With SecOps automation, threat enrichment happens automatically. As alerts are ingested, automation pulls relevant context from multiple intel sources, correlates them with local data, and attaches insights to each case. That gives analysts a complete picture from the start.

3. Incident Response

Manual incident response is slow, error-prone, and hard to scale, especially with limited staff. Analysts have to piece together clues from multiple systems, coordinate handoffs, and manually document every action. For lean teams, it’s a recipe for delays and missed steps.

Automated incident response changes the game. As soon as an incident is detected, workflows kick off to contain the threat, collect forensics, notify stakeholders, and even auto-resolve based on pre-approved playbooks. With agentic AI in the loop, you can even triage, investigate, and remediate without any human intervention.

4. Vulnerability Management (VM)

Prioritizing which vulnerabilities matter is half the battle. But manually scanning assets, matching vulnerabilities to context, and assigning follow-up tasks can take days — assuming it gets done at all.

Automated SecOps streamlines the entire VM lifecycle. It ingests scanner output, correlates it with asset data, flags exploitable vulnerabilities, and initiates remediation workflows based on risk level — all without human touch. Analysts get real-time visibility into what’s fixed, what’s pending, and what’s critical.

5. Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Access creep and reused credentials are an open door for attackers — but they’re often overlooked because IAM tasks are tedious and time-consuming.

With automation, IAM becomes hands-free. Just-in-time access, automatic revocation, and periodic audits all run behind the scenes. You can even automate a response to suspicious activity, like impossible travel or privilege escalation, before an attacker has time to act.

SecOps Automation = Big Results for Lean Teams

Built for all skill levels: Low-code and no-code automation platforms have lowered the barrier to entry for security teams, making it easier for them to implement and manage security solutions. Analysts can build and deploy workflows without needing to write a single line of code, while more technical users can dig into scripting and APIs when needed. This flexibility empowers teams to move faster and focus on strategy instead of syntax.

Faster time to value with pre-built workflows: Many SecOps automation platforms offer prebuilt workflows for common use cases like phishing response and alert triage. These templates help teams launch fast, then iterate and customize for their environment.

Unified dashboards and reporting: Effective SecOps automation isn’t just about doing more — it’s about seeing more. Automation platforms often include built-in dashboards, visual workflow builders, and custom reporting tools that make it easier to track performance, prove value, and drive continuous improvement.

More use case coverage: Automation isn’t limited to incident response. Mature SecOps teams extend it to vulnerability management, insider threat detection, access controls, compliance audits, and even IT workflows like onboarding or offboarding. The more you automate, the more time your team has for strategic work.

Fully integrated AI access: It’s no secret that AI is the big hot ticket item in the cybersecurity industry. However, most organizations are diligently evaluating and carefully choosing when and where to deploy AI in their security stack — and rightfully so.

Whether you are slow-rolling AI access due to budget constraints or still building a business case to demonstrate the value of AI in the SOC to upper management, a SecOps automation platform provides a unique, centralized hub that fully integrates with every security solution, ensuring consistent and controlled AI access across your entire security environment.

Torq: The Leading Platform for SecOps Automation

Torq HyperSOC™ is the agentic AI-driven platform explicitly designed to empower lean security teams with extensive SecOps automation capabilities. Torq delivers:

Multi-Agent AI: Torq’s Socrates orchestrates automated workflows across specialized AI agents, seamlessly handling phishing triage, malware containment, IAM hygiene, and more.
Natural language workflows: No-code and low-code interfaces allow teams to launch and modify workflows simply by describing their intent, significantly accelerating adoption and effectiveness.
Rapid integration: Instant, seamless integrations across the entire security ecosystem eliminate silos, ensuring workflows operate fluidly across tools like AWS, Azure, Okta, SentinelOne, and many more.
Autonomous response: From detection to containment and remediation, Torq autonomously manages threats, dramatically reducing response times and enabling analysts to focus on high-impact tasks.

What SecOps Automation Looks Like

Torq customers consistently report transformative impacts from automating SecOps.

Check Point

Check Point’s SOC faced a crushing alert load and a 30–40% manpower gap, until Torq HyperSOC™ came into the picture. Within days, Torq deployed over two dozen AI-driven playbooks that automated repetitive tasks, reduced alert fatigue, and enabled autonomous remediation for low-level threats. Now, analysts are empowered to focus on what matters, with NLP-powered case insights helping them make faster, smarter decisions.

Global Retailer

This global fast-fashion giant replaced its legacy SOAR with Torq Hyperautomation™ to streamline security operations, cut alert fatigue, and simplify complex workflows across international teams. By automating end-user requests, case management, and just-in-time access, they reduced ticket resolution from days to minutes and saved a week of time per request.

Lennar

Lennar’s SOC team replaced XSOAR with Torq to eliminate manual phishing remediation that used to take hours and is now resolved in minutes. With no-code and AI-powered workflow building, analysts of all skill levels can build automations and refocus on proactive threat hunting. Torq’s flexibility and speed also helped streamline asset management, cutting hours of work down to just minutes.

Scale Your Security Without Scaling Your Team

Torq HyperSOC™ enables lean teams to protect their businesses at enterprise scale, with automated SecOps workflows that eliminate manual drudgery, reduce response times, and enable analysts to focus on strategic threat hunting and high-value tasks.

Want to scale your security operations with Torq? Get a demo. And check out our Field CISO’s guide with practical advice for a more efficient SOC.

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Hyperautomate the Vulnerability Management Lifecycle from Start to Finish

By Torq

June 6, 2025

11 Minute Read

Traditional vulnerability management is falling behind. Manual workflows stall progress. Legacy SOAR drags teams down. Siloed tools leave dangerous gaps. The result is delays, blind spots, and risk exposure that compound fast. Human error and inefficiency are baked into the process, costing teams more than time. It’s compromising compliance, degrading customer experience, and overwhelming analysts.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

This blog breaks the vulnerability management lifecycle into six steps, each primed for automation. We’ll show you how to modernize your workflows using Hyperautomation and agentic AI. This is how modern SOCs move faster, respond smarter, and stay in control.

What is the Vulnerability Management Lifecycle?

Vulnerability management is the continuous process of identifying, evaluating, prioritizing, remediating, and monitoring security weaknesses (vulnerabilities) across an organization’s systems, networks, and applications. Its goal is to reduce the attack surface by proactively addressing vulnerabilities before cybercriminals can exploit them.

The vulnerability management lifecycle is a continuous, systematic process for identifying, assessing, prioritizing, remediating, and monitoring security vulnerabilities within an organization’s IT infrastructure. It’s a crucial part of any cybersecurity strategy, aiming to manage risks and minimize the potential for cyberattacks proactively.

The vulnerability management lifecycle includes:

Discovery of all assets in the environment
Assessment of vulnerabilities using automated scanners and threat intelligence
Prioritization based on factors like severity (i.e., CVSS score), exploitability, and business impact
Remediation or mitigation through patching, configuration changes, or compensating controls
Validation and monitoring to confirm fixes and detect re-exposure or new risks
Reporting and improvement to refine processes and boost efficiency

Today’s dynamic cloud environments demand more than reactive security. As modern IT environments grow more complex and dynamic, traditional approaches that rely on manual processes and fragmented tools can’t keep up. The rapid change in cloud infrastructure and the constant emergence of new vulnerabilities make it nearly impossible for security teams to identify and act on every risk in time.

Automating the vulnerability management lifecycle — across asset discovery, scanning, prioritization, remediation, and validation — helps teams move from reactive to proactive. By integrating data from scanners, threat intelligence platforms, Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs), and ITSM (IT Service Management) systems, automated workflows can continuously identify critical issues, assign ownership, and trigger remediation actions.

Organizations can ensure consistent, efficient, and scalable risk mitigation with a well-defined and automated vulnerability management program. The result is faster response, reduced exposure, improved compliance, and a more resilient security posture.

The 6 Steps of Vulnerability Management Lifecycle You Can Automate Today

Step 1: Asset Discovery and Vulnerability Assessment

Before vulnerabilities can be managed, organizations must first identify every asset in their environment. This step begins with building a complete, real-time inventory of IT assets — including endpoints, servers, cloud workloads, SaaS apps, IoT devices, and shadow IT — across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments. Critical vulnerabilities often go undetected without accurate asset discovery, leaving organizations exposed.

Once discovered, assets should be classified based on business importance, data sensitivity, and exposure level. Security frameworks like the CIS Controls or ISO standards can help guide this classification process to ensure consistent, policy-driven prioritization.

Vulnerability assessment follows closely behind discovery. Organizations conduct scheduled or continuous scans using tools like Qualys, Tenable, or Rapid7 to identify known vulnerabilities. Automated scans are augmented by penetration tests and configuration audits, which simulate real-world attack scenarios and uncover deeper misconfigurations that scanners might miss. These assessments provide the foundation for informed, risk-based decision-making in later stages.

Key metrics for this step include asset discovery completeness, vulnerability coverage rate, and time to discovery. Organizations that automate asset discovery and vulnerability scanning reduce blind spots, accelerate detection, and set the stage for a proactive vulnerability management lifecycle.

How Torq Can Automate This: Torq integrates with your asset inventory, CMDB, cloud providers, and endpoint detection tools to ingest asset data continuously. No-code workflows automatically reconcile discovered assets across hybrid environments, keeping your inventory current without spreadsheets or manual audits. Clients can also use Torq to trigger validation workflows when new, unmanaged assets appear, alerting security teams to take immediate action.

Step 2: Vulnerability Scanning and Detection

With assets identified and inventoried, the next step is systematic vulnerability scanning. Continuous scanning ensures that new vulnerabilities are identified immediately, not just during scheduled review windows. Modern scanners integrated with SIEMs, EDRs, and threat intelligence platforms can detect vulnerabilities and push findings into workflows.

Equally important is the normalization and automation of scan data. Without these key systems, teams often struggle to analyze findings from multiple tools or formats. Automated ingestion pipelines ensure scan results are normalized, deduplicated, and enriched with contextual metadata so teams can prioritize issues efficiently. This minimizes human error and eliminates manual data wrangling, allowing analysts to focus on threat mitigation rather than spreadsheet management.

How Torq Can Automate This: Torq connects directly to vulnerability scanners like Tenable, Qualys, and Rapid7 to ingest real-time scan results. It normalizes disparate data formats and enriches them with contextual metadata, like asset criticality, owner, and business function, then automatically routes findings into triage workflows. Torq eliminates bottlenecks by auto-tagging vulnerabilities based on severity, source, and exploitability, and escalating only the ones that matter.

Step 3: Risk-Based Vulnerability Prioritization

Not all vulnerabilities pose the same threat, and relying solely on Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) scores often wastes time and leads to missed priorities.

Effective vulnerability prioritization combines multiple factors: severity ratings, real-time threat intelligence, asset value, exploitability, and the potential business impact if compromised. A vulnerability on a public-facing application used by customers carries far more weight than one on an internal test server, even if their CVSS scores are identical.

This stage involves applying structure and strategy to vulnerability triage. It requires input from multiple systems and stakeholders and the ability to evaluate each vulnerability in context, not just in isolation.

How Torq Can Automate This: Torq automates prioritization by combining CVSS scores, threat intelligence, asset importance, and business impact. Risk-scoring models are baked into workflows that assign ownership based on asset tags or business unit and notify the right team instantly. AI Agents dynamically adapt prioritization workflows to changing threat intel, for example, reprioritizing based on active exploitation reports from MISP or Recorded Future.

Step 4: Remediation and Patch Deployment

Once vulnerabilities are prioritized, the next step is action — and this is where many organizations get bogged down. Patch management and remediation can be time-consuming, error-prone, and resource-intensive, especially when handled manually.

Coordinating patch deployment, configuration changes, and policy enforcement is complex. Different systems, ticketing queues, and ownership models often introduce delays that extend mean time to remediate (MTTR). Critical asset patching may sometimes be skipped entirely due to a lack of visibility or process bottlenecks.

The key to making remediation effective is ensuring it’s consistent, policy-driven, and well-integrated with existing IT and security infrastructure. Automated workflows streamline this process.

How Torq Can Automate This: Torq triggers auto-remediation actions the moment a vulnerability crosses a risk threshold. Whether that’s opening a ServiceNow ticket, deploying a patch through CrowdStrike, or updating firewall rules — Torq coordinates every step across ITSM, EDR, and config management systems. Torq lets you define remediation SLAs by risk level, then automatically tracks and escalates any patching delays.

Step 5: Validation and Continuous Monitoring

Even after a patch is deployed or a mitigation is applied, teams must validate that the vulnerability is truly resolved and that the fix hasn’t introduced new risks. Organizations can be left with a false sense of security without a clear validation process.

This step is also where continuous monitoring comes into play. Threats evolve, and systems change, meaning previously resolved vulnerabilities can resurface or emerge in the same risk areas. Keeping tabs on those changes in real time is essential to maintaining a strong security posture.

Beyond operational assurance, validation and monitoring also feed key performance indicators (KPIs). Metrics like mean time to validate, remediation success rate, and recurring vulnerabilities offer insight into program effectiveness and guide continuous improvement.

How Torq Can Automate This: Torq ensures that every remediation action is followed by automatic verification. It coordinates post-patch scans, checks system health, and updates real-time vulnerability status. If a scan fails or a system shows signs of re-exposure, Torq reopens the case and notifies the right teams.

Torq’s workflows also power continuous monitoring across your environment, triggering alerts and actions the moment new vulnerabilities are detected. All validation results are logged with full audit trails, giving teams a clear, compliant record of what was fixed, when, and how.

Step 6: Reporting and Improvement

The final — and often most overlooked — step in the vulnerability management lifecycle is reporting and continuous improvement. This stage turns tactical remediation work into strategic insight, enabling security teams to track performance, share results with stakeholders, and refine processes over time.

Effective reporting starts with capturing and consolidating key metrics from across the lifecycle. These include mean time to detect (MTTD), mean time to remediate (MTTR), validation success rate, outstanding vulnerabilities by risk level, and SLA adherence. Automation can generate these reports in real time, pulling directly from ITSM, scanning tools, and case management systems, eliminating manual data gathering and improving accuracy.

But reporting isn’t just about compliance dashboards or CISO updates. It’s also about communicating clearly across teams. Security analysts need detailed, technical data to investigate root causes. IT and DevOps teams need actionable task lists and timelines. Executives need business-aligned summaries showing risk reduction, operational efficiency, and ROI. Torq’s AI case summaries and customizable reports ensure the right insights reach the right people.

Beyond communication, this stage powers process improvement. Every vulnerability managed, every patch deployed, and every false positive investigated is an opportunity to learn. Were there delays in detection? Was ownership misrouted? Did remediation workflows succeed automatically, or require manual overrides?

Automation platforms like Torq can highlight bottlenecks, track repetitive tasks, and suggest optimizations for future cycles, helping teams evolve with the threat landscape.

How Torq Can Automate This: Torq aggregates lifecycle metrics — MTTR, patching trends, asset coverage, false positives, and more — into real-time dashboards. It automates reporting to different stakeholders (security, IT, execs) and uses historical data to optimize future workflows. With Torq’s intelligent case summaries and agentic AI analysis, your team gets metrics, insights, and improvement recommendations after every cycle.

Visualizing the Automated Vulnerability Management Workflow

Each stage features integration points with standard security tools, all unified through no-code automation and adaptive AI workflows, ensuring seamless transitions between each lifecycle step.

How Torq’s No-Code, Agentic AI Transforms VM

Legacy SOAR platforms often promise automation — but deliver rigid, playbook-style workflows that break the moment something unexpected happens. They’re difficult to update, heavily reliant on code, and require constant upkeep to remain useful in fast-changing threat environments. Vulnerability management, in particular, suffers from this inflexibility. New CVEs emerge daily, patch windows shift, and business priorities evolve. Static systems simply can’t keep up.

Torq is built for the opposite. Its modern no-code platform empowers security teams to create and customize complex vulnerability management workflows — without writing a single line of code. Whether integrating with vulnerability scanners like Tenable or Qualys, orchestrating patch actions through CrowdStrike or SCCM, or syncing data across Jira, ServiceNow, and CMDBs — Torq makes it fast, repeatable, and reliable.

Where Torq truly sets itself apart is with agentic AI — purpose-built intelligence that doesn’t just execute tasks, but reasons through them. Torq’s agentic AI dynamically adjusts prioritization models based on live threat intelligence, changes workflows on the fly based on remediation delays or escalation policies, and even recommends new automation paths based on past actions and results.

This creates an entirely different experience:

No-code flexibility means teams can launch or modify vulnerability workflows in minutes, not days or weeks.
Dynamic response allows the system to reprioritize or reassign vulnerabilities as business needs or threat conditions shift.
Human-level reasoning lets agentic AI anticipate gaps or delays, take corrective action, and escalate intelligently, all without manual input.

By combining intuitive workflow creation with adaptive intelligence, Torq transforms the vulnerability management lifecycle from a slow, manual process into a fast, autonomous system. Teams can focus on strategy and oversight while Torq handles the orchestration, remediation, and validation at machine speed — all with full visibility and control. It’s not just automation — it’s Hyperautomation, designed for the pace and complexity of modern cybersecurity.

Reclaim Time. Reduce Risk. Automate Everything.

With Torq Hyperautomation™, every stage of the vulnerability management lifecycle becomes faster, more accurate, and radically more effective. Teams reclaim time, reduce risk, and stay focused on what matters: preventing the next security incident.

Ready to make the shift? Read the SOC Efficiency Guide to see how leading security teams accelerate response, eliminate alert fatigue, and scale operations with Torq.

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Cybersecurity Frameworks Explained: Avoid Critical Risks in Your Strategic Enterprise

By Torq

June 4, 2025

9 Minute Read

Cybersecurity frameworks provide organizations with clear, actionable pathways to safeguard assets, ensure regulatory compliance, maintain robust security controls, and align security initiatives effectively. But while frameworks like NIST, ISO, and CIS provide a vital blueprint for security, implementing them is anything but straightforward. Manual processes, siloed tools, and resource constraints slow implementation and dilute impact.

Torq Hyperautomation™ eliminates the operational friction of security framework adoption. It connects your tools, automates repetitive control validation, and ensures your security program stays aligned, agile, and audit-ready.

Whether you’re building toward SOC 2, aligning to NIST CSF, or managing global compliance at scale, Torq transforms frameworks from static documents into living, responsive systems that secure your entire network.

Why Cybersecurity Frameworks Matter

A security framework is a structured set of guidelines, best practices, and standards designed to help organizations manage and reduce cybersecurity risk. It provides a repeatable methodology for identifying, protecting, detecting, responding to, and recovering from cyber threats, while ensuring alignment with regulatory, legal, and industry-specific compliance requirements.

A security framework outlines:

Security controls: Technical, administrative, and physical safeguards to protect systems and data
Risk management processes: How to assess and prioritize threats and vulnerabilities
Governance structures: Roles, responsibilities, and oversight mechanisms
Continuous improvement: Ongoing assessment, monitoring, and adaptation to evolving threats

Benefits of adopting a cybersecurity framework include:

Improved risk management: Frameworks provide comprehensive and established methods for identifying, assessing, and mitigating cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities.
Enhanced compliance: Frameworks such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS outline explicit guidelines for managing sensitive data, ensuring enterprises meet regulatory obligations and avoid costly penalties.
Streamlined security processes: Implementing standardized cybersecurity frameworks reduces complexity and enables more efficient security operations.

12 Common Types of Security Frameworks in 2025

Understanding the various security frameworks available is crucial for selecting the right approach tailored to your organization’s needs. Here are some of the most widely adopted cybersecurity frameworks:

SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls 2): A framework developed by the AICPA to evaluate service providers’ ability to manage customer data securely. It is based on five trust service criteria: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. SOC 2 is crucial for SaaS and cloud service providers handling sensitive customer data. It signals to clients and auditors that your organization meets strict standards for data handling and privacy.
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation): A European Union regulation that sets strict requirements for data privacy and protection for any organization handling EU citizen data. GDPR impacts organizations worldwide due to its extraterritorial scope and severe penalties for noncompliance.
PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard): A global standard for securing credit card transactions and sensitive payment data. It is mandatory for any organization that stores, processes, or transmits cardholder data.
HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act): A U.S. regulation that establishes national standards to protect sensitive patient health information. It applies to healthcare providers, insurers, and business associates managing protected health information (PHI).
CIS Controls: A prioritized set of 18 best practices developed by the Center for Internet Security (CIS), designed to protect against the most common and dangerous cyber threats.
ISO 27001: An international standard for establishing, implementing, maintaining, and continually improving an Information Security Management System (ISMS). It’s one of the most comprehensive and certifiable frameworks available.
NIST SP 800-53: A catalog of security and privacy controls developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for federal agencies and their contractors. It’s highly detailed and adaptable for enterprises seeking rigorous security control baselines.
NIST SP 800-171: Aimed at non-federal organizations, this framework outlines security requirements for protecting Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). Often used by defense contractors and other government-adjacent enterprises.
NIST Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF): A voluntary framework designed to help organizations of all sizes manage and reduce cybersecurity risks. It consists of five core functions: Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover.
NIST SP 1800 Series: A collection of practical, example-driven publications offering step-by-step guidance for implementing cybersecurity technologies, tailored for specific sectors and challenges.
COBIT: A framework by ISACA for governance and management of enterprise IT, aligning security with strategic business goals.
DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act): A regulation introduced by the EU to ensure the financial sector’s operational resilience. DORA requires banks, insurers, investment firms, and other financial entities to manage and withstand risks.

How to Choose a Security Framework

Selecting an appropriate security framework requires careful consideration of several critical factors.

Understand your business context and requirements: Assess your industry, business size, regulatory landscape, and specific cybersecurity challenges.
Evaluate framework compatibility: Consider how easily the framework integrates with your existing technologies and security controls.
Prioritize scalability and adaptability: Ensure the chosen framework can grow with your organization and adapt to evolving threats.
Seek broad organizational support: Engage stakeholders across your organization, including IT, compliance, and executive teams, to ensure alignment and buy-in.
Leverage Hyperautomation for execution: Look for opportunities to operationalize framework controls using automation platforms like Torq. Automating control validation, policy enforcement, and evidence collection accelerates adoption and reduces long-term operational burden.

How to Navigate Security Framework Challenges with Torq

Implementing security frameworks can pose significant challenges for many organizations. Between legacy infrastructure, fragmented tooling, evolving threats, and limited resources, many organizations struggle to move from documentation to real-world execution. Torq Hyperautomation™ helps security teams overcome the most common framework adoption barriers by eliminating manual overhead and automating critical workflows. Here are some common challenges and how Torq helps solve them.

Integration with Existing Systems

Challenge: Legacy systems and fragmented security stacks can hinder effective integration of cybersecurity frameworks.

Torq Solution: Torq’s Hyperautomation Platform acts as the connection across your environment, integrating seamlessly with SIEMs, EDRs, ticketing systems, IAM tools, and cloud platforms. Whether you’re automating control testing, enforcing configuration standards, or orchestrating incident response, Torq streamlines the end-to-end flow of data and decisions. Drag-and-drop and AI-generated workflows and low-code/no-code interfaces empower teams to operationalize frameworks without developer bottlenecks.

Budget Constraints

Challenge: Many organizations have limited resources, which complicates the implementation of comprehensive security frameworks.

Torq Solution: Torq automates the grunt work of security operations. From mapping controls to running automated assessments, Torq eliminates repetitive tasks and minimizes the need for dedicated coding resources. Torq helps organizations achieve full framework alignment within days or weeks by reducing engineering dependencies and accelerating time-to-value. The result is lower operational costs and higher team productivity.

Evolving Threat Landscape

Challenge: Cyber threats continually evolve, requiring dynamic responses from security frameworks.

Torq Solution: Torq continuously adapts to changing threat conditions using telemetry, AI-driven enrichment, and dynamic workflows. When anomalies are detected, it can automatically trigger responses aligned to your framework requirements, whether that means escalating high-risk activity, revoking access, or triggering predefined mitigation playbooks.

Ensuring Compliance and Audits

Challenge: Maintaining ongoing compliance and being audit-ready at all times is challenging, particularly for global enterprises.

Torq Solution: Torq automates evidence collection, control validation, and documentation, ensuring compliance workflows are baked into daily operations. It creates a centralized audit trail of all actions taken, complete with timestamps, enriched context, and mapped framework references. Whether preparing for an internal review or a third-party audit, Torq gives your team a single source of truth that’s always up to date and defensible.

Why Torq?

Torq Hyperautomation is built to operationalize security frameworks at scale. It delivers:

Unified orchestration across tools, teams, and cloud-native environments
Contextual automation that adapts to evolving threats and compliance needs
Framework-aligned workflows that are repeatable, measurable, and audit-ready
Enterprise-grade security with RBAC, logging, version control, and policy enforcement

Whether you’re building toward SOC 2, aligning to ISO 27001, or navigating NIST 800-171 requirements, Torq makes it faster, easier, and more cost-effective to meet your goals.

Operationalizing Security Frameworks with Hyperautomation

For many organizations, cybersecurity frameworks exist primarily as static documents, useful for audits, but disconnected from daily security operations. The result is an execution gap: security teams know what they should be doing but lack the tools to enforce those controls in real time. This is where most frameworks fall short.

With Torq Hyperautomation™, security frameworks are no longer theoretical. Every control, requirement, and guideline can be translated into automated workflows that enforce compliance continuously across your environment.

Torq brings security frameworks to life:

Control mapping: Connect framework controls to specific, repeatable workflows. Based on your framework’s requirements, automate user access reviews, policy enforcement, or data loss prevention.
Continuous monitoring: Instead of relying on periodic assessments, Torq continuously validates whether controls are being followed, flagging drift immediately and triggering corrective action before gaps become risks.
Automatic documentation and evidence collection: Every action is logged, timestamped, and mapped back to the corresponding framework control. That means when audit time comes, all the evidence is already there.
Case management: Framework-driven alerts or incidents (e.g., a failed backup, an unauthorized access attempt) are automatically routed into case management workflows. Analysts can investigate, respond, and document resolutions, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.

Make Cybersecurity Frameworks Work for You

Security frameworks are essential to building a resilient, compliant, and threat-ready enterprise, but only when they’re effectively operationalized. Too often, organizations get stuck in manual processes, fragmented tools, and misaligned controls, turning frameworks into paperwork rather than real protection.

By combining powerful Hyperautomation with deep integration across your security stack, Torq brings cybersecurity frameworks to life. It ensures your organization isn’t just aligned to standards like NIST, ISO 27001, or SOC 2 but actively enforcing them in real time.

From automating evidence collection and incident response to dynamically adapting to new threats, Torq empowers your security teams to move faster, reduce costs, and improve outcomes, without compromising control or compliance.

Stop managing frameworks. Start operationalizing them.

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The AI SOC Analyst That Offloads 90%+ of Tier-1 Cases — Meet Socrates

By Bob Boyle

June 2, 2025

10 Minute Read

Security Operations Centers (SOCs) continue to struggle in 2025. The perfect storm of growing alert volume, consistent talent shortage, and the well-documented limitations of legacy SOAR solutions have brought many SOC teams to a breaking point. At the same time, bad actors continue to innovate, and cybercriminals have become more sophisticated in their tactics and techniques, including using AI to launch attacks at scale.

Fortunately, AI in the SOC has begun to revolutionize the security operations field, specifically in the area of Tier-1 security analysis. According to Gartner, “By 2026, AI will increase SOC efficiency by 40% compared with 2024 efficiency, beginning a shift in SOC expertise toward AI development, maintenance and protection.”

Why the SOC Needs an AI Analyst

As alert complexity rises, so does burnout and alert fatigue. SOC analysts today spend too much time sifting through noise and manually triaging alerts, rather than taking action to proactively secure the environment. According to the 2024 SANS Detection and Response Survey, more than half of security teams say false positives are a huge problem, and 62.5% are overwhelmed by sheer data volume.

A major reason for this frustration is that security teams are fighting with their own tools. In a recent State of Security 2025 report, Cisco’s Splunk surveyed over 2,000 security professionals in their community to find:

59% spend too much time and/or effort maintaining tools and associated workflows
51% admit their tools do not integrate well with one another
47% face alerting issues
32% of teams do not have the requisite skills to be efficient in the SOC

Tier-1 alert triage is overwhelming. Analysts face tens of thousands of Tier-1 alerts per day, and on average, security analysts are only getting to half of the alerts they’re supposed to review. Combined with these SOC inefficiencies, the volume becomes too high for human-only triage. As a result, detection and response times suffer. Gartner says, “AI agents are emerging as a critical solution to enhance efficiency, reduce burnout, and enable teams to focus on strategic initiatives.”

Enter Torq Socrates — the agentic AI SOC Analyst designed to dramatically offload Tier-1 workloads and lead organizations toward an autonomous SOC.

What is an AI SOC Analyst?

An AI SOC Analyst serves as an extension of SOC teams, automating incident response by interpreting natural language instructions in security runbooks to execute tasks such as alert triage, containment, and remediation actions. While an AI SOC Analyst autonomously handles over 90% of Tier-1 tasks, human analysts remain in control of critical decisions and can interface with the AI SOC Analyst using natural language for additional enrichment, investigation, and recommended next steps.

Learn unconventional criteria for evaluating AI SOC analysts >

What Is Torq Socrates?

Socrates is Torq’s agentic AI SOC Analyst — a self-deterministic, autonomous AI Agent that plans, reasons, and acts the way a human SOC analyst would. Unlike SOAR solutions or common Generative AI chatbots, Socrates does not require human instruction or guidance. Socrates understands the SOC objectives and executes complex actions with minimal oversight.

Legacy SOAR and generic workflow automation solutions offer AI chatbots that run on static, rule-based playbooks — controlled by human input. And, while GenAI augments case triage by generating context to help reduce detection and response times, it is still largely reactive and reliant on human analysts to instruct, guide, and manually trigger remediation actions. Agentic AI, on the other hand, represents the next leap towards a more autonomous SOC.

According to IDC’s latest report, agentic AI has enormous potential in cybersecurity as it can process and solve problems the way a human being would. Socrates isn’t reactive — it’s adaptive. To continuously improve and evolve with new threats, Socrates uses:

Semantic memory to understand prompts and take explicit action
Episodic memory to learn from past incidents to develop new strategies
Procedural memory to make decisions on which tools to use and which data to gather

The Anatomy of Socrates: Torq’s OmniAgent

Socrates is more than just a single AI Agent. Socrates sits at the helm of Torq’s Multi-Agent System (MAS), acting as an OmniAgent in charge of coordinating multiple specialized AI Agents. Each of these agents is trained to perform a specific task, and is capable of using sophisticated iterative planning and reasoning to solve complex, multi-step problems autonomously. Torq’s AI Agents include:

Runbook Agent: Autonomously plans and adapts incident response runbooks with a deep knowledge and understanding of the environment.
Investigation Agent: Performs deep-dive investigations in seconds, uncovering hidden patterns across disparate data sources and tools to pinpoint root causes and assess threat impact.
Remediation Agent: Executes remediation actions, closing the loop with verifiable outcomes, either by autonomously following the associated runbook or through human-in-the-loop response.
Case Management Agent: Gathers real-time and historical data, organizes case timelines, highlights key indicators, and reprioritizes incidents based on evolving information.

This agentic AI architecture is supported by first in class Retrieval-Augemented Generation (RAG) and Model-Context Protocol (MCP) technology that helps the Torq MAS dynamically accelerate SecOps outcomes by improving detection and triage accuracy, while reducing MTTD and MTTR.

How an AI SOC Analyst Performs Tier-1 Tasks

So, how does Socrates leverage Torq’s MAS to perform Tier-1 security tasks? Let’s look at this Command and Control attack detected by Crowdstrike and see how tasks previously handled by human analysts are now handled with unprecedented efficiency by Torq’s AI SOC Analyst, Socrates.

*Watch Socrates, Torq’s AI SOC Analyst, following the guidelines in a SOC runbook to triage a case automatically.*

1. Automatic Runbook Analysis

When a security event arises, an analyst traditionally consults a “runbook” – a guide specifying the response to that specific type of event. Today, these “runbooks” exist in all modern SOCs and are prepared by senior architects to benefit Tier-1 and Tier-2 analysts.

Torq Socrates looks at outcomes of historical cases and associates the appropriate runbook based on the observables of the new case. Socrates automatically analyzes runbooks written in natural language, typically containing step-by-step procedures for handling various security incidents. By analyzing the semantic meaning of the natural language instructions, the AI SOC Analyst derives action flow from the recommended response strategies for different security events.

*The associated case remediation runbook is written in natural language that Socrates analyzes, “understands,” and can follow.*

2. Deep Research Incident Investigations

The many security tools available in the arsenal of Tier-1 SOC analysts can return a large amount of detailed information. The analyst’s goal is to synthesize this information into a decision about which next steps to take, according to the runbook’s guidance.

Just as human analysts rely on insights from the runbook, Socrates can assist in automating investigation or even incident response tasks. This includes executing tasks such as alert triage, data enrichment, containment, and remediation actions, which speeds up response times and reduces the manual effort required from human analysts.

An agentic AI SOC Analyst like Socrates excels at processing both structured and unstructured security tool data. This enables it to analyze complex information and create dynamic decision trees based on runbook analysis. These decision trees adapt to the specific context of each incident, allowing for more efficient and accurate incident handling. For example, Socrates can determine: Is the file malicious? Is the user a very important person (VIP)? Is the activity frequent or infrequent during a specific time period indicating anomalous behavior?

*Socrates utilizing Crowdstrike, VirusTotal, and a deep understanding of the organization’s environment to query observables and distill the relevant information.*

3. Knowledge of Security Frameworks for Context

More experienced alert triage specialists bring their own contextual knowledge and understanding of networking, endpoint architecture, and attack techniques into the mix.

AI Agents are trained on an immense body of natural language documents containing information about the above and more. This allows the semantic analysis of an AI Agent to match the observed outcome of a security tool and the technique described in a documented framework, such as the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

Using the above technique, Torq’s agentic AI SOC Analyst, Socrates, leverages the information available in numerous documents describing attack frameworks, such as the MITRE ATT&CK framework, and maps its tactics and techniques to the outcomes observed in the analyzed security event.

Intelligent modeling with Torq’s AI SOC Analyst Socrates enables it to mimic a human-like thinking process, correlating information efficiently and mapping the appropriate outcomes to common frameworks like the MITRE ATT&CK framework, NIST, and more.

4. Leveraging Hyperautomation to Perform Designated Remediation Actions

The next step for a human analyst is to carry out the remediation actions outlined in the runbooks, choosing the proper tool and executing the instructions.

Based on the content of the runbook, the AI SOC Analyst utilizes its semantic analysis capabilities to suggest and trigger suitable Hyperautomated workflows and security tools from the list of ones explicitly made available within the Torq platform. These workflows align with the specific steps outlined in the document conveyed in natural language.

*Torq Socrates performing the initial actions within the runbook.*

5. Intelligent Case Management and Documentation

An important pillar of any operational practice is the meticulous documentation of all actions taken, decisions, and achieved outcomes.

AI Agents have proven to be efficient at summarizing large amounts of natural language text. Torq Socrates leverages this capability to summarize the “conclusions” and desired next steps, and document them in the “case timeline”. Socrates then reaches back into its toolbox and ability to take action autonomously, marking the case as “closed” and moving the case forward without any human intervention.

*Torq Socrates summarizing the findings and actions taken of the security event and automatically adding them to Torq’s built-in ticket management system timeline.*

How Security Teams Use Socrates Today

Gartner forecasts that by 2028, multi-agent AI in threat detection and incident response will rise from 5% to 70%. For Torq customers leveraging Socrates, this is already their reality.

“I believe the successful use of Torq Agentic AI in SOC operations shows up in practical outcomes. With Torq Agentic AI, the answer is yes to questions such as: Are analysts happier? Are they sticking around? Do they have time to focus on more interesting and complex investigations? Are MTTM and MTTR lower? Torq Agentic AI extends and enhances our team so it can make better decisions more quickly — resulting in stronger security all around.”
Mick Leach, Field CISO, Abnormal Security

Socrates isn’t just another tool — it’s another teammate. And it’s changing the way security gets done. With Socrates, security decisions are made with context, fully automated incident response becomes the default, and agentic AI becomes the connective tissue across previously siloed security solutions that enable SOC teams to move from human-in-the-loop to human-on-the-loop.

According to IDC, Torq HyperSOC, powered by Socrates, helps:

Eliminate over 95% of Tier-1 analyst workload
Reduce time-to-remediation by 90%
Increase case handling capacity 3-5x with zero added headcount

Torq Socrates is designed to handle Tier-1 triage actions by mapping the tasks and activities of human Tier-1 analysts to use cases leveraging agentic AI. With Torq Socrates as their AI SOC Analyst, human security analysts remain in charge of processes and outcomes while introducing dramatic new efficiencies and incident response accuracy, alleviating security analysts’ most critical challenges.

Want to meet Socrates? Request a demo. And get the AI or Die Manifesto to learn strategic considerations and CISO advice for deploying AI in your SOC.

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Cybersecurity Best Practices Every Organization Should Follow

By Torq

May 30, 2025

8 Minute Read

What are Best Practices in Cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity best practices are proactive measures, policies, and technologies designed to minimize your organization’s cyber risk. Adhering to these practices helps businesses stay secure by preventing breaches, ensuring compliance, protecting sensitive data, preventing data breaches, and maintaining business continuity.

Many cybersecurity frameworks emphasize the “5 C’s of cybersecurity”:

Change: Regularly updating security measures.
Compliance: Adhering to industry standards and regulations.
Cost: Balancing security spending and effectiveness.
Continuity: Ensuring ongoing business operations after incidents.
Coverage: Comprehensive protection across all digital assets.

To improve cybersecurity, companies must combine extensive policies, employee education, strong access controls, and real-time threat response, ideally powered by scalable Hyperautomation platforms.

10 Essential Cybersecurity Best Practices (and How Torq Hyperautomates Them)

Cyber threats move fast, and your defenses need to move faster. These ten best practices are non-negotiable for modern SOC teams. But implementing them manually? That’s where most organizations fall behind.

Torq Hyperautomation™ eliminates the friction by turning best practices into fully automated, always-on workflows. Whether enforcing access controls, responding to phishing attempts, or monitoring endpoints, Torq ensures each control is executed precisely and at scale.

Here’s what to put in place now — and how Torq helps you do it effortlessly.

1. Use Strong, Unique Passwords and a Password Manager

Passwords are often the first — and weakest — line of defense against cyber intrusions. Weak or reused passwords significantly increase the risk of account compromise, especially in credential stuffing and brute-force cyber attacks. Organizations should enforce strong password policies that mandate the use of long, complex, and unique passwords for every account.

To ease the burden on employees, deploy enterprise-grade password managers that generate, store, and autofill passwords securely. These tools reduce password fatigue and help prevent risky practices like writing down credentials or reusing them across platforms. Periodic password audits can also be automated with Torq, which can trigger alerts when passwords aren’t updated or don’t meet compliance standards.

2. Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) Everywhere

MFA is one of the simplest and most effective ways to prevent unauthorized access. It ensures that even if credentials are compromised, hackers can’t easily access sensitive systems without a second form of verification, such as biometrics, hardware tokens, or authenticator apps.

Torq enhances MFA implementation with Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) automation workflows. Security teams can use Torq to enforce MFA across platforms, audit authentication events, and automatically revoke access for users who haven’t completed MFA setup, minimizing friction and oversight.

3. Keep All Software and OS Up to Date

Outdated systems often harbor unpatched vulnerabilities that threat actors exploit. From zero-day vulnerabilities in operating systems to neglected third-party apps, every unpatched asset is a liability.

Implement an automated patch management strategy. With Torq, security teams can set up workflows that monitor software versions across endpoints, flag outdated components, and trigger notifications or remediation actions when updates are overdue. Coupling this with scheduled audits ensures continuous hygiene and reduces attack surfaces.

4. Install Antivirus and Anti-Malware on Every Device

Endpoint protection remains critical in defending against a broad range of cyber threats including ransomware, malware, and trojans. Organizations should deploy endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions that use real-time behavioral analysis, not just signature-based detection.

To ensure these tools stay effective, Torq can integrate with antivirus platforms to monitor endpoint health, validate update statuses, and automate quarantine or isolation actions in response to detected threats, speeding up remediation and reducing exposure windows.

5. Secure Networks with Firewalls and VPNs

Firewalls and VPNs help shield organizational networks from unauthorized access and malicious traffic. Firewalls block suspicious inbound/outbound traffic, while VPNs provide encrypted tunnels for secure remote access, especially critical in hybrid work environments.

Torq can enhance these protections by automating firewall rule updates, triggering alerts when unexpected changes occur, and monitoring VPN usage for anomalous patterns such as logins from unusual geolocations or times. This automation ensures your network security posture stays strong without requiring constant manual oversight.

6. Regularly Back Up Data to the Cloud and Offline

Cyberattacks like ransomware and accidental deletions can lead to devastating data loss. Regular backups are your safety net. Organizations should adopt a 3-2-1 backup strategy: three copies of data, two on different media, and one offsite.

Torq helps ensure backup best practices are followed by automating backup verification, alerting if a backup fails, and orchestrating regular backup operations. Teams can also use Torq to conduct post-backup security posture checks to ensure backups aren’t infected or misconfigured, ensuring they’re both usable and secure.

The human element remains the weakest link in cybersecurity. Regular security awareness training, including simulated phishing campaigns, is essential to prepare employees for common social engineering tactics.

Torq supports these efforts with automated phishing response workflows. When phishing attacks are reported or detected, Socrates, our AI SOC Analyst, rapidly investigates, auto-remediates the message, and updates the reporting employee, reducing response time and enabling analysts to focus on complex threats. Combined with training, this creates a layered defense against email-based attacks.

8. Use Encryption for Sensitive Data at Rest and in Transit

Encryption ensures that even if data is intercepted or accessed without authorization, it remains unreadable. All sensitive data — customer records, financial information, proprietary code — should be encrypted both at rest (on storage systems) and in transit (during transmission over networks).

Organizations should enforce the use of industry-standard protocols such as AES-256 and TLS 1.3, and regularly audit encryption configurations. Torq can automate policy enforcement and integrate with encryption management systems to verify encryption coverage and trigger alerts for unprotected data assets.

9. Limit User Access with RBAC and Least Privilege

The principle of least privilege (PoLP) limits access rights for users to the bare minimum necessary. Overprivileged accounts are a goldmine for cybercriminals and a major source of internal risk.

Torq’s RBAC capabilities automate access provisioning, ensure only necessary permissions are granted, and continuously audit user roles. If access privileges drift over time due to role changes or misconfigurations, Torq can automatically flag or correct them, helping prevent lateral movement in case of compromise.

10. Monitor for Suspicious Behavior and Automate Alerts

Traditional alerting often leads to analyst burnout due to high volumes of low-fidelity alerts. Modern threats demand intelligent monitoring that can identify anomalies and respond in real time.

Torq’s multi-agent system continuously monitors systems for signs of compromise and suspicious behavior. When an anomaly is detected, it automatically triages the event, enriches it with context, and initiates workflows to investigate or contain the threat, without requiring human intervention. This reduces MTTD and MTTR, keeping your defenses agile and proactive.

Common Cyber Threats Every Organization Faces

To understand why these security best practices matter, consider some of today’s most pressing cyber threats:

Ransomware: Ransomware attacks encrypt critical data, demanding payment for restoration. Organizations must maintain backups, enforce patch management, and automate threat detection to prevent such attacks.
Phishing: Attackers trick employees into revealing credentials or downloading malware. Continuous security awareness training and automated phishing remediation significantly reduce phishing-related breaches.
Insider Threats: Whether intentional or accidental, insider threats pose significant risk. Implement strong RBAC policies and continuous user activity monitoring to quickly detect suspicious behavior.
DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service): Attackers overwhelm your network or services with traffic, disrupting operations. Deploy firewall protections, traffic monitoring, and automated mitigation responses to maintain availability.

Hyperautomate Your Cybersecurity Best Practices with Torq Hyperautomation

Even the most extensive cybersecurity best practices can fall short without consistency, speed, and scalability. That’s where Torq Hyperautomation steps in.

Torq automates every layer of your security operations — from detection to remediation — without writing a single line of code. Whether you’re enforcing MFA, orchestrating real-time phishing response, or managing RBAC policies across hybrid environments, Torq executes it all with precision and speed.

Torq’s Hyperautomation platform empowers organizations to convert cybersecurity best practices into always-on, fully orchestrated workflows. Our agentic AI capabilities, including our multi-agent system led by Socrates, detect, triage, and respond to alerts instantly, without flooding your team with noise.

This means your security analysts spend less time on repetitive triage and more time focused on high-impact, strategic initiatives. And with a vast library of integrations and workflow templates, you can implement sophisticated security controls faster than ever.

Build a Stronger, Smarter Security Posture

Cybersecurity threats are growing rapidly, but so are the solutions to fight them. Adopting these cybersecurity best practices will strengthen your organization’s defenses against modern threats. However, manually managing every aspect of security is unsustainable.

Torq Hyperautomation gives your organization an edge by transforming security best practices into streamlined, automated operations. From employee training and endpoint protection to real-time threat response and compliance reporting, Torq ensures that your security posture isn’t just strong; it’s intelligent, adaptable, and future-ready.

Ready to strengthen your cybersecurity posture with Torq?

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Contents

What is a SOC Tool?

SOC Tools

5 Core Capabilities of Security Operations Center Tools

1. Continuous SOC Monitoring

2. Log Collection and Analysis

3. Threat Detection

4. Incident Response

5. Automation

The Top 10 SOC Tools in 2025

1. Log Collection and Management

2. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

3. Vulnerability Management

4. Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Extended Detection and Response (XDR)

5. Email Security

6. Threat Hunting

7. Threat Intelligence

8. Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

9. Identity and Access Management (IAM)

10. Automation

How Automation Transforms SOC Tools

How Torq Hyperautomation Transforms the SOC

Seamless Integration with Your Entire Security Stack

AI Agents That Work Like SOC Analysts

Natural Language-Driven Automation

Hyperautomation at Enterprise Scale

Built to Flex with Your Needs

Hyperautomation is the SOC Tool You Need Today

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

Contents

The Evolving Landscape of SOC Tools

SIEM: Built for Logging and Search, Not Speed

SOAR: Designed to Orchestrate, but Not Adapt

Hyperautomation: A New Model for a New Threat Landscape

What Makes Hyperautomation Different

Hyperautomation’s Strategic Value

Proven Benefits of Security Hyperautomation

SIEM vs SOAR vs Hyperautomation

Why Hyperautomation Wins for Modern SOCs

How to Transition from SIEM/SOAR to Hyperautomation

You Don’t Have to Rip and Replace

Connect What You Have. Automate What You Couldn’t.

Building Automated Workflows for Detection → Response → Remediation

Automate Everything That Matters

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90 Days to SOC Autonomy: How Torq Customers Get There

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

Contents

Hyperautomation: A SOC Must-Have

1. Endpoint Detection and Response

EDR Hyperautomation in Action: Torq and SentinelOne

2. Email Security

Email Security Hyperautomation in Action: Torq and VirusTotal

3. Identity and Access Management (IAM)

IAM Hyperautomation in Action: Torq and Okta

Fast, Scalable Results… In Days

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90 Days to SOC Autonomy: How Torq Customers Get There

Torq for MDRs: Increase Margin and Onboard Customers Faster

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Contents

Manual Phishing Triage: A Losing Battle for SOC Teams

What is Automated Phishing Response?

6 Hyperautomated Phishing Response Strategies and Tactics

1. Perimeter Defense: Hardening the Email Gateway

2. Identity and Access Control: Protecting Your People

3. Endpoint Security: Containing the Impact

4. The Human Element: Empowering Users as a Line of Defense

5. Data Protection & Incident Response: Minimizing the Damage

6. Continuous Improvement: Learning from Every Attack

Example Automated Phishing Alert Analysis Workflow in Torq

Case Study: Lennar Cuts Phishing Resolution from Hours to Minutes

Win the Phishing War with Automated Phishing Response

Related Articles

90 Days to SOC Autonomy: How Torq Customers Get There

Torq for MDRs: Increase Margin and Onboard Customers Faster