HyperSOC-2o: The Game-Changing, Analyst-Validated Autonomous SOC

By Bob Boyle

April 23, 2025

10 Minute Read

The autonomous SOC is here. It is no longer a distant reality, it’s not a pipe dream, and it’s certainly not just another cybersecurity buzzword. According to IDC’s latest report exploring the evolution from generative AI to agentic AI in cybersecurity, the autonomous SOC is “heaven on earth…everyone should want it.”

And with the release of Torq HyperSOC-2o, now everyone can have it.

WTF is HyperSOC-2o?

HyperSOC-2o is the latest release of Torq HyperSOC™ — our most autonomous model to date and the first truly agentic SecOps platform.

Torq HyperSOC™ was first released in April 2024 as a purpose-built solution that harnesses the power of the AI-driven Torq Hyperautomation™ platform to automate, manage, and monitor critical SOC responses at machine speed. At the time of initial launch, IDC had this to say:

“Every day, IDC is engaged with SOC professionals who communicate the existential challenges they’re facing, both in terms of keeping up with ever-escalating threat complexity and volume, and the incredible burden that places on the shoulders of their teams.

Torq HyperSOC is the first solution we’ve seen that effectively enables SOC professionals to mitigate issues including alert fatigue, false positives, staff burnout, and attrition. We are also impressed by how its AI augmentation capabilities empower these staff members to be much more proactive about fortifying the security perimeter.”
Chris Kissel, Vice President, Security & Trust Products, IDC Research, Achieving Machine Speed Detection and Response

A lot has changed since HyperSOC was first released, but SOC challenges remain the same. In a recent Emerging Techscape for Detection and Response Startups report, Gartner notes that as cybersecurity threats grow in volume and complexity, SOC teams continue to experience increasingly heavy workloads. While the surge in AI-supported threats demands more resources, more attention, and puts significant pressure on SOC teams to respond to threats effectively, Gartner says “AI agents are emerging as a critical solution to enhance efficiency, reduce burnout, and enable teams to focus on strategic initiatives.”

SOC teams are still struggling to keep up with increasingly complex threats, utilizing the limited resources available to them. According to IDC’s report, “Agentic AI is the next step toward a more autonomous SOC, but there must also be a bridge where local decisions have to become extensible to the greater network.” That bridge is HyperSOC-2o.

The Need for the Autonomous SOC

SOCs have been using AI, machine learning (ML), and large language models (LLMs) to collect information, assess risk, and prioritize alerts for some time now. These common GenAI use cases perform the first stages of security event triage, enabling security teams to interact and guide investigations through a natural language interface — significantly reducing the detection and response time to alerts. So why do we need the autonomous SOC?

An AI-influenced SOC, supported by a GenAI digital assistant, is still reliant on the ability and capacity of a human analyst to instruct and guide remediation actions. While security automation plays a significant role in the real-time response to these threats at machine speed — certainly faster than a human analyst could triage, investigate, and respond without GenAI augmentation — the truth is that GenAI and automation alone is still a reactive security posture.

What good are AI-driven, triaged, enriched, and prioritized comprehensive security cases that sit there waiting for a human to press the big red remediate button, if SOC analysts are still drowning in so-called “high priority” alerts? AI is supposed to reduce a SOC analyst’s workload, not create more manual tasks to watch over and approve.

Moving from the Aspirational to the Inspirational in SOC Processes

Agentic AI is different. The IDC report explains that “[agentic AI] can solve problems, adapt to its environment, and make complex decisions based on goals and available information. It does this in real time without constant human supervision. Agentic AI is self acting and self deterministic.” The promise is that agentic AI will become as effective on the prevention side as its GenAI predecessor has become in detection and response.

“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. AI and ML are revolutionizing proactive defense security by adding preemption and enhancing detection and response capabilities.”
Gartner, Emerging Tech: Techscape for Detection and Response Startups, March 2025

IDC goes on to state that the next leap towards the autonomous SOC is fusing the MTTD and MTTR improvements of GenAI with the human-like decision making of agentic AI to produce the following improved SOC outcomes:

Agentic AI becomes the mastermind of every incident: AI agents will handle over 95% of manual case triage, investigation, and enrichment without requiring constant human intervention — shifting from human-in-the-loop to human-on-the-loop. This supervisory model means humans will get involved much later in the case management lifecycle, if at all — likely only when the AI agent deems a case critical enough to require human oversight.

The incident detection and response life cycle will have embedded compliance and governance: Blackbox decision making from AI solutions does not suffice. Agentic AI records the deterministic logic and reasoning behind its decision-making in real-time for a security case, reducing the manual burden and risk of human error associated with case management documentation today.

The threat detection and response life cycle greatly improves a company’s proactive cybersecurity posture: The three key pillars that define agentic AI and allow it to solve complex problems and make human-like decisions are semantic memory, episodic memory, and procedural memory. As a result, agentic AI can apply what it’s learned from managing similar incidents in the past to improve future response processes and adapt to the latest emerging threats.

Fully automated responses will be nearly ubiquitous in the SOC: AKA… achieving the autonomous SOC. Together, GenAI and agentic AI will eliminate 95% of Tier-1 security tasks as most SOC processes become fully automated.

Agentic AI has enormous potential in security operations because of its ability to process and solve problems like a human SOC analyst. Alone, however, agentic AI still isn’t enough to achieve autonomy — Hyperautomation becomes the key to holding it all together. To truly achieve the autonomous SOC, security teams must use agentic AI to combine and contextualize relevant security event data in an instant, then leverage Hyperautomation to take remediation action as quickly as possible, without the delay of human intervention.

“Torq’s Hyperautomation capabilities can help improve the efficacy of security teams now and with an eye to the future. Hyperautomation is a type of glue logic that binds static entities, such as logs, directories, and applications, creating usable correlations for observation, detection and response, and remediation. Torq is working on all SOC fronts while improving MTTD, MTTR, threat hunting, and remediation actions impactfully. The agentic AI architecture is disruptive.”
Chris Kissel, Vice President, Security & Trust Products, IDC Research

The unique combination of GenAI, agentic AI, and Hyperautomation is why IDC recognizes Torq alone to have established the most important building blocks needed to achieve the autonomous SOC.

HyperSOC-2o: Achieving the Autonomous SOC

Last week Torq announced HyperSOC-2o — the world’s first truly autonomous SOC.

This latest version of Torq HyperSOC™ expands Torq’s Multi-Agent System (MAS) by incorporating cutting-edge Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) technology into existing agentic AI functionality. RAG allows Torq AI Agents to reference massive amounts of data and produce extremely specific outputs that are highly contextual, continuously improving in accuracy and enabling game-changing deep research capabilities.

Socrates, the agentic AI SOC Analyst, sits at the helm of HyperSOC-2o, acting as an OmniAgent responsible for controlling and collaborating with four new RAG-enabled micro-agents. These agents are trained in specific areas of expertise and capable of using sophisticated iterative planning and reasoning to solve complex, multi-step problems autonomously. The four micro-agents are:

Runbook Agent: Plans highly customized agentic threat investigations and responses based on its ability to learn from past incident outcomes, recognize similar attack patterns, and adapt to emerging threat vectors.
Investigation Agent: Uncovers hidden attack patterns across disparate data sources, performs detailed root cause analysis, and accurately assesses threat impact to help HyperSOC-2o effectively prioritize responses.
Remediation Agent: Takes action across the security stack either completely autonomously, or by intelligently escalating critical cases for human-in-the-loop remediation, reducing MTTR and enabling SOC analysts to trigger complex actions at machine speed.
Case Management Agent: Delivers faster access to real-time and historical data through AI-generated case summaries, enabling more accurate threat identification, dynamic case prioritization, and streamlined decision-making by eliminating irrelevant noise.

Think of Socrates like the head coach of a football team. The head coach is surrounded by specialists — an offensive coordinator, a defensive coordinator, a special teams coordinator, assistant coaches, and so on. While it is the head coach’s responsibility to make the final play calls on game day, they rely heavily on their specialists to study the opponent’s game film, design the plays, and make real-time adjustments on the fly.

This is exactly how Socrates operates. When a case is assigned to Socrates for auto-remediation — Socrates calls on the Runbook Agent to formulate the most efficient investigation and response strategy. When a SOC analyst asks Socrates to analyze the observables of a case — Socrates employs the Investigation Agent to correlate third-party threat intelligence and find the relevant event data.

And when a threat needs immediate containment, Socrates works through the Remediation Agent to trigger the appropriate hyperautomation workflow — whether that is using Crowdstrike to isolate an endpoint, Okta to reset a password, or Abnormal to remove a phishing attack from an end user inbox.

“Torq HyperSOC makes the potential of AI in a SOC attainable and sustainable by connecting AI with the SOC’s full range of tools and processes. With Torq HyperSOC, you can automate more than 95% of Tier-1 analyst tasks and significantly reduce the burden on existing SOC teams. Torq HyperSOC is a huge game-changer for enterprises.”
Francis Odum, Software Analyst, Cyber Research

Don’t Just Change the Game — Flip the Gameboard

In security, the odds are always stacked against the defender. The attacker has the element of surprise, access to the same AI and security tooling, and room to fail over and over and over again — biding their time until that one successful breach.

To stay ahead, we need to empower SOC teams to act as quickly, accurately, and proactively as they possibly can. HyperSOC-2o gives teams that fighting chance — leveraging AI agents and Hyperautomation to reduce investigation times by up to 90%, increasing the SOC’s capacity to handle 3-5x more alerts with no added headcount, and remediating over 95% of security threats — completely autonomously.

Dive deeper into IDC’s exploration of agentic AI as the next leap in the autonomous SOC.

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Torq HyperSOC™ is the First Autonomous SOC Platform with Native Model-Context Protocol (MCP) Support

By Leonid Belkind, Co-Founder and CTO

April 22, 2025

9 Minute Read

Innovation in cybersecurity technology, particularly in security operations, is advancing at an incredible pace. The past few months have seen a surge in announcements of Agentic AI solutions and SOC Analyst AI Agents, transforming the landscape rapidly. At BlackHat USA 2023, Torq pioneered this space by introducing Socrates, the first AI Agent SOC Analyst. This highlights the remarkable acceleration of AI adoption in cybersecurity and the significant advancements made in a relatively short period.

Socrates, our Agentic AI SOC Analyst, has been up and running for a solid year and a half, which is pretty impressive for this kind of tech. It’s dealing with thousands of real security issues every hour for major companies. Since the initial release of Socrates, Torq has expanded our agentic AI portfolio by launching a comprehensive Multi-Agent System (MAS), as well as the latest version of Torq HyperSOC™ powered by Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) technology.

Even as new entrants jump on the AI-in-SOC bandwagon, Torq continues to push the envelope — Socrates keeps learning and evolving, and Torq remains steps ahead in the Autonomous SOC space.

Today, Torq is proud to announce another ‘first’ in the Autonomous Security Operations field: the first platform to support a Model-Context Protocol (MCP) natively in its architecture. This groundbreaking advancement unlocks a new realm of possibilities in security operations, enabling powerful and exciting outcomes that were previously unattainable. By integrating MCP into its core framework, Torq is paving the way for more intelligent, adaptive, and efficient security solutions, setting a new standard for the industry.

What is Model-Context Protocol?

Model-Context Protocol (MCP) is an open protocol designed to standardize how applications provide context to Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI Agents to retrieve contextual information from applications and systems.

When a security operations process is orchestrated by an AI Agent, native integration with MCP Servers delivers outcomes far greater than static lists of tools and actions, or even extensions with APIs and workflows. This dynamic integration accelerates Security Operations outcomes by improving detection and triage accuracy, and reducing Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Respond (MTTR).

Torq as a Model-Context Protocol Host: Endless Extensibility

Torq HyperSOC-2o acts as an Model-Context Protocol Host, meaning it can natively interface with MCP servers to both fetch context and execute actions. The flexibility of MCP makes integrations with corporate systems and cloud services more agile than ever.

Your AI agent isn’t operating with a fixed toolbox — it can seamlessly tap into real-time data sources, internal databases, SaaS applications, cloud workloads, and more, all through standardized MCP connections. This extensibility ensures your autonomous SOC is always armed with the most up-to-date information and capabilities, leading to more intelligent and effective security operations.

Today, during the early days of Model-Context Protocol adoption, most MCP Servers available for use require self-hosting, making it extremely important to provide an enterprise-grade security for the transport and access layers in order to benefit from the capabilities without compromising the underlying data or operations.

Torq provides unique benefits by leveraging its secure communications infrastructure used for a scalable Hyperautomation of hybrid cloud environments.

Torq platform natively extends its automation and orchestration capabilities to become Model-Context Protocol hosts, allowing access to both self-hosted and cloud-hosted MCP servers in an intelligent and secure manner.

The schematics above depicts how the Torq platform natively extends its automation and orchestration capabilities to become Model-Context Protocol hosts, allowing access to both self-hosted and cloud-hosted MCP servers in an intelligent and secure manner.

Key advantages of Torq’s native MCP Host capability include:

Real-Time Contextual Awareness: AI-driven investigations can pull in live context (user details, asset data, threat intel, etc.) exactly when needed, rather than relying on stale or predefined inputs. This leads to smarter decisions and fewer false positives.
Unlimited Extensibility: Thanks to MCP’s open standard, any new tool or data source that supports MCP can be plugged into your SOC workflows instantly. Torq HyperSOC-2o transforms into a plug-and-play powerhouse, adapting as your environment evolves.
Faster, Smarter Response: Dynamic context enables higher-fidelity alerts and faster root-cause analysis. Early users have seen significant improvements in detection precision and response times, cutting down the investigative workload on analysts.
Enterprise-Grade Security: All MCP interactions through Torq are encrypted, authenticated, and audited. You can safely connect to self-hosted knowledge bases or third-party MCP services, confident that communications meet your security and compliance standards.

Torq as an MCP Server: New Ways to Access Your Processes

Torq’s native Model-Context Protocol architecture opens up an exciting paradigm where Torq workflows, steps, and integrations can be securely utilized as tools and actions within other MCP Hosts. This enables a significant increase in productivity for both security professionals and organizational information employees.

By providing secure, managed, and monitored organizational processes as context to external LLM applications such as Claude Desktop and various IDEs, Torq facilitates seamless integration and enhances the capabilities of these platforms. This approach ensures that sensitive organizational processes are handled with the utmost security while empowering users with advanced AI-driven functionalities.

Imagine an organization embracing self-service processes for various IT and Security functions as a means for increasing organizational efficiency. Torq Hyperautomation has been the hub for such activities since its inception, and now these processes can be accessed in a completely new way, through the organization’s chosen and adopted AI tools.

Torq MCP Server provides access from the organization’s chosen AI tools to Torq workflows, steps, and integrations, increasing the efficiency of leveraging various organization-approved security operational practices natively.

The schematics above depict how a Torq MCP Server provides access from the organization’s chosen AI tools to Torq workflows, steps, and integrations, increasing the efficiency of leveraging various organization-approved security operational practices natively.

For example, a security analyst using a chatbot interface like Anthropic’s Claude or a developer working in an IDE with an AI coding assistant can simply ask their AI agent to perform a task, “Hey AI, scan this newly reported IP across our logs and threat intel sources.” Behind the scenes, the AI agent invokes a Torq workflow (exposed via MCP) that conducts a multi-step investigation across all your tools, then returns the result directly into the chat or IDE. The person didn’t need to switch consoles or manually run any script; the AI, powered by Torq, handled it instantly.

Torq HyperSOC-2o makes this scenario a reality by providing a secure, managed, and monitored way for external AI applications (from chatbots to SIEMs to custom AI assistants) to leverage your organization’s existing Torq automations as first-class actions. Importantly, all of this is done with the utmost security and control.

Torq’s permissioning and audit logs extend into the MCP domain, ensuring that any action an external AI triggers is authorized and tracked. Your sensitive processes remain protected, even as they become more accessible and useful to your teams via AI.

In short, Torq as an MCP server turns the AI tools your team already uses into powerful gateways for your automated SOC workflows — dramatically increasing efficiency and accessibility without sacrificing security.

Security Operations Data as MCP Resources

The above examples of Torq’s innovation in natively adopting the Model-Context Protocol framework are just the beginning. The potential of MCP resources and prompts opens up an exciting avenue for creating native user experiences for navigating and analyzing security events and case data. By leveraging MCP, any AI tool can be transformed into a powerful threat hunting and digital forensics orchestration environment, providing unparalleled capabilities for security professionals. This advancement allows for deeper insights and more effective responses to security incidents, significantly enhancing an organization’s overall security posture.

Consider what this could mean: Analysts will be able to navigate and analyze security events through natural language via their AI assistants, with Torq feeding the relevant data on demand. An AI agent could correlate an ongoing incident with past cases, highlight patterns, or even suggest remediation steps by drawing from your organization’s entire trove of security knowledge — all in seconds, all within the AI’s conversational or analytical environment.

This kind of seamless, context-rich interaction provides unparalleled capabilities for security professionals. It leads to deeper insights, more proactive threat hunting, and ultimately more effective responses to incidents. By breaking down data silos and making institutional knowledge available in real time through MCP, Torq HyperSOC-2o significantly enhances an organization’s overall security posture. It’s not just about doing things faster; it’s about empowering humans and AI to collaborate on tasks that were previously impossible.

Stay Tuned: This is Just The Beginning

“An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense intuitive linear view”, said Ray Kurtzweil in “The law of accelerating returns” in 2021. Almost a quarter of a century later, this statement, which in itself can be seen as a generalization of Moore’s Law from 1965, is being proven as true time after time.

Torq’s journey with AI and automation in security is a testament to this acceleration. We went from conceptualizing an AI SOC analyst to having one in production within months, and now to enabling an open protocol that can fundamentally change how AI systems interact with security tools and data. And we’re far from done.

Torq HyperSOC-2o’s introduction of native Model-Context Protocol support is just the first chapter in an exciting new era of autonomous security operations. Torq will continue to innovate and lead as technology races forward, ensuring our customers stay ahead of the curve. We are privileged to be part of this revolution – and we’re committed to driving it.

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to expand what’s possible in the SOC. The future of security operations is unfolding now, and with Torq, you’re not just witnessing it — you’re leading it alongside us. Let’s embrace this future together and redefine what a truly autonomous SOC can achieve.

How To Use AI to Predict, Prevent, and Respond To Cybersecurity Threats

By Torq

April 18, 2025

9 Minute Read

From zero-day exploits to morphing malware, cybercriminals are increasingly using automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to stay ahead — and traditional defenses can’t keep up. That’s why forward-thinking security teams are turning to AI in cybersecurity to predict, prevent, and respond to threats faster than any human ever could.

AI has quickly shifted from a “nice-to-have” to a mission-critical capability for modern SOCs. Platforms like Torq Hyperautomation™ are making this shift seamless with built-in intelligence and automation that deliver real results.

With a multi-agent system led by Torq Socrates, adaptive playbooks, and real-time behavioral analysis, Torq gives you the speed, precision, and scalability to detect, investigate, and remediate threats at machine speed without overwhelming your team.

Why Traditional Cybersecurity Can’t Keep Up

Legacy security architectures weren’t built for today’s threat landscape. The nature, volume, and velocity of attacks are simply too much for manual approaches and static tools.

Sheer threat volume: Security operations centers (SOCs) are bombarded with a flood of data. Billions of events stream from cloud platforms, endpoints, networks, and third-party tools. Filtering through this data for real signals is nearly impossible without intelligent assistance.
Limited human resources: Security talent is in short supply, and burnout is rampant. Analysts can only triage so many alerts before accuracy and morale drop. AI can help cut through the noise and surface only what matters.
Tools are disconnected: Disconnected systems and disparate dashboards slow down detection and response. Without centralized visibility, threats slip through the cracks. With AI, disparate data sources can be correlated automatically, so nothing falls through the cracks.

What is AI in Cybersecurity?

Artificial intelligence in cybersecurity involves using intelligent algorithms and machine learning models to detect, investigate, and respond to cyber threats. These systems go beyond traditional automation by learning from past data, identifying patterns, and making informed decisions without constant human oversight.

AI in cybersecurity uses artificial intelligence to monitor, analyze, detect, and respond to cyber threats in real time. AI-powered systems continuously scan networks to identify vulnerabilities, detect suspicious activity, and prevent potential attacks before they escalate. By analyzing vast amounts of behavioral and contextual data, AI establishes baselines and flags anomalies that could indicate malware, unauthorized access, or other security risks.

Beyond detection and prevention, AI also plays a key role in prioritizing risks, automating incident response, and enabling security automation at scale. This reduces human error, accelerates threat mitigation, and frees up cybersecurity teams to focus on strategic initiatives instead of repetitive manual tasks.

How AI in Cybersecurity Prevents Cyberattacks

Artificial intelligence has become a game-changer in how organizations detect, investigate, and respond to cyber threats. At its core, AI in cybersecurity leverages agentic AI, intelligent automation, and behavioral analytics to act faster and smarter than traditional tools ever could. Here are some ways AI works in security operations:

Advanced threat detection: AI continuously ingests and analyzes vast volumes of logs, telemetry, and network data. It identifies subtle anomalies deviating from normal behavior — clues pointing to zero-day exploits, insider threats, or stealthy lateral movement. These threats often bypass legacy systems, but AI can detect them early, reducing dwell time and potential damage.
Automated incident response: When known threats are detected, AI instantly executes predefined response playbooks without waiting for human intervention. From isolating compromised devices and disabling user accounts to revoking access credentials or initiating forensic analysis, AI automation ensures that threats are neutralized before they escalate.
Behavioral analysis and anomaly detection: AI cybersecurity applications include real-time user and entity behavior monitoring to establish baseline patterns. When deviations occur, such as unusual login locations, phishing emails, irregular access to sensitive files, or unexpected privilege escalation, AI flags and escalates them as potential threats, enabling proactive defense.
Enriched threat intelligence: AI doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It correlates internal security data with external threat intelligence feeds to enrich alerts with context, improving prioritization and clarity for analysts. This enhanced visibility helps security teams understand attacks’ scope, origin, and intent more quickly and accurately.
Proactive phishing detection: AI-powered systems intelligently analyze email metadata, language patterns, and behavioral signals to detect phishing attempts in real time. By identifying suspicious URLs, spoofed senders, and anomalous requests for sensitive information, AI can flag and neutralize phishing threats before users even see them, reducing the risk of social engineering attacks across the organization.
Cost-efficient security: AI reduces the burden on overstretched security teams by automating routine investigations, triage, and threat correlation. This enables organizations to achieve enterprise-grade protection without continuously expanding headcount, cutting operational costs while maintaining (and even improving) overall security effectiveness.
Automated remediation: AI can also accelerate recovery. From isolating affected endpoints and resetting credentials to restoring systems from clean backups, AI-driven workflows ensure rapid remediation and minimal disruption. This shortens downtime, protects business continuity, and keeps incidents from escalating.
Predictive defense capabilities: The future of AI in cybersecurity lies in its predictive capabilities. Instead of reacting to known indicators of compromise, AI anticipates threats by identifying vulnerabilities and patterns that could lead to a breach. It then recommends or automatically implements preemptive measures — hardening systems before attackers strike.

How Torq Uses AI to Power Security Operations

Rather than applying AI as a surface-level enhancement, Torq treats it as a core capability, enabling more intelligent, scalable, and autonomous security operations.

AI-Enhanced Playbooks

Traditional playbooks follow linear paths that often fail when an unexpected event occurs. Torq’s AI-enhanced workflows are dynamic; they adapt in execution based on real-time inputs, threat intelligence, and behavioral anomalies. For example, if an endpoint begins communicating with a known malicious IP during an investigation, the playbook can autonomously pivot, escalate the issue, and initiate quarantine without human input.

Automated Threat Analysis Across Hybrid Environments

Security environments are no longer confined to a single perimeter. Torq’s multi-agent system ingests, normalizes, and correlates data across multi-cloud, on-prem, and hybrid systems. This ensures end-to-end visibility, rapid threat detection, and intelligent triage across every layer of the modern enterprise. Whether correlating EDR alerts with cloud logs or detecting unusual user behavior across SaaS platforms, Torq enables AI-powered insights that drive action.

Policy Enforcement Without Human Intervention

Using contextual awareness and learned baselines, Torq enforces security policies automatically, whether by disabling suspicious accounts, rotating credentials, or blocking data exfiltration attempts. These policy enforcement actions are triggered based on AI-driven evaluations of risk, not just predefined rules, making them far more effective at keeping up with novel and fast-moving attacks.

Behavior-Based Triggers for Autonomous Workflows

Rather than relying solely on static alert thresholds, Torq uses behavior-based triggers to launch workflows when unusual activity is observed. This allows the system to detect subtle indicators of compromise, like a user logging in from an unusual location or a sudden spike in data transfers, and initiate proactive investigations or mitigations before a threat escalates.

Always Learning, Always Improving

Whether you’re deploying Torq AI Agents for the SOC or interacting with Torq Socrates, the platform constantly refines its models and decision-making logic. By learning from past incidents, analyst input, and environment-specific context, Torq ensures your SOC automation gets smarter daily. Not only does Torq respond to threats; it anticipates and neutralizes them, creating a more resilient, proactive, and self-healing SOC.

Get the AI or Die manifesto for advice for deploying AI the right way as a SOC leader.

5 Benefits of Using AI in Cybersecurity

As cyber threats increase in speed, volume, and sophistication, traditional security tools struggle to keep up. Integrating AI solutions into your security operations equips your team with the speed, scale, and intelligence needed to move from reactive defense to proactive protection. Here are some of the benefits of AI.

1. Faster Threat Detection and Incident Response

In the race against attackers, speed is everything. AI systems accelerates threat detection and incidence response by analyzing millions of signals across your environment in real time.

Torq’s AI-powered platform automatically correlates telemetry from cloud, on-premises, and hybrid sources to identify anomalies the moment they occur. Once detected, Torq’s AI-enhanced playbooks launch instant, context-aware response actions — shrinking dwell time, reducing Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Respond (MTTR), and helping security teams contain threats before damage occurs.

2. Reduced False Positives and Alert Fatigue

One of the most pressing challenges for security analysts is the overwhelming number of alerts, most of which are false positives. AI drastically improves signal-to-noise ratio.

Torq’s intelligent agents use behavioral analysis and historical data to suppress irrelevant alerts and elevate those that indicate real risk. This helps eliminate alert fatigue and gives your SOC team the clarity to focus on legitimate cyber threats without wasting time or attention on false alarms.

3. Enhanced Visibility Across Hybrid Environments

Today’s digital environments are complex and decentralized, spanning cloud infrastructure, on-prem servers, endpoints, SaaS tools, and edge devices. AI applications in cybersecurity make it possible to ingest, normalize, and analyze telemetry across all of these domains.

Torq enhances this capability by layering AI enrichment on top of unified data streams, delivering deep, actionable insights across the full attack surface. This ensures that teams have a complete and continuous view of activity, no matter where threats emerge.

4. Continuous, Adaptive Protection

Unlike static rule-based systems, AI is dynamic. It learns from both historical and real-time data to adapt to new and emerging threats. Torq’s AI-enhanced workflows evolve alongside your adversaries, constantly adjusting detection thresholds, response tactics, and automation triggers based on new threat intelligence and system behavior.

With AI, SOC teams can predict potential vulnerabilities in their security systems by simulating attack scenarios and assessing weaknesses. This proactive approach allows for timely remediation measures, ultimately hardening defenses before threats materialize.

5. More Efficient Security Operations With Fewer Resources

Hiring and retaining skilled cybersecurity talent remains a massive challenge. AI in the SOC helps close that gap. Torq empowers lean security teams by automating Tier-1 investigation, decision-making, and remediation tasks.

This boosts productivity and creates a scalable model where a lean team can manage the workload of a much larger SOC. AI can also reduce the strain on human resources by automating routine cybersecurity tasks. Security teams can focus on strategic initiatives and complex incident responses, rather than getting bogged down in repetitive alert monitoring and analysis, ultimately increasing operational efficiency.

The Future of Cybersecurity is AI-Driven — And It Starts with Torq

As adversaries become more sophisticated, so must the tools we use to fight them. From prediction to prevention to rapid response, AI in cybersecurity enables a new era of intelligent defense.

Torq’s AI-powered Hyperautomation platform ensures that your SOC is staying ahead. With adaptive workflows, real-time analysis, and intelligent orchestration, Torq transforms your cybersecurity operations from reactive to proactive.

Explore how AI can take your security operations to the next level.

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Full SIEM Ahead: How Hyperautomation Unleashes SIEM’s Full Potential

By Torq

April 16, 2025

9 Minute Read

Without fast, automated response, SIEM solutions become a bottleneck. Security Hyperautomation platforms like Torq extend the power of SIEM by transforming alerts into real-time, intelligent action, closing the detection-response gap with precision, speed, and scale. Here’s how modern security teams use Torq to unlock their SIEM investment’s full value.

What is SIEM and What Does It Do?

A SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) system is a cybersecurity tool that collects, aggregates, and analyzes security data from across an organization’s IT environment to detect and alert on potential threats.

Here’s what a SIEM does:

Centralizes logs and events from endpoints, servers, firewalls, cloud services, and applications
Correlates and analyzes events in real time to detect anomalies and suspicious behavior
Generates alerts when specific patterns or rule thresholds are triggered
Supports compliance by providing audit trails and automated reporting for frameworks like HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and GDPR
Enables incident investigation by storing and organizing historical security data for forensic analysis

While SIEM platforms are SOC essentials for visibility and detection, they don’t take action on their own. That’s why modern SOCs pair SIEM with Hyperautomation platforms like Torq to turn alerts into fully automated, real-time incident response.

Limitations of SIEM (And What Torq Adds)

Despite its significant advantages, SIEM alone is not enough to keep pace with today’s fast-evolving threat landscape. It excels at centralizing visibility and detecting threats, but detection without response leads to delay, fatigue, and missed opportunities.

Torq doesn’t replace your SIEM solution; it makes it more effective. By layering intelligent automation, orchestration, and agentic AI over your existing SIEM infrastructure, Torq Hyerautomation transforms passive alerting into autonomous action. Here’s how Torq fills the gaps SIEMs leave behind:

SIEMs generate alerts, but don’t take action: SIEM tools detect threats, but rely on security analysts for response. Torq closes this gap with fully automated, AI-driven remediation workflows that execute in seconds.
SIEMs still require heavy manual tuning and rule maintenance: Torq reduces the overhead with no-code, adaptive workflows that evolve with your environment — no constant rule updates required.
SIEMs can be expensive and slow to deploy: Torq’s cloud-native platform integrates with SIEMs out of the box, accelerating time to value without the cost or complexity of traditional solutions.
SIEMs struggle with newer cloud-native environments: Torq was built for hybrid and cloud-native stacks, offering easy-to-deploy integrations, and full context across dynamic infrastructure.
SIEMs often lack automation, enrichment, and remediation: Torq enriches SIEM alerts with contextual data from across your ecosystem and auto-remediates routine threats to keep your SOC analysts focused on what matters most.

Top SIEM Benefits + How Torq Takes Them to the Next Level

SIEM solutions offer several benefits, primarily focused on enhancing cybersecurity operations and compliance. These benefits include real-time threat detection, improved incident response, compliance reporting, and enhanced visibility into an organization’s security posture.

But a SIEM’s true potential is only unlocked when paired with a Hyperautomation platform like Torq, which can act on those insights in real time, with speed, precision, and scale. Let’s break down the key benefits and how Torq Hyperautomation elevates each one.

Centralized Visibility Across the Enterprise

What SIEM does: Consolidates data from multiple sources (endpoints, firewalls, cloud services, applications) into one platform for unified monitoring.

What Torq adds: Torq builds on this centralization by automatically triggering workflows based on SIEM alerts. It enriches those alerts with additional telemetry from tools like EDR, IAM, and cloud infrastructure, giving security analysts a fully contextualized, real-time view of threats, without manual data gathering.

Faster Threat Detection and Response

What SIEM does: Detects threats by correlating logs and identifying anomalies.

What Torq adds: Torq turns alerts into automated actions. As soon as a threat is identified, Torq can initiate an AI-driven workflow to isolate affected assets, revoke credentials, notify responders, and even contain the incident, shrinking mean time to respond (MTTR) from hours to minutes.

Better Context and Correlation Across Events

What SIEM does: Links disparate events across systems to create a clearer threat picture.

What Torq adds: Torq enriches alerts with threat intelligence, user behavior data, and system metadata from across your stack automatically. This eliminates the need for manual correlation and enables faster, more accurate decisions during investigation.

Improved Incident Investigation and Forensics

What SIEM does: Stores and organizes historical event data for deep-dive analysis.

What Torq adds: Torq automates forensic workflows, pre-populating investigation tickets with enriched event details, artifacts, and recommended next steps. It can also automatically launch post-incident reports and feed findings back into your detection logic for continuous improvement.

Easier Compliance and Audit Readiness

What SIEM does: Provides logs and dashboards needed to meet compliance mandates and internal policies.

What Torq adds: Torq automates audit preparation, collecting evidence, populating reports, and tracking remediation progress across regulatory frameworks like HIPAA, PCI DSS, and ISO 27001. It also ensures that every response action is documented in a traceable, repeatable workflow.

Reduces Alert Fatigue with Intelligent Filtering

What SIEM does: Uses rule-based logic to suppress low-priority alerts and highlight high-risk events.

What Torq adds: Torq offloads routine alert handling entirely. With agentic AI and adaptive logic, Torq identifies, triages, and resolves known issues autonomously, freeing analysts to focus on complex, novel threats instead of digging through alert queues.

Enables Long-Term Log Retention and Trend Analysis

What SIEM does: Stores large volumes of event data for retrospective threat hunting and compliance.

What Torq adds: Torq automates trend analysis by triggering investigative workflows based on historical patterns. It can scan logs for dormant threats, lateral movement, or changes in attacker behavior, surfacing early indicators of compromise that static tools often miss.

SIEM gives you visibility; Torq gives you velocity. Together, they form a modern detection and response powerhouse, one that’s intelligent, autonomous, and built to meet the scale and complexity of today’s threat landscape.

SIEM + Hyperautomation: Automate, Orchestrate, and Accelerate Your SOC

Traditional SIEM tools provide crucial visibility, but they stop short at the most critical moment: taking action. Torq Hyperautomation™ bridges that gap, automatically translating detection into a real-time, orchestrated response.

Orchestrating Automated Incident Response

Torq Hyperautomation is the connective tissue between your SIEM and the rest of your security stack. When a threat is detected, Torq automatically launches the appropriate response workflow — escalating to the right team, isolating endpoints, blocking IPs, or disabling compromised accounts — without requiring human intervention. The result is a quick, consistent incident response that scales with your environment.

Enriching Alerts with Real-Time Context

A plain old SIEM alert rarely tells the whole story. Data enrichment from Torq gathers intelligence from both internal systems (like asset management, identity platforms, and vulnerability scanners) and external sources (such as VirusTotal, WHOIS, and threat intelligence feeds). This added context enables your security operations center (SOC) to rapidly understand the scope and severity of an alert, so every response is informed and accurate.

Connecting SIEM with External Systems

Torq’s integrations natively connect SIEM tools with hundreds of other technologies: IAM systems, EDR, XDR, cloud providers, ticketing systems, SOAR platforms, and beyond. This unifies your environment and allows for fully automated, cross-platform workflows that eliminate alert silos and enable cohesive security operations.

Auto-Remediating Low-Risk Threats

Not every alert needs a human touch. With Torq remediation workflows, SOC teams can auto-resolve routine incidents like quarantining a phishing email, resetting a password, or blocking a suspicious IP. These workflows reduce noise, remove low-risk tasks from analysts’ queues, and address minor issues before they escalate.

Reducing MTTR and Cybersecurity Analyst Fatigue

Torq enables security teams to prioritize critical threats and offload repetitive tasks by combining agentic AI with dynamic workflows. Alerts are triaged in real time, cases are automatically created and enriched, and remediation actions are executed autonomously, cutting MTTR from hours to minutes, and giving analysts time back to focus on higher-value initiatives.

Feature	SIEM Alone	SIEM + Torq Hyperautomation
Threat Response	Alert-only, manual response	Automated, AI-driven incident response
Deployment Complexity	High; slow deployment	Low; rapid integration and deployment
Cloud Environment Support	Limited, manual adjustments needed	Comprehensive, real-time cloud integration
Automation and Remediation	Minimal; manual-heavy processes	Full-cycle automated remediation
MTTR Reduction	Moderate	Dramatic; from hours to minutes

Maximizing SIEM Benefits with Hyperautomation: The Check Point Success Story

Check Point, a leading cybersecurity company, faced a common challenge: too many SIEM alerts, too few analysts. Their overburdened SOC struggled to keep pace with a constant flood of threat signals. With a 30–40% staffing shortfall, manual triage wasn’t just inefficient — it was a security risk.

To close the gap between detection and action, Check Point deployed Torq Hyperautomation. Within days, over two dozen automated workflows were live, instantly handling repetitive alerts and streamlining response processes. Unlike legacy SOAR tools, Torq integrated effortlessly with Check Point’s existing SIEM and security stack, ingesting data, enriching alerts, and executing response actions autonomously.

Now, Torq HyperSOC automatically investigates and remediates many internal alerts. It intelligently escalates cases to analysts with full context and AI-suggested next steps for critical or ambiguous threats. Natural language processing also enables Torq to learn from internal documentation, making triage faster and more accurate.

Within weeks, Check Point reduced phishing remediation time from hours to minutes, accelerated overall SOC efficiency by 10x, and cut manual workloads dramatically — without hiring a single additional analyst.

“It’s a cat-and-mouse game. And, with Torq, we can catch the mouse more easily.”
Jonathan Fischbein, CISO at Check Point

Unlock SIEM’s Full Potential with Torq Hyperautomation

While SIEM tools are essential for centralized threat detection and visibility, they weren’t built to solve today’s most pressing security challenges alone. The alert volume is too high. Security analyst resources are too stretched. And the speed of modern cyberattacks demands more than just passive monitoring.

By integrating SIEM with Torq Hyperautomation, security teams don’t just detect threats; they act on them instantly. Torq empowers teams to automate the entire response lifecycle, from triage and enrichment to remediation and escalation. It reduces time-to-response from hours to minutes, minimizes manual effort, and ensures that even short-staffed SOCs can operate with maximum efficiency.

Detection is just the start. Let Torq take you the rest of the way.

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All Gas, No Brakes: The Autonomous SOC Revolution is Here

By Ofer Smadari, CEO & Co-Founder

April 15, 2025

5 Minute Read

As CEO of Torq, I’ve had a front-row seat to this transformation. In speaking with countless CISOs and analysts, one theme rings loud and clear: We can’t fight modern threats with yesterday’s tools. SOC teams today are wilting under an onslaught of alerts and “busywork,” creating an existential crisis in security operations. It’s time for a bold leap forward.

Leading the Charge: Torq HyperSOC-2o and the Revrod Leap

Earlier this month, we took a decisive step into the future by launching Torq HyperSOC-2o, fresh on the heels of our acquisition of Revrod — a stealth-mode Israeli AI startup with advanced multi-agent AI expertise. This move isn’t just about adding features; it positions Torq at the forefront of the autonomous SOC revolution.

Torq HyperSOC-2o is built around a comprehensive OmniAgent that can identify, prioritize, and remediate threats across the entire organization. By integrating Revrod’s cutting-edge multi-agent RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) technology, we’ve supercharged our platform’s ability to do deep research, planning, and generative reasoning in the SOC. In plain terms: HyperSOC-2o can analyze threats and coordinate responses with near-human-level insight and precision at machine speed.

This isn’t hype — it’s happening now. Torq was recently named an “AI Startup to Watch” by Business Insider, recognizing the momentum and innovation behind our approach. With Revrod’s team now part of Torq, that momentum accelerates.

“Torq is at least 18 months ahead of the pack in delivering true autonomy for security operations.”

I can confidently say Torq is at least 18 months ahead of the pack in delivering true autonomy for security operations. Revrod’s technology “fundamentally changes what’s possible in a SOC,” and by weaving it into HyperSOC-2o, we’re giving our customers the ability to operate faster and smarter than ever. In demos at RSA Conference, attendees will see firsthand that the autonomous SOC isn’t a distant vision — it’s here, and Torq is leading it.

Beyond Legacy SOAR: A Generational Leap in SOC Automation

To understand why this leap matters, consider the tools many SOCs have relied on until now: legacy SOAR platforms like Palo Alto’s Cortex XSOAR (Demisto), Splunk Phantom, or Siemplify. These systems were pioneering in their day, but they were built for a different era and a different scale. Traditional SOAR demanded extensive coding and constant maintenance to keep up with new threats and systems.

In contrast, Torq HyperSOC is built on an agentic architecture where AI agents actively collaborate, reason, and take initiative across the full security stack. We’ve developed an OmniAgent that can orchestrate a team of specialized AI agents, each with its own focus area, dynamically working together like a human SOC team.

Compared to the rigid, one-track automations of legacy SOAR, Torq’s multi-agent brain represents a generational leap. It’s the difference between a scripted assistant and an autonomous colleague. It auto-calibrates its response playbooks and tools on the fly to mitigate threats faster and more accurately than any static playbook could.

Inside Torq HyperSOC-2o: AI Agents on the Front Lines

Rather than a monolithic black box, Torq HyperSOC-2o is an ensemble of intelligent agents working in concert — a “virtual SOC team” that never gets tired. Here’s a closer look at the AI agents powering HyperSOC-2o:

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.
Case Management Agent — Gathers real-time and historical data, organizes case timelines, highlights key indicators, and reprioritizes incidents based on evolving information.
Runbook Agent — Autonomously executes and adapts incident response runbooks with institution-specific knowledge built-in.
Remediation Agent — Executes remediation actions autonomously, closing the loop with verifiable outcomes, operating in orchestrated or human-in-the-loop configurations.

Together, these agents function as an AI-powered SOC unit: ingesting alerts, investigating, collaborating, and remediating as a cohesive intelligence.

Real Results: Faster Responses, Greater Scale, Happier Analysts

Fortune 500 companies have already deployed Torq’s agentic SOC platform. In early deployments, organizations saw:

Up to 90% reduction in investigation time.
3–5× increase in alert handling capacity with no added headcount.
95%+ of Tier-1 security tasks automated.
Significant improvements in key SOC KPIs like MTTR (mean time to respond).

Security leaders can now shift from a reactive stance to a proactive strategy. They can spend more time on strategic initiatives because the AI agents have their backs on the front lines.

The Road Ahead: How AI Agents Will Redefine Cybersecurity Operations

The introduction of intelligent, collaborative AI agents into the SOC is not just an incremental improvement — it’s a tectonic shift. Security operations will never be the same.

Organizations will be able to achieve a level of security posture and responsiveness previously limited to only the most well-staffed enterprises — not by hiring armies of analysts, but by deploying intelligent agents that work like armies of analysts.

The autonomous SOC is here, and it’s here to stay.

The Fast Eat the Slow: AI Adoption for Survival in Modern Cybersecurity

By John "JQ" Quinsey

April 14, 2025

4 Minute Read

Don’t Play Checkers While Attackers Play Chess

Security teams today face an overwhelming number of alerts, many of which result from harmless Internet activity. With countless alerts pouring in daily, identifying the real threats becomes incredibly difficult, and serious vulnerabilities can go unnoticed amid the noise. This is where AI in the SOC comes in.

AI has become essential for detecting and stopping sophisticated threats at scale. By rapidly filtering out irrelevant traffic, an AI SOC analyst can give human analysts a clear head start. Capable of tirelessly sifting through millions of data points, auto-remediating the majority of Tier-1 alerts, and intelligently escalating critical cases, an AI SOC analyst enables human analysts to tackle high-priority threats in real time.

This combination of AI-driven anomaly detection and response with human-led investigation for critical events is essential in today’s cybersecurity landscape, where attackers are constantly evolving their tactics. Relying on traditional methods to defend your organization against a modern attack is akin to playing checkers while the bad guys play chess.

The Early Adopter Advantage in the Age of AI

A few years ago, embracing an early adopter mindset in IT and security operations was considered risky, a gamble on unproven technology. Today, AI adoption in the SOC has become a necessity to combat existential threats. Organizations that are slow to adopt AI run the risk of being eaten alive.

The new cutting edge in AI for SecOps is agentic AI, a paradigm shift that empowers autonomous SOC operations. Agentic AI can coordinate specialized AI agents to autonomously handle cases, build workflows, write case summaries and reports, transform data, and more.

Making the shift to an early adopter mindset for AI in SecOps involves more than just deploying new tools. It requires investment in training so that security teams are equipped to leverage AI effectively and responsibly. It also requires a strategic approach to building trust in AI systems through transparency, explainability, and guardrails, ensuring that AI-driven decisions are reliable and aligned with organizational objectives.

‘The Best Practical Use of AI From Any Vendor’

Torq has GenAI and agentic AI embedded throughout our platform. We use it to help with integrations, to help build workflow automations, and to improve the quality of life of human analysts. By automating routine tasks and providing enriched insights, AI adoption in the SOC frees human analysts to focus on the most critical threats, enabling faster and more effective responses.

I was recently on a call with the CISO at a Fortune 500 company that has been a customer for over a year. She said, and I quote, “Torq has the best practical use of AI I’ve seen from any vendor.”

Ready to turbocharge your SOC with AI so you don’t get eaten alive? Get the AI or Die Manifesto to learn how to deploy AI the right way, so your SOC — and the humans in it — survive.

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AI Hyperautomation Research Security Automation 101

12 Common Cybersecurity Attacks and How to Stop Them with Hyperautomation

By Torq

April 10, 2025

13 Minute Read

This guide breaks down the most prevalent types of cybersecurity attacks and how they continue to evade traditional defenses. More importantly, it shows how modern SOCs are automating their defenses with Torq Hyperautomation™ — using AI-powered detection, investigation, and response to identify, prioritize, and eliminate threats at machine speed.

What Is a Cyberattack?

A cyberattack is a deliberate attempt by malicious actors to infiltrate, disrupt, or damage a computer system, network, or digital infrastructure. These attacks are typically launched to steal data, alter or destroy systems, disrupt operations, or expose sensitive information.

It’s not just about stolen data or defaced websites anymore. Today’s cybercriminals and hackers are strategic. They exploit weaknesses across your people, processes, and technology — whether it’s a vulnerable application, a misconfigured cloud setting, or a team member who clicks on the wrong link.

The motivations vary — financial gain, espionage, political disruption, or even pure sabotage — but the outcome is always costly. Successful cyberattacks can cripple operations, exfiltrate customer or proprietary data, and inflict long-term reputational damage. For regulated industries, the fallout often includes hefty compliance fines and legal consequences.

12 Types Cyberattacks — and How to Stop Them with Hyperautomation

1. Phishing & Spear Phishing

Phishing attacks are among the most widespread and successful forms of cyberattacks. They typically arrive via email, SMS, or social media, disguised as legitimate communications from trusted entities. The goal is to lure recipients into clicking malicious links, downloading malware, or submitting sensitive data such as credentials, banking information, or PII.

When it comes to spear phishing, instead of sending mass emails, threat actors craft personalized messages using information about their targets (often scraped from LinkedIn, websites, or previous breaches). This makes them highly convincing and highly effective.

Successful phishing can lead to full account takeovers, data breaches, financial theft, or further malware infections. It remains one of the top initial access vectors for ransomware attacks.

Torq Advantage: Torq Hyperautomation™ integrates with several key partners to help organizations prevent and mitigate phishing attacks and avoid costly data breaches. To defend against phishing attacks, the first line of automated protection is the email inbox. Torq integrates with Secure Email Gateway (SEG) providers like Abnormal Security, Microsoft, Proofpoint, and Mimecast to improve detection and response by correlating insights across platforms. Once a threat is identified, Torq automatically removes malicious emails and enforces updated security controls.

Key tactics include analyzing multiple email attributes for risk signals, detonating suspicious content in sandbox environments to confirm threats safely, and blocking malicious senders and domains organization-wide to stop future attacks.

2. Denial-of-Service (DoS & DDoS)

DoS attacks flood a system or server with traffic until it becomes unresponsive. DDoS attacks (Distributed Denial-of-Service) use networks of infected devices (botnets) to generate massive traffic volumes from multiple sources, making them harder to block.

DDoS attacks can cripple online services, e-commerce platforms, or customer portals, especially during peak hours. While often used to cause disruption, they can also serve as cover for more covert cyber intrusions.

Torq Advantage: Torq defends against DoS and DDoS attacks by integrating with providers like Cloudflare, Akamai, and AWS to automate real-time detection, response, and remediation. Triggered by Cloudflare alerts, Torq workflows can correlate traffic anomalies, block malicious IPs or domains, adjust firewall or rate-limiting rules, and alert teams via Slack, Teams, or ITSM.

3. Spoofing

Spoofing tricks users or systems into believing a malicious source is trustworthy, via email, IP, DNS, or even internal system impersonation. Domain lookalikes and deepfake voice or video are increasingly used in spoofing, particularly in executive impersonation fraud.

Torq Advantage: For impersonation-based spoofing like CEO fraud or Slack impersonation, Torq uses behavior analytics from IAM tools like Okta and Microsoft Entra ID: flag anomalies in sender behavior, access requests, or login locations and auto-enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA), revoke sessions, or escalate for identity verification.

4. Code Injections

SQL Injection (SQLi) is a code injection technique targeting web applications that interact with databases. Hackers can manipulate backend databases by inserting malicious SQL statements into input fields (such as login forms).

SQLi can expose or tamper with sensitive records, bypass authentication mechanisms, and even escalate access privileges. It’s especially dangerous for e-commerce, SaaS, and any app handling sensitive or financial data.

Torq Advantage: Torq protects against malicious code injection attacks by sanitizing all user inputs and workflow data using built-in utilities like jsonEscape and Escape JSON String. These steps ensure malicious payloads can’t be interpreted as executable code during automation. All scripts in Torq run in a secure, sandboxed environment with strict access controls. Torq also applies input validation and enforces least-privilege access to prevent unauthorized actions, even if injection is attempted. Additionally, every workflow execution is logged and monitored, enabling automated responses to any suspicious behavior.

5. Password Attacks

Password-based attacks aim to compromise user credentials. They come in multiple forms:

Brute force: trying every possible combination
Dictionary attacks: using common passwords
Credential stuffing: reusing leaked credentials across services

Weak passwords, lack of MFA, and poor password hygiene make systems more vulnerable. Gaining access to even one user account can allow hackers to escalate privileges, exfiltrate data, or distribute malware internally.

Torq Advantage: Torq helps protect against password attacks by automating identity-centric security workflows across your entire authentication stack. It integrates with IAM, MFA, and SSO providers like Okta, Azure AD, Duo, and Ping Identity to monitor suspicious login activity, such as brute force attempts or credential stuffing. When anomalies are detected, Torq can:

Automatically block IPs or user accounts after repeated failed logins
Enforce step-up authentication or password resets based on contextual risk
Notify SecOps teams via Slack, Teams, or ticketing systems
Correlate identity signals with threat intel to identify compromised accounts
Trigger full response workflows, including deprovisioning or re-authentication flows

By automating detection, correlation, and response, Torq reduces the exposure window and prevents password-based compromises from escalating into breaches.

6. Insider Threats

Insider threats arise from individuals within the organization — employees, contractors, or partners — who misuse their access. These threats can be malicious (data theft, sabotage) or negligent (falling for phishing, misconfiguring systems).

Insiders bypass perimeter defenses and often have direct access to sensitive assets. Detecting insider activity is difficult, making this a high-risk attack vector in regulated industries like finance and healthcare.

Torq Advantage: Torq protects against insider threats by automating the continuous monitoring, detection, and response to anomalous user behavior across identity, endpoint, and cloud systems. It integrates with platforms like Okta, CrowdStrike, Microsoft Defender, and data loss prevention (DLP) tools to detect deviations from normal activity, such as unusual login times, excessive data downloads, or privilege escalation.

7. Supply Chain Attacks

A supply chain attack targets third-party vendors, software dependencies, or service providers to reach a larger target organization. Examples include:

Malware in software updates (e.g., SolarWinds)
Compromised APIs or SDKs
Vulnerabilities in third-party platforms or logistics partners

These attacks are stealthy, difficult to detect, and highly scalable. They exploit trust relationships to bypass traditional defenses, often affecting hundreds or thousands of downstream organizations.

Torq Advantage: Torq helps prevent supply chain attacks by continuously monitoring and securing third-party integrations, tools, and services. It integrates with code repositories, SaaS platforms, package managers, and CI/CD pipelines to detect anomalies, unauthorized changes, and known vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.

These attacks exploit human behavior rather than technical flaws. Threat actors may impersonate executives (CEO fraud), fake emergencies, or build trust over time (pretexting) to trick victims into disclosing sensitive data or performing unauthorized actions.

Social engineering can bypass even the most robust technical controls. It’s often used as the first step in broader attacks like business email compromise (BEC) or ransomware deployment.

Torq Advantage: Torq protects against social engineering attacks by integrating with identity platforms to detect suspicious account activity in real time. When unusual behavior is detected, it can automatically trigger actions like step-up authentication, account lockdown, or escalation to analysts.

Torq enriches alerts with threat intelligence and behavioral context to distinguish real threats from false positives. For confirmed attacks, it automates full response, isolating users, blocking malicious domains, and notifying teams through Slack, Teams, or ticketing systems. This automation reduces analyst fatigue and ensures faster, more accurate responses to identity-based threats.

9. Zero-Day Exploits

Zero-day attacks take advantage of unknown or unpatched software vulnerabilities. Because the vendor is unaware and no fix exists at the time of the attack, these threats are extremely dangerous. Organizations have no immediate defense, making zero-days a favorite tool for sophisticated threat actors. Once disclosed, the race is on to patch before mass exploitation begins.

Torq Advantage: Torq protects against zero-day exploits by automating rapid detection, enrichment, and response workflows across your security stack. When suspicious activity or anomalous behavior is flagged by tools like EDR, NDR, or threat intelligence platforms, Torq immediately correlates the event across systems to determine risk level.

Torq enhances visibility into potential zero-day indicators using real-time enrichment from threat feeds and behavioral data. It then automatically triggers protective actions such as quarantining endpoints, isolating network segments, or blocking suspicious domains. By eliminating manual delay, Torq helps security teams contain and remediate zero-day threats before they can escalate.

10. Malware

Malware (malicious software) encompasses viruses, worms, spyware, trojans, and ransomware. It infiltrates systems to damage, disrupt, or steal data. Ransomware, in particular, encrypts files and demands a ransom payment — often in cryptocurrency — for the decryption key.

Malware is among the most prevalent cybersecurity threats, encompassing various malicious software types designed to compromise and damage systems:

Viruses attach themselves to legitimate files or programs, spread from one system to another, corrupt or destroy data, and affect system performance.
Worms replicate independently across networks, rapidly spreading without user action, causing bandwidth overload and potential system crashes.
Trojans masquerade as legitimate software, tricking users into downloading malware that provides attackers with unauthorized access to systems.
Spyware secretly gathers sensitive user information, such as login credentials and financial details, without consent.
Ransomware encrypts data, holding systems hostage until ransom payments are made, severely impacting business continuity.

Torq Advantage: When tools like EDR, SIEM, or email security platforms identify suspicious file behavior, Torq automatically enriches the alert with threat intelligence, correlates it across systems, and launches predefined remediation workflows. These can include isolating infected endpoints, disabling compromised accounts, blocking malicious domains, and alerting internal stakeholders via Slack or ticketing systems.

11. Ransomware

Modern ransomware groups operate like organized businesses, using affiliate models (RaaS) and combining extortion with data leaks to increase pressure on victims.

Ransomware can shut down entire business operations for days or weeks. The financial impact includes ransom payments, incident response costs, lost revenue, and reputational damage. Sectors like healthcare, government, and retail are frequent targets.

Torq Advantage: Torq’s Hyperautomation capabilities help stop the attack early by instantly identifying abnormal encryption activity or lateral movement, triggering actions like locking down file shares, suspending network access, and kicking off recovery protocols. Torq also enables proactive protection by scanning IOCs from threat intelligence sources and applying them across your environment, preventing known malware from ever reaching your systems.

By automating investigation and response from detection to remediation, Torq helps reduce dwell time, minimize damage, and keep ransomware and malware threats from escalating into full-blown business crises.

12. AI-Powered Attacks

AI-powered threats aren’t just more efficient — they’re more deceptive, personalized, and scalable than anything seen before. They mimic humans, adjust based on feedback, and execute attacks autonomously at a scale no SOC could keep up with manually.

AI-powered cyberattacks differ from traditional threats due to:

Smarter threat intelligence: Unlike static, rules-based attacks, AI-powered threats learn from failed attempts and continuously optimize their strategies.
Autonomous targeting: AI automates target discovery, scouring public data, social profiles, and exposed assets to pinpoint weaknesses.
Personalized deception: Spear phishing becomes supercharged. AI customizes phishing campaigns based on granular details about each target, dramatically increasing success rates.
Deepfake impersonation: AI enables real-time creation of convincing voice or video deepfakes, fueling new forms.

As AI continues to evolve, so do the threats, making intelligent, automated defense essential.

How to Protect Against Cyberattacks

Employee training: Regularly train staff to recognize and report phishing, BEC, and social engineering threats.
Multi-factor authentication: Add identity layers like biometrics or tokens to stop attackers, even if passwords are stolen.
Password policies: Enforce strong, unique passwords and promote password manager use to prevent easy account takeovers.
Security audits: Run regular audits and vulnerability scans to find and fix security gaps before attackers do.
Threat detection tools: Use AI-driven tools for real-time visibility and faster threat detection across your environment.
Incident response plans: Create and test IR plans to act fast, minimize damage, and recover quickly after attacks.
Automate with Torq Hyperautomation: Eliminate manual tasks with AI-driven workflows that detect, triage, and respond to threats in real time.

Combatting Cyberattacks with Hyperautomation

The speed, volume, and complexity of today’s cyberattacks have outpaced what humans can handle alone. Traditional security models rely heavily on manual processes — analysts combing through alerts, chasing down indicators of compromise, and triggering containment steps one by one. That’s not just inefficient — it’s dangerous.

By combining intelligent automation with AI-driven decisioning, Torq Hyperautomation empowers security teams to detect, investigate, and respond to threats at machine speed. Instead of drowning in noise, analysts are armed with context-rich insights, automated playbooks, and dynamic workflows that act instantly across their entire security stack.

Here’s how:

Instant threat detection and prioritization: Torq listens across your entire security stack, continuously ingesting and analyzing signals. Our multi-agent system instantly triages threats based on risk, business context, and policy.
End-to-end case automation: Torq auto-generates security cases, populates them with all the evidence and context, and assigns them based on team workflows. No more swivel-chair analysis. Just the right response, right now.
AI-driven investigation and remediation: With Socrates, our agentic AI SOC Analyst, Torq doesn’t just respond; it thinks. It uses real-time threat intelligence, enriches alerts, recommends the next best action, and even auto-remediates incidents across your environment.

Stay Ahead of Cyber Threats with Torq Hyperautomation

Cyberattacks aren’t slowing down, and neither should your defenses. Understanding the most common types of cyberattacks is only the beginning. The real advantage comes from responding faster, smarter, and at scale. Torq Hyperautomation transforms your SOC with intelligent, AI-driven workflows that detect, investigate, and neutralize threats in real time, before damage is done.

Ready to see how Torq can revolutionize your cybersecurity operations with advanced automation and AI-driven security response?

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Understanding Security Incident Categories: A Guide to Smarter, Faster Response

By Torq

April 9, 2025

9 Minute Read

In security operations centers, the sheer volume of alerts can be overwhelming, so sorting out chaos starts with knowing what you’re looking at. Quickly distinguishing between a routine cybersecurity event and a genuine cybersecurity incident isn’t merely a matter of semantics — it’s fundamental to effective defense.

This blog breaks down the most prevalent types of cybersecurity attacks and how they continue to evade traditional defenses. More importantly, it shows how modern SOCs are automating their defenses with Torq Hyperautomation™ — using AI-powered detection, investigation, and incident response to turn security incident categories into action.

What is a Security Incident? (And Why Categorization Matters)

A security incident is an adverse event that compromises the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of a system and can negatively impact an organization. It can signify a breach of security policy, a violation of acceptable use, or a deviation from standard cybersecurity practices that has the potential to harm organizational assets or operations.

Security Incident vs. Security Event

Not every security event is an incident. A security event is any observable occurrence or change within a system or network, such as a login attempt or a file access. A security incident, however, means an event with the potential for negative consequences is actually happening or has happened.

Fifty phishing emails landing in user inboxes? That’s an event. A user replying to a phishing email to share confidential information? Now it’s an incident.

Examples of Security Incidents

A user clicks on a malicious link in a phishing email
Malware installed through a fake browser update
An employee accidentally emailed a sensitive file to the wrong recipient
A brute-force attack against user login portals
Unusual traffic spikes that turn out to be a DDoS attack

What are the Two Types of Security Incidents?

Cybersecurity incidents generally fall into two camps:

Intentional: Think malware infections, privilege abuse, social engineering attacks, or targeted phishing attacks
Accidental: Misconfigurations, user error, or lost devices (still very much incidents!)

What is an Information Security Incident?

An information security incident focuses specifically on threats to data, such as unauthorized access, exposure, modification, or deletion of sensitive information. If your intellectual property, customer data, or credentials are at risk, it’s in this bucket.

Why Categorizing Incidents is Critical for Consistent Response and Automation

Widely recognized frameworks like NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) and MITRE ATT&CK offer authoritative models for incident definition and classification, establishing a common operational language. Other established frameworks, such as ISO/IEC 27035, SANS cybersecurity incident categories, and ENISA guidelines, shape how organizations define and structure types of security incidents, particularly within regulated or global environments.

Categorizing incidents helps cybersecurity teams:

Rapidly understand a threat’s nature and potential impact
Triage faster with more context
Ensure consistent and predictable incident response
Lay the groundwork for incident response automation

The true power of incident categorization emerges when it informs and enables automated incident response. In the Torq platform, categorization directly feeds into the design and execution of security workflows and dictates escalation paths.

For example, when an alert is categorized as “malware,” an automated response workflow can be instantly triggered. This workflow might automatically isolate the compromised host and dispatch a contextual alert to the SOC team. This systematic approach substantially reduces alert fatigue, allowing security analysts to concentrate on complex, high-priority investigations rather than wading through noise. The result is significantly faster and more consistent response.

The 6 Most Common Security Incident Categories In Enterprise Environments — and How to Automate Them

Let’s break down the usual suspects. Here are the security incident categories you’ll encounter most in enterprise settings and how Torq Hyperautomation speeds up response.

1. Malware and Ransomware

Malware refers to malicious software designed to disrupt, damage, or gain unauthorized access to computer systems. Ransomware, a specific and highly disruptive type of malware attack, encrypts data and demands payment to get it back.

Example: A finance department user downloads an Excel file disguised as an invoice. Boom. The entire shared drive gets encrypted, accompanied by a ransom demand. This scenario can rapidly halt critical business operations.
Torq in Action: When malware attacks strike, Torq kicks in immediately — isolating infected endpoints, correlating alerts across systems, triggering EDR scans, and notifying the SOC automatically.

Social engineering uses psychological manipulation to trick users to take risky actions or disclose confidential data. Phishing is a type of social engineering that involves deceptive tactics, typically through emails or fraudulent websites, to dupe users into divulging sensitive information.

Example: An executive receives a highly convincing email seemingly from their bank, requesting immediate account verification. Clicking the embedded link directs them to a spoofed website, where their login credentials are harvested and then used for unauthorized financial transactions.
Torq in Action: Torq integrates with leading secure email gateways to flag risky messages, strip malicious links, and remove phishing attempts before users click. Confirmed phishing attacks trigger user notifications and IOC enrichment instantly.

3. Unauthorized Access and Privilege Misuse

Unauthorized access occurs when an individual gains entry to systems or networks without permission. Privilege misuse describes a situation where a user with legitimate access privileges abuses those permissions to access or exfiltrate data outside the scope of their authorized duties.

Example: A recently departed employee’s account remains active. Days later, the sensitive project documentation is downloaded.
Torq in Action: Torq automatically revokes stale credentials, triggers re-authentication flows, and alerts identity teams when suspicious access patterns emerge.

4. Insider Threats (Accidental and Malicious)

Insider threats originate from within an organization. They can be accidental, such as an employee inadvertently misconfiguring a critical server, or malicious, where an employee deliberately seeks to harm the organization, perhaps through intellectual property theft or system sabotage.

Example (accidental): An employee uploads sensitive information like customer data to a personal Google Drive for convenience.
Example (malicious): A disgruntled contractor copies or steals intellectual property before offboarding.
Torq in Action: Torq monitors user behavior across endpoints, identity platforms, and cloud systems to detect anomalies. Unusual activity like bulk file downloads, strange login times, or privilege escalation? Torq flags it and launches workflows to lock accounts, revoke access, and notify HR and legal — automatically.

5. Denial-of-Service (DoS/DDoS)

A Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack aims to render a service unavailable by overwhelming it with excessive traffic or requests, thereby preventing legitimate users from accessing it. A Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack achieves the same objective but utilizes multiple compromised systems, making mitigation significantly more challenging.

Example: A botnet sends millions of requests to your login page, knocking it offline.
Torq in Action: Torq integrates with tools like Cloudflare and Akamai to detect traffic anomalies, block bad IPs, and notify your team.

6. Data Breaches and Exfiltration

A data breach is unauthorized access to sensitive, protected, or confidential data. Data exfiltration is the unauthorized data transfer from a system or network to an external destination. (A data breach usually comes before exfiltration).

Example: A healthcare provider discovers that protected health information (PHI), including patient identities and medical histories, has been accessed and copied by an attacker.
Torq in Action: Torq listens for signs of exfiltration — like abnormal API calls or outbound traffic spikes — then correlates them across systems. If the signals stack up, it kicks off investigation, isolates affected systems, and accelerates breach response.

How Subcategories and Signals Drive Better Detection

Security incident subcategories enable much finer detection capabilities and facilitate highly targeted responses. Think of a crime scene investigation: rather than simply labeling an event as a “burglary”, categorizing it as “forced entry during specific hours” provides far greater context and detail.

Cybersecurity Incident Subcategories That Add Granularity

Some common sub-types of security incidents include:

Business Email Compromise (BEC): This is a subcategory of social engineering where an attacker impersonates a senior executive to deceive an employee into conducting unauthorized financial transfers or disclosing sensitive data. (You know the one: “Hey, it’s your CEO. Quick favor: I’m stuck in a board meeting and really need five $200 Apple gift cards for a client thing. Text me the codes ASAP, thanks! 🙏”)
Keylogger: This subcategory of malware is designed to record user keystrokes, potentially capturing credentials and confidential information.
Credential Stuffing: This is a subcategory of account compromise in which stolen username/password pairs (often sourced from unrelated data breaches) are used to gain unauthorized access to user accounts.

Detection Cues: Precursors vs. Indicators

Two types of signals help with detecting cybersecurity incidents.

Precursors = Early warning signals: These signals suggest an attack may be imminent, offering an opportunity for proactive intervention or prevention. For example, a sudden surge in failed login attempts against a critical system, or an unusual volume of emails containing suspicious attachments.
Indicators = Evidence of compromise: These represent direct evidence that a cybersecurity incident has occurred or is actively underway. For example, unauthorized file modifications on a critical server or a dormant account suddenly logging in from an atypical geographic location and exfiltrating substantial data volumes.

Security Incident Categorization Best Practices

To ensure effective categorization of security incidents, organizations should implement standardized frameworks like the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. Regular training for security personnel to familiarize them with the latest threats and incident types is crucial.

Additionally, utilizing Torq Hyperautomation™ can streamline the categorization process, allowing teams to focus their efforts on high-priority incidents.

Common Challenges in Security Incident Categorization

Despite having a robust categorization framework in place, organizations often encounter security incident categorization challenges such as a lack of real-time visibility into incidents or inadequate data for analysis. This is where Torq Hyperautomation™ shines, providing immediate insights and automating responses based on categorized incidents.

Categorization Is the First Step Toward Autonomous SOCs

Effective security incident classification isn’t merely a procedural step. Security incident categories enable intelligent triage, which fuels automation and accelerates response — all critical for building scalable, autonomous SOCs that can handle modern threat volume and complexity.

Learn how your SOC can move from reactive alert clickers to a strategic value center in the Don’t Die Manifesto.

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FAQs

Why is categorizing security incidents important for an organization?

Categorizing security incidents speeds up everything — from understanding threats to triggering the right response. Clear categories help teams triage smarter, tailor responses, prioritize efforts, and allocate resources effectively. Additionally, accurate categorization lays the groundwork for automation, enabling organizations to implement specific automated responses that minimize reaction time and lessen the impact of cyber threats.

How does Torq Hyperautomation enhance incident categorization?

Torq Hyperautomation streamlines the incident detection and identification and rapidly correlates security incidents with historical data — so your team doesn’t have to start from scratch every time an alert fires.

Can security incident categories evolve over time?

Absolutely. New threats = new security incident categories. That’s why staying current on security incident categorization frameworks to account for changes in the risk landscape is important. Staying agile in your response strategy ensures that your incident management system remains relevant and effective.

What role do employee training and awareness play in minimizing security incidents?

Well-trained employees are your first line of cybersecurity defense — especially against cybersecurity incidents like phishing and accidental leaks. Educating employees about common security threats and ensuring they understand how to recognize and report potential security events not only decreases security incident occurrence but also speeds up incident response and fosters a culture of security awareness.

How can an organization measure the effectiveness of its incident categorization processes?

Track metrics like response times (MTTR), accuracy of tagging, and resolution rates. If things are moving faster across the board, you’re on the right track.

What can organizations do to prepare for new types of security incidents?

Organizations should adopt a proactive approach that includes regular threat assessments and engaging with cybersecurity communities to stay informed on emerging threats. Keep tools current, threat intel flowing, and security incident response playbooks updated with what you’re learning.

How can an organization differentiate between a minor security incident and a major one?

It comes down to impact. Look at the number of compromised systems, the sensitivity of the data involved, legal implications, and business disruption. Use a risk framework to guide the incident response plan based on the severity of the security breach.

What tools can assist in the categorization of security incidents?

SIEMs, EDRs, and threat intel platforms all help with security incident categorization — especially when integrated with something like Torq to drive automated incident response.

How should organizations document security incidents for future reference?

Log the what, when, who, and how of the cyber incident. Torq makes it easy with AI-generated case summaries to help teams analyze trends and sharpen response over time.

What are some future trends in security incident categorization?

Smarter AI, adaptive frameworks, and real-time categorization that evolves as threats change. Torq’s already building toward that future.

Evolution Equity Partners’ Portfolio Companies Tackle a Cyber Crisis

By Patrick “PO” Orzechowski

April 7, 2025

4 Minute Read

Patrick Orzechowski (also known as “PO”) is Torq’s Field CISO, bringing his years of experience and expertise as a SOC leader to our customers. PO is a seasoned security veteran with a deep understanding of the modern security landscape. You can find him talking to SOC leaders and CISOs from major brands at cybersecurity events around the world.

I recently took part in a cyber crisis simulation event which showcased Evolution Equity Partners’ portfolio companies and made Torq’s real-world value strikingly clear.

The simulation presented a realistic scenario: a data breach at a fictional wealth management firm, with the attack’s progression followed through detection, investigation, response, and resolution. Participating companies included Torq, Sweet Security, Oleria, Halcyon, and Cytactic.

This cyber simulation reinforced the need for proactive security: automation, robust identity management, and agile cloud response. It also underscored the importance of having a crisis management system in place for simulating a live event — so when the inevitable happens, all teams, stakeholders, and external parties that need to be involved in resolving a major incident are included from the beginning.

A Cyber Crisis Simulation Unfolds

1. Detecting the Impossible Alert

The initial attack factor in the simulation was a compromised credential initially identified by an “impossible journey” detection in Torq’s AI-native Hyperautomation platform. Torq was able to identify this impossible travel through authentication logs that contained geographical source login information.

The targeted financial services company had several layers in place to detect and respond to these types of attacks, so the incident was kicked off through the initial case management system in Torq.

Through its AI-powered automated response capabilities, Torq’s platform triaged, enriched, and investigated the alert, ultimately determining that it required escalation.

Inside Torq’s platform, this event could then be tracked by the SOC throughout the incident lifecycle until being handed off to Legal, PR, and potentially cyber-insurance and external incident response partners.

2. Confronting the Extortion

After the initial attack, it was determined that the user did in fact access sensitive information contained in an S3 bucket, which was detected by Sweet Security’s unified detection and response platform.

Once the attacker procured the data, they sent an extortion threat letter to the company which included screenshots of contracts and other sensitive information. At this point, management had to:

Decide whether or not to disclose the breach
Determine whether or not the breach was “material”
Assess if they need to contact their customer base.

From there, Oleria identity security platform discovered the attacker had gained access to an insecure SharePoint site, but only accessed a limited amount of sensitive data.It was determined that the SharePoint site needed to be secured and, due to the limited data exposure, a negotiation team was brought in. They then found that the attacker was attempting to move laterally through the company’s systems.

3. Stopping Ransomware Escalation

From there, the company deployed Halcyon’s ransomware defense solution to determine if ransomware was active. Halcyon successfully detected and blocked infections on the systems where it was installed, but the attacker was able to begin encryption on systems where it was not.

The company then engaged Halcyon’s Professional Services to attempt to decrypt what the attacker was encrypting without having to pay for the keys.he keys.

Minimal Damage, Maximum Defense

In the end, the company was able to handle the incident without a breach disclosure and minimal impact to customer operations. This event could have been much worse if the services company did not have advanced detection and response capabilities already deployed within its security stack.

Torq streamlined detection and initial investigation through SOC automation and integration with the entire security stack.
Sweet Security correlated alerts and prevented exfiltration attempts in the cloud.
Oleria uncovered user account activities and assessed breach scope.
Halcyon blocked ransomware escalation and secured endpoints.
Cytactic enhanced tracking and decisionmaking capabilities for incident response.

Learn how Torq and Sweet Security operationalize cloud security automation >

Building Cyber Resilience through Proactive Simulation

This “impossible journey” simulation demonstrated the critical importance of establishing effective cybersecurity strategies and deploying innovative security solutions.

Proactive cyber crisis simulations enable businesses to build resilience and minimize the impact of potential attacks by:

Identifying vulnerabilities.
Improving mean time to detect and respond
Testing incident response plans
Improving decision-making under pressure
Understanding the impact of cyberattacks
Facilitating learning and continuous improvement

Want to learn more about leveling up your SOC’s automation and autonomous response capabilities? Read the SOC Automation Pyramid of Pain.

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Modern SOC Framework: How Scalable Security Ops Are Built for Today’s Threats

By Torq

April 4, 2025

10 Minute Read

Today’s security operations demand more: faster action, smarter decisions, and systems that don’t crack under scale. This isn’t just about staying ahead of attackers; it’s about rebuilding the SOC from the ground up, with automation at its core and resilience in its DNA. This is the blueprint for next-gen security operations — and it’s built for today’s threats.

What is a Security Operations Center (SOC) Framework?

A Security Operations Center (SOC) framework outlines the structure, roles, workflows, and technologies required for a team to effectively monitor, detect, investigate, and respond to cybersecurity threats. It ensures consistency, efficiency, and accountability across the SOC’s operations.

The Three Core Components of a SOC Framework

People: Security analysts, engineers, and managers responsible for triage, investigation, and incident response
Processes: Standard operating procedures for threat hunting, alert triage, escalation, and remediation
Technology: Essential tools such as SIEMs, EDR, IDS/IPS, and automation platforms power threat detection and response

Examples of SOC Frameworks

NIST Cybersecurity Framework: Focuses on five core functions — Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, Recover — to manage cyber risk

MITRE ATT&CK: A detailed matrix of adversary tactics and techniques used to anticipate and understand attacker behavior

Custom frameworks: Many organizations tailor frameworks to their environments, blending industry standards with internal requirements

Benefits of Implementing a SOC Framework

Implementing a structured SOC framework equips security teams with the tools and clarity needed to respond faster, smarter, and more consistently to threats.

Stronger threat detection: Structured approaches enable proactive identification of emerging threats
Streamlined incident response: Defined roles and workflows reduce response times and errors
Reduced risk exposure: Frameworks enforce best practices, minimizing security gaps
Greater operational efficiency: Standardized processes eliminate ambiguity and improve team performance

Key Considerations for SOC Framework Success

A SOC framework must be practical, adaptable, and deeply aligned with the organization’s operational reality to maximize impact.

Integration: Frameworks must align with the organization’s broader security ecosystem and tools
Automation: Automating routine tasks boosts SOC capacity and reduces analyst fatigue
Continuous improvement: Frameworks should evolve with the threat landscape, incorporating lessons learned and new technologies

Rebuilding the SOC for the Cloud-First Era

The pace of digital transformation has reshaped enterprise infrastructure. Agile development, DevOps, and continuous deployment enable engineering teams to move faster than ever, shipping features in real time, automating updates, and expanding cloud-native environments at scale.

But this speed comes with complexity. Constantly evolving systems introduce new vulnerabilities, while fragmented environments spanning public cloud, on-premises infrastructure, SaaS platforms, APIs, and endpoints create blind spots that traditional security operations centers can’t handle.

Legacy SOC frameworks were built for static environments and perimeter-based defense. They were siloed, reactive, and heavily dependent on manual investigation. Threat detection often lagged behind attacker tactics, and incident response relied on slow, disjointed workflows. As a result, security became a bottleneck instead of a business enabler.

Modern security operations require a fundamentally different approach, one that’s cloud-first, automation-native, and intelligence-driven. A contemporary SOC framework must extend continuous visibility across hybrid cloud infrastructure, integrate seamlessly with CI/CD pipelines and SaaS ecosystems, and adapt to infrastructure changes and new threats in real time. Sophisticated threat actors now leverage automation and AI. To keep up, the SOC must do the same.

Modern SOCs are built for resilience and speed. They function as cross-functional, collaborative teams that leverage AI-powered analytics, automated decision-making, and integrated orchestration so that:

Alerts are triaged automatically
Threats are contextualized instantly
Responses are executed across the stack, from IAM and cloud to endpoint and network, without waiting for human input

The result is a security operations center that moves as fast as the business it protects. By evolving beyond the reactive, manually intensive models of the past, today’s security operations centers become strategic assets, delivering continuous monitoring, proactive threat hunting, and intelligent response at enterprise scale.

Torq’s Role in the Modern SOC: Real Automation for Real-World Demands

Modern SOC frameworks need more than strategy — they need execution. That’s where Torq comes in. Torq enables security teams to build and scale their SOC operations in alignment with today’s demands: speed, resilience, automation, and continuous improvement.

With Torq, security teams can operationalize SOC frameworks through:

Visual, no-code workflow automation that empowers analysts to orchestrate threat detection, investigation, and response without engineering support.
Seamless integration with existing SIEM, EDR, cloud security, and IAM tools, ensuring the entire tech stack works together to enforce your framework’s processes.
Enterprise-grade control and compliance with role-based access, audit logs, and policy enforcement that support governance across global SOC teams.

Torq HyperSOC™ is a fully autonomous security operations platform built for the realities of today’s threat landscape. HyperSOC leverages Hyperautomation and agentic AI to dynamically triage alerts, investigate incidents, and trigger precise remediation, all without human intervention. It automates the key components of your SOC framework: from detection logic and enrichment to playbook execution and case management.

Applying MITRE ATT&CK to Strengthen Detection and Response

MITRE ATT&CK (Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge) is a globally recognized, open-source framework that catalogs real-world adversaries’ tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) during cyberattacks. It serves as a behavioral threat model, helping SOC teams and threat intelligence analysts understand how attackers operate.

What it is: Rather than focusing solely on static indicators like IP addresses or file hashes, ATT&CK maps the full attack lifecycle, from initial access and privilege escalation to lateral movement, data exfiltration, and persistence. This enables security teams to build, test, and refine detection and response capabilities that align with how threats unfold in the real world.

How it’s used: Penetration testers and red teams use the framework to emulate adversary behavior and identify weaknesses in infrastructure. Blue teams use it to strengthen defenses by aligning detections and controls to known tactics and techniques, improving visibility, response speed, and resilience.

How it helps: MITRE ATT&CK provides a tactical blueprint of real-world adversary behaviors that SOC analysts can use to improve threat detection and incident response. By mapping alerts and incidents to specific ATT&CK techniques, analysts can identify coverage gaps, refine detection logic, and prioritize high-impact defenses.

Integrating MITRE ATT&CK into SOC workflows enables more proactive threat hunting, more precise response playbooks, and continuous alignment with evolving attacker tactics, strengthening security posture across the entire detection and response lifecycle.

Using MITRE D3FEND to Close Gaps and Validate Controls

MITRE D3FEND is the defensive counterpart to ATT&CK. It maps known tactics to countermeasures, offering prescriptive guidance to reduce attack surfaces and harden systems.

D3FEND empowers SOC teams to implement evidence-based controls, prioritize mitigations, and validate that defenses align with the real tactics adversaries use in the wild.

How Modern SOCs Operationalize MITRE Frameworks

Mature SOCs embed the MITRE ATT&CK and D3FEND frameworks into the fabric of daily operations. These frameworks provide a shared language and strategic lens for identifying detection gaps, simulating adversary behavior, and continuously refining defenses. But their true power is unlocked when paired with Hyperautomation.

With Torq Hyperautomation, SOC teams can:

Instantly remediate detection gaps identified in ATT&CK
Automatically update alert logic and enrich incidents based on mapped techniques
Simulate adversary behavior and validate controls using repeatable, automated workflows

For example, if ATT&CK highlights a missing control for lateral movement, Torq can trigger a sequence to update endpoint detection rules, notify appropriate analysts, and enforce IAM policy adjustments — all automatically.

This transforms the SOC into a self-improving system. One where detection, validation, and response are continuously optimized against evolving threats, and frameworks like MITRE become engines for operational excellence rather than compliance checkboxes.

Beyond automation, leading teams apply ATT&CK and D3FEND for threat modeling and control validation. They simulate realistic attack chains to test how controls hold up under pressure and then harden them based on empirical evidence. Over time, this creates a feedback loop, where detection logic, mitigation tactics, and automated response are continually optimized against evolving threats.

Scaling Smarter: Best Practices for High-Performance SOCs

Modern security operations center frameworks demand more than manual playbooks and reactive processes; they require automation that empowers analysts, accelerates response, and strengthens visibility across every layer of the infrastructure.

With platforms like Torq, SOC analysts can:

Eliminate alert fatigue and manual triage: Repetitive tasks like threat intel enrichment, investigation, and prioritization overwhelm analysts and delay response. Torq automates these processes by pulling context from SIEM tools, enriching alerts in real time, and routing them based on dynamic risk scoring, accelerating triage, and reducing cognitive load.
Embed no-code response directly in ChatOps tools: Incident response should happen where collaboration happens. Torq enables teams to execute security workflows natively within Slack, Microsoft Teams, or any ChatOps environment, allowing analysts to act quickly without switching platforms.
Automate compliance-ready incident documentation: Every step of an incident — from detection through resolution — is automatically logged, timestamped, and auditable. This ensures accurate records for compliance requirements without introducing additional overhead.

But automation alone doesn’t make a SOC resilient. To truly scale operations and mature security programs, organizations must follow best practices for building and evolving their SOC frameworks:

Align with MITRE ATT&CK, NIST CSF, and CIS Controls: Grounding your SOC framework in well-established standards ensures consistency, auditability, and defensibility. Integrating these frameworks into day-to-day workflows enables adaptive threat detection and informed decision-making.
Define and track KPIs that matter: Establish performance metrics such as Mean Time to Detect (MTTD), Mean Time to Respond (MTTR), and automation coverage. These indicators provide visibility into operational gaps and inform continuous investment and improvement.
Scale securely through software, not just headcount: Adding more analysts isn’t always sustainable. Automating Tier-1 triage, orchestrating response workflows, and optimizing alert routing allow SOCs to grow coverage and responsiveness without increasing overhead.

Together, security automation and strategic framework alignment transform the SOC from a reactive, overwhelmed team into a proactive, resilient, and high-performing function that delivers real security outcomes at enterprise scale.

Build a SOC Framework That Adapts as Fast as Threats Do

A modern security operations center framework must do more than meet regulatory standards — it must evolve with your business, your threat landscape, and your technology stack. Frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK, NIST CSF, and CIS provide the strategic foundation. But without automation, those frameworks remain theoretical.

Torq transforms them into action. By automating triage, response, compliance documentation, and control validation, Torq empowers SOC teams to operationalize frameworks in real time, not just for audits, but for actual defense.

Whether you’re scaling globally, modernizing legacy systems, or building your first SOC from scratch, the future of security operations depends on speed, context, and automation. Don’t settle for reactive checklists. Build an autonomous SOC that’s intelligent, resilient, and engineered to thrive in today’s threat environment.

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Contents

WTF is HyperSOC-2o?

The Need for the Autonomous SOC

Moving from the Aspirational to the Inspirational in SOC Processes

HyperSOC-2o: Achieving the Autonomous SOC

Don’t Just Change the Game — Flip the Gameboard

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Contents

What is Model-Context Protocol?

Torq as a Model-Context Protocol Host: Endless Extensibility

Torq as an MCP Server: New Ways to Access Your Processes

Security Operations Data as MCP Resources

Stay Tuned: This is Just The Beginning

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Contents

Why Traditional Cybersecurity Can’t Keep Up

What is AI in Cybersecurity?

How AI in Cybersecurity Prevents Cyberattacks

How Torq Uses AI to Power Security Operations

AI-Enhanced Playbooks

Automated Threat Analysis Across Hybrid Environments

Policy Enforcement Without Human Intervention

Behavior-Based Triggers for Autonomous Workflows

Always Learning, Always Improving

5 Benefits of Using AI in Cybersecurity

1. Faster Threat Detection and Incident Response

2. Reduced False Positives and Alert Fatigue

3. Enhanced Visibility Across Hybrid Environments

4. Continuous, Adaptive Protection

5. More Efficient Security Operations With Fewer Resources

The Future of Cybersecurity is AI-Driven — And It Starts with Torq

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Contents

What is SIEM and What Does It Do?

Limitations of SIEM (And What Torq Adds)

Top SIEM Benefits + How Torq Takes Them to the Next Level

Centralized Visibility Across the Enterprise

Faster Threat Detection and Response

Better Context and Correlation Across Events

Improved Incident Investigation and Forensics

Easier Compliance and Audit Readiness

Reduces Alert Fatigue with Intelligent Filtering

Enables Long-Term Log Retention and Trend Analysis

SIEM + Hyperautomation: Automate, Orchestrate, and Accelerate Your SOC

Orchestrating Automated Incident Response

Enriching Alerts with Real-Time Context

Connecting SIEM with External Systems

Auto-Remediating Low-Risk Threats

Reducing MTTR and Cybersecurity Analyst Fatigue

Maximizing SIEM Benefits with Hyperautomation: The Check Point Success Story

Unlock SIEM’s Full Potential with Torq Hyperautomation

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Contents

Leading the Charge: Torq HyperSOC-2o and the Revrod Leap

Beyond Legacy SOAR: A Generational Leap in SOC Automation

Inside Torq HyperSOC-2o: AI Agents on the Front Lines

Real Results: Faster Responses, Greater Scale, Happier Analysts

The Road Ahead: How AI Agents Will Redefine Cybersecurity Operations

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Contents

Don’t Play Checkers While Attackers Play Chess

The Early Adopter Advantage in the Age of AI

‘The Best Practical Use of AI From Any Vendor’

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The AI or Die Manifesto