Hyperautomation Security Automation 101 Use Cases

The Best Threat Intelligence Tools & How to Automate Alert Enrichment with Torq

By Torq
May 21, 2025
11 Minute Read

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Threat intelligence is the cornerstone of proactive security. By collecting and analyzing indicators of compromise (IOCs), tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), and adversary infrastructure, threat intelligence tools help cybersecurity teams spot attacks before they escalate.

But here’s the catch: Most tools stop at surfacing raw intel. They hand you the data but don’t help you operationalize it. This results in analysts drowning in noise, alert fatigue, and slow incident response times.

Explore the top categories of threat intelligence tools and see how Torq Hyperautomation bridges the gap between intel and action, delivering real-time enrichment and autonomous response at scale.

What Are Threat Intelligence Tools?

Threat Intelligence (TI) tools are software and services that collect, enrich, analyze, and distribute information about cyber threats so security teams can detect, prioritize, and respond faster.

What Threat Intelligence Tools Do

Collect data: Ingests signals from OSINT, dark web sources, malware sandboxes, DNS/WHOIS, product telemetry, ISACs, and commercial vendor feeds to build a comprehensive threat picture.

Normalize and enrich: Standardizes formats, deduplicates indicators, and adds context — actor, campaign, TTPs, confidence, and sightings — so data is usable and trustworthy.

Correlate and score: Links indicators to behaviors using frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK and assign risk and confidence to drive prioritization.

Distribute intel: Pushes curated intelligence to SIEM, EDR, or SOAR via APIs and STIX/TAXII, often triggering automated playbooks.

Search and investigate: Lets analysts pivot across IPs, domains, and hashes, build campaign timelines, and track adversary infrastructure.

Report and measure: Provides dashboards, alerts, and takedown and mitigation guidance while tracking coverage and efficacy.

Threat Intelligence Tooling Categories

  • Feeds (Raw indicators): Continuous streams of IPs, domains, hashes, phishing kits, and C2 infrastructure.
  • Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): Central hubs that aggregate sources, dedupe and score indicators, enable sharing, and orchestrate automation.
  • Vertical/Community intel: ISAC/ISAO groups that facilitate trusted, sector-specific sharing of timely threats and mitigations.
  • Managed TI services: Provider-run offerings where human analysts deliver curated, finished intelligence and advisory support.

4 Types of Threat Intelligence

    1. Strategic (Board/CISO): High-level trends, risks, and business impact to inform investment and policy.
    2. Operational (SOC/IR): Campaign-level insights — adversaries, infrastructure, and TTPs — translated into detections and response actions.
    3. Tactical (Detections): Short-lived IOCs with confidence and expiry to feed blocklists and detection rules.
    4. Technical (Artifacts): Low-level signatures and artifacts — YARA/Sigma rules, decoders, and malware I/O — used to research and codify detections.

    While threat intelligence is vital for shifting from reactive to proactive security, most tools stop short of execution. They provide intel but don’t automate triage or incident response, leaving a critical gap in the security kill chain.

    Why Threat Intelligence Alone Isn’t Enough

    “Threat intelligence — while abundant — is frequently underutilized due to inconsistent application and a lack of objective analysis, keeping teams stuck in reactive mode.”

    – SANS 2025 SOC Survey

    High-quality threat intelligence is essential for modern security operations, but even the best intel feeds can only take you so far. Many SOC teams still struggle to operationalize that intelligence effectively, facing challenges such as:

    • Siloed data sources: Threat intel often lives in separate tools and feeds, requiring analysts to manually pivot between consoles to correlate indicators with events in their environment. This not only slows investigations but also risks missing connections entirely.
    • Alert fatigue from unverified IOCs: Raw intelligence feeds can produce an overwhelming volume of indicators of compromise (IOCs). Without automated context and verification, analysts are forced to triage a flood of alerts, many of which turn out to be irrelevant or false positives.
    • Slow MTTR due to manual processes: Even when malicious activity is identified, enrichment, prioritization, and incident response often rely on a series of manual steps. This delays containment, gives adversaries more time to act, and increases the likelihood of impact.

    The missing link is security Hyperautomation: The ability to take incoming threat intelligence and enrich it in real time, validate it against your environment, prioritize based on risk, and execute the right response automatically.

    With Hyperautomation in place, security teams can:

    • Instantly correlate threat intel with live telemetry from SIEM, EDR, IAM, and cloud security tools.
    • Automatically filter out low-confidence or irrelevant IOCs before they reach analysts.
    • Trigger pre-approved auto-remediation workflows such as blocking a domain, isolating an endpoint, or disabling a compromised account in seconds.

    Threat intelligence is powerful, but it becomes truly operational when paired with automation. That’s how teams turn static data into actionable, measurable defense at machine speed.

    The Power of Automated Alert Enrichment

    Threat intelligence enrichment is the critical bridge between raw threat data and meaningful, actionable threat intelligence. It transforms a bare IOC or alert into a fully contextualized security event, giving analysts the information they need to make faster, more confident decisions.

    Without enrichment, a malicious IP alert is just a red flag without a story. You know something might be wrong, but you don’t know:

    • Who controls the IP
    • When it was first reported as malicious
    • Whether it has been active in other attacks
    • If it’s currently interacting with your environment

    With threat enrichment, those questions are answered instantly. You can see ownership, reputation scores, historical abuse records, and whether the threat currently targets your assets. This drastically reduces false positives, helps prioritize real threats, and accelerates triage, especially in high-volume SOC environments.

    Real-Time Enrichment with Torq

    Torq automates this process end-to-end, ingesting IOCs from virtually any source:

    • Open-source feeds like AbuseIPDB or AlienVault OTX
    • Commercial CTI platforms such as Recorded Future or CrowdStrike Falcon Intelligence
    • Internal telemetry from SIEM, EDR, IAM, and CSPM systems

    Once ingested, Torq automatically enriches each IOC or alert with:

    • Threat intelligence lookups for risk scoring and category classification
    • WHOIS data to identify domain or IP ownership
    • GeoIP mapping for geographic attribution
    • Historical incident correlation to see if this IOC has appeared in past investigations

    All of this happens without writing a single line of code, using Torq’s no-code/low-code visual builder.

    Connecting Enrichment to Automated Response

    Enrichment is all about enabling faster, more precise action. With Torq, once an alert is enriched, it can immediately trigger targeted, pre-approved response runbooks, such as:

    • Block malicious IPs or domains at the firewall or secure web gateway
    • Disable compromised accounts in IAM systems like Okta or Azure AD
    • Quarantine infected endpoints via EDR tools like CrowdStrike or SentinelOne
    • Notify analysts in Slack or Microsoft Teams with full, structured context for review

    Because enrichment and incident response are linked in the same Hyperautomation workflow, there’s no waiting for an analyst to manually look up data before taking action — vulnerabilities are validated, prioritized, and remediated in near real time.

    Real-World Use Cases: How Torq Elevates Your Threat Intelligence Stack

    IOC-Triggered Triage

    Scenario: A new malicious IP is published by Abuse.ch’s SSL Blacklist feed.

    How Torq Handles It:

    1. The IOC enters Torq through a scheduled or webhook-based integration with Abuse.ch.
    2. Torq automatically enriches it with:
      • Recorded Future for risk scoring and threat actor attribution.
      • VirusTotal for file and domain associations.
      • WHOIS and GeoIP for ownership and location details.
    3. The enriched IOC is compared against SIEM and EDR telemetry to see if it’s active in your environment.
    4. Based on the risk score and internal matches, Torq either:
      • Auto-blocks the IP in your firewall and secure web gateway.
      • Escalates the IOC to a case in Torq for analyst review.

    Result: Threats are validated and acted on within seconds, without manual lookups or context switching.

    Autonomous Response to High-Risk Alerts

    Scenario: Correlated threat intel and internal detections reveal an active phishing campaign targeting corporate users.

    How Torq Handles It:

    1. The IOC feed from a commercial CTI provider flags multiple domains tied to a phishing kit.
    2. Torq cross-references internal email gateway logs to confirm delivery attempts to specific users.
    3. Upon confirmation, Torq executes automated actions:
      • Revokes credentials in Okta or Azure AD for targeted accounts.
      • Sends a Slack or Teams alert to affected users with security guidance.
      • Updates the SIEM with an incident record for correlation and compliance.

    Result: Compromised accounts are secured, and users are alerted before threat actors can exploit access.

    Threat Intel + Phishing Detection

    Scenario: A user reports a suspicious email via the company’s phishing reporting button.

    How Torq Handles It:

    1. The reported email is sent to Torq via Microsoft 365 Security or Proofpoint TAP integration.
    2. Torq extracts sender domains, IPs, and embedded URLs.
    3. Those indicators are checked against:
      • External threat intel feeds like AlienVault OTX and Abuse.ch.
      • Internal blocklists and historical case data in Torq.
    4. If confirmed malicious, Torq:
      • Quarantines the email for all recipients at the email gateway.
      • Blocks the domain in the web proxy.
      • Notifies the reporting user with a “verified malicious” confirmation.

    Result: A single user report becomes a fully automated, organization-wide protection action.

    Scalable Enrichment Without Developer Overhead

    Scenario: The SOC wants to enrich all IOC feeds with cross-platform intelligence but lacks developer bandwidth.

    How Torq Handles It:

    1. An analyst drags and drops connectors for Recorded Future, VirusTotal, AbuseIPDB, and MISP into the workflow canvas.
    2. Using Torq’s no-code visual editor, the analyst chains enrichment steps, scoring logic, and conditional response rules.
    3. New threat intel feeds can be added in minutes, and workflows update automatically without engineering intervention.

    Result: The SOC scales enrichment capabilities rapidly, integrating multiple TI sources and incident response actions without waiting on dev cycles.

    Threat Intelligence Is Only as Good as the Action It Enables

    Threat intelligence is the spark that ignites detection, but it’s the action you take with that intelligence that determines whether it prevents an attack or becomes just another line in a report. Without automation, even the most curated and timely feeds leave SOC teams drowning in manual triage, correlation, and remediation steps.

    The challenge is operationalizing threat intelligence at machine speed, ingesting, validating, enriching, and acting on it in seconds, not hours. That requires an automation platform that connects intelligence sources directly to your detection, investigation, and response layers.

    What to Look for in an Automated Threat Intelligence Stack

    To fully realize the value of your threat intel, your automation stack should deliver:

    • Interoperability: Native integrations with SIEM, SOAR, EDR, firewall, email security, and CTI feeds so threat data flows seamlessly across tools.
    • Real-time enrichment: The ability to instantly enhance IOCs with reputation scores, geo-location, WHOIS data, historical activity, and related incidents, and feed that context back into detection and response systems.
    • Scalability: Capacity to process thousands (or millions) of IOCs per day without slowing down, whether from burst attack campaigns or ongoing intelligence streams.
    • No-code flexibility: The option for analysts to adapt, expand, or fine-tune workflows without relying on developer resources, so you can pivot quickly to new threats.

    Why Torq Is Built for Modern Threat Detection

    Torq’s Hyperautomation Platform turns raw threat intel into orchestrated action across your SOC. It’s designed to:

    • Automate at scale with autonomous runbooks that can process and act on high IOC volumes without analyst intervention.
    • Integrate instantly using agentless, native connectors to 1,000+ tools — from threat intel platforms like Recorded Future, VirusTotal, and MISP to your SIEM, EDR, and firewall stack.
    • Enable SOC agility through a visual no-code/low-code editor and AI workflow building, so analysts can build or modify enrichment and incident response workflows in minutes.
    • Drive immediate outcomes — blocking malicious IPs, quarantining emails, disabling compromised accounts, or alerting security analysts— all triggered by enriched intel in real time.

    With Torq, threat intelligence isn’t just data; it’s a live signal that moves seamlessly from detection to decision to remediation, without manual processing delays.

    Categories of Threat Intelligence Tools Cybersecurity Teams Rely On

    CategoryWorkflow StagePurposeWhere Torq FitsExample Tools
    Threat Data Aggregators & FeedsCollect → NormalizeCentralize raw intel from OSINT, dark web, vendor feedsIngests IOCs, auto-dedupes, normalizes to STIX/TAXII, applies TTL, routes to SIEM/EDR with guardrailsAlienVault OTX, Abuse.ch, Recorded Future
    Threat Analysis & CorrelationEnrich → Analyze → HuntLink IOCs to malware families, campaigns, actorsAutomates enrichment and correlation, captures analyst pivots as runbooks, pushes TTPs back to detectionThreatConnect, Anomali, VirusTotal
    Alert Prioritization & Risk ScoringTriage → PrioritizeRank alerts by risk and asset criticalityAuto-escalates high-risk alerts, auto-suppresses noise, learns from analyst feedbackSplunk ES, Cisco SecureX, Exabeam
    Threat Intelligence Sharing & CollaborationShare → Collaborate → GovernDistribute intel across teams & communitiesAuto-ingests shared intel, validates, enriches, deploys, feeds outcomes back to communityMISP, OpenCTI, ISAC Portals

    Operationalize Threat Intelligence Tools with Torq

    Great threat intelligence tools surface what’s out there; Torq turns that signal into outcomes. By ingesting feeds and TIPs, normalizing to common schemas, enriching with WHOIS/GeoIP/reputation, and correlating against your SIEM/EDR/IAM telemetry, Torq’s no-code Hyperautomation moves from detect to resolve in seconds — automatically. 

    Pre-approved playbooks block domains and IPs, isolate endpoints, revoke access, and notify stakeholders in chat, all with full audit trails and role-based control. The result: lower MTTR, less downtime, fewer manual escalations, a stronger security posture, and a calmer on-call.

    If you’re investing in threat intelligence tools but still triaging by hand, you’re leaving value on the table. Pair your intel with automation that’s interoperable, explainable, and scalable so every high-confidence indicator translates into immediate, governed action.

    Ready to turn intel into impact? See how Torq can help make your SOC more efficient. 

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    FAQs

    What are examples of threat intelligence?

    Examples of threat intelligence include malicious IP addresses, suspicious domain names, file hashes associated with malware, phishing email indicators, and known threat actor infrastructure. More advanced threat intelligence also includes TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures) tied to specific threat actors.

    What are the four types of threat intelligence?
    1. Strategic: High-level trends and risks for executive decision-making.
    2. Tactical: Information on adversary TTPs for defensive planning.
    3. Operational: Intel on active campaigns and imminent threats.
    4. Technical: Raw indicators like IOCs for detection and blocking.
    What are six major sources of cyber threat intelligence?
    1. Open-source threat feeds (e.g., AlienVault OTX, Abuse.ch)
    2. Commercial CTI platforms (e.g., Recorded Future, Mandiant Advantage)
    3. Security product telemetry (SIEM, EDR, XDR)
    4. Dark web monitoring
    5. Industry sharing groups (ISACs/ISAOs)
    6. Government or law enforcement alerts (e.g., CISA, FBI)
    What are the best free cyber threat intelligence feeds?

    Popular free feeds include AlienVault OTX, Abuse.ch, MalwareBazaar, URLhaus, and various ISAC community feeds. While valuable, they should be supplemented with commercial feeds and automated enrichment for best results.

    What does threat intel do?

    Threat intelligence helps security teams understand, anticipate, and respond to cyber threats by providing context, patterns, and IOCs that inform detection and incident response workflows.

    What are feeds in cybersecurity?

    A threat feed is a continuously updated stream of IOCs and threat data that can be ingested into cybersecurity tools like SIEMs and SOAR platforms to enhance detection.

    What are examples of threat feeds?

    Examples of threat feeds include IP blocklists, malicious domain lists, malware hash databases, and phishing URL repositories.

    What is threat feed vs threat intelligence?

    Threat feed: A raw data stream containing IOCs.

    Threat intelligence: Enriched, analyzed, and contextualized data derived from one or more feeds, ready to be used in decision-making and automated workflows.

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    AI AI SOC Research

    CISOs’ Unconventional Criteria for Evaluating AI SOC Analysts

    By Noam Cohen
    May 19, 2025
    10 Minute Read

    Contents

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

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    Noam Cohen, Director of AI at Torq

    Noam Cohen is a serial entrepreneur building seriously cool data and AI companies since 2018. Noam’s insights are informed by a unique combination of data, product, and AI expertise — with a background that includes winning the Israel Defense Prize for his work in leveraging data to predict terror attacks. As the Head of Artificial Intelligence at Torq, Noam is helping build truly next-gen AI capabilities into Torq’s autonomous SOC platform.

    Still obsessing over compliance certifications and data volumes when choosing your AI SOC analyst? You might as well be that guy at the dealership kicking tires and demanding V8 specs while ignoring the self-driving capabilities. 

    Today’s CISO battlefield isn’t won with yesterday’s metrics. While AI security vendors sell you on training corpus size and customization options, you should be demanding zero-day detection without signatures and unified threat visibility. 

    Let’s be brutally honest: the blistering pace of AI innovation means your current AI SOC evaluation checklist is obsolete. GenAI marked an inflection point; now, agentic AI is completely disrupting SecOps. This means the real competitive edge lies in capabilities your procurement team isn’t even asking about.

    So, what should CISOs look for in an AI SOC analyst? Below, we break down 8 key capabilities that you might not have considered but are crucial to ensure AI trust and effectiveness in your SOC.

    What to Look for in an AI SOC Analyst Evaluation

    1. AI That Simplifies and Communicates Context

    Look for: Next-gen AI for the SOC that shows sophistication beyond query-response models, demonstrating a nuanced understanding and delightful communication of organizational context, ongoing security incidents, and specific scenarios. 

    Rather than summarizing in a generic “TL;DR” format, the AI should communicate about logs, case artifacts, and indicators of compromise (IOCs) through a cybersecurity-oriented UI that highlights key information for the specific security context. 

    Ask:

    • Can the AI maintain contextual continuity across analyst shifts and SOC handoffs?
    • How does the chat UI maintain context for the user when referencing information-heavy items like logs and cases?
    • Does the AI have different user views for summarizing actions, IOCs, and alerts?
    • Where can I embed our knowledge and policies to guide the AI’s interactions?

    General example: 

    AI SOC Evaluation example: Example: simplified context communication
    General example showing how a smart reference summarization popup from Arc (The Browser Company) helps users quickly understand selected text or an entire webpage without leaving their current browser.

    2. AI for the Entire Team

    Look for: Practical AI capabilities mapped explicitly to real-world SOC workflows and use cases.

    The AI SOC analyst should do the actual, gritty tasks your SOC team performs daily — from initial triage to investigating alerts, hunting for threats, and remediating problems. This isn’t about general intelligence; it’s about directly supporting actual analyst workflows from end to end. If you use a multi-agent system (MAS), the AI SOC analyst should act as an OmniAgent to coordinate and collaborate with multiple specialized AI agents to accomplish these complex security goals.

    Ask:

    • What analyst-level jobs does the AI accelerate (e.g. query writing, unstructured enrichment, and response recommendations)?
    • How does the AI SOC agent accelerate threat hunting and detection engineering through intelligent hypothesis generation?
    • Is the system capable of auto-healing errors in security workflows the way a good security engineer can?

    General example:

    Example of AI for cross-functional teams
    General example showing how Gemini’s Gem store features different chatbots for Marketing, Sales, and Developers.

    3. AI That Explains What It’s Doing

    Look for: AI that grounds its findings and recommendations in clear, structured explanations showing its sources.

    CISOs increasingly prioritize “explainability” in AI decisions as a pragmatic imperative for achieving cognitive alignment between the AI SOC analyst and the human security team. To foster trust, adoption, and effective action, your security team must have a line of sight into the AI’s reasoning, not just its conclusions.

    Ask:

    • Does the AI SOC analyst clearly explain why particular security events are flagged or escalated?
    • How easily can human analysts validate or challenge the AI’s recommendations? For instance, can they request source links, exact quotes, or highlighting?
    • Do we have visibility into the AI agent’s self-critique step?
    • What validation guardrails does the AI implement?

    General examples:

    Example of AI that explains what it's doing
    General examples showing how two AI models show the data it relies on. Perplexity shows a snippet of the source while NotebookLM highlights the exact sentence it used from the source.

    4. AI That’s Easy to Interact With — Without Training

    Look for: A SOC-specific user interface that is genuinely intuitive, innovative, and frictionless and that directly enhances analyst productivity, retention, and job satisfaction.

    Even the most powerful AI can be hampered by a clunky or difficult interface, undermining your team’s effectiveness and morale and discouraging AI adoption. A truly innovative interface should feel natural to use and streamline workflows, not add complexity or friction to processes. An intuitive design enables analysts of any level to quickly access insights and take action without specialized skills or knowledge.

    Ask:

    • How much do our human analysts need to be familiar with AI hacks and general prompt engineering, such as knowing when to use deep search options, ask for a specific data format, or open a new conversation thread?
    • Does the AI SOC analyst support conversational SIEM queries and natural-language threat exploration?
    • How does the AI communicate its planning and thinking process?
    • In autopiloting, can I interrupt the investigation before the AI is done?

    General example:

    AI SOC Evaluation: example of AI that is intuitive to use
    General example showing how Perplexity creates a simpler user experience by auto-choosing the model according to its research, rather than making the user choose a model by task/prompt. 

    5. AI That Helps You Get Ahead

    Look for: An AI SOC analyst that doesn’t only react to known threats but proactively guides SOC teams towards improving security posture and operational effectiveness. 

    Think of your top analysts — the ones who are always one step ahead, anticipating your team’s needs and suggesting improvements without being asked. Agentic AI that performs at this advanced level can act as a virtual extension of your team, identifying weaknesses and suggesting optimizations to elevate your security operations.

    Ask:

    • Can the AI SOC analyst proactively detect and suggest SOC operational improvements, such as recommending repetitive manual processes that are ripe for automation?
    • Can it automatically correlate cases with incident history and recommend improvements?
    • Has your AI ever caught a missing step in its instructions and fixed it (or asked about it) before executing?
    • Can the AI automatically tag and store important information from your interactions that can help in future cases?
    • Will the AI suggest changes to the detection rules, workflows, or playbooks? How often does your AI flag inefficiencies in workflows?

    General example: 

    Example of AI that proactively recommends optimizations
    General example of ChatGPT maintaining context after you’ve told it that you are an AI product manager in San Francisco. When asking it to brainstorm messaging for a social post celebrating an achievement, ChatGPT already knows where to start. 

    6. AI That Understands What You Really Want (and Can Figure Out How to Do It)

    Look for: Deterministic, agentic AI that understands how to break a user intent into multiple tasks, which may require different execution plans. 

    Good AI gets a task and starts working. Great AI first looks for communication gaps, understands the goal, and asks for more instructions when needed. Ideally, the user shouldn’t have to think like the AI to ensure the AI grasps their intent — the AI should understand how the user thinks and ask clarifying questions when needed.

    A structured execution scheme reduces ambiguity and improves the accuracy of the AI’s planning and orchestration, eliminating the likelihood of the AI agent skipping steps, going out of order, selecting incorrect tools, or misinterpreting instructions.

    Ask:

    • When I give the AI a vague or complex instruction, does it ask clarifying questions — or just charge ahead?
    • How does it use screens, user information, and past sessions to better understand the user’s specific intent?
    • Can your AI break down a high-level goal (‘Investigate this alert’) into a sequence of logically ordered tasks — and tell you why?
    • Can your AI explain its execution plan in plain language before it starts and adjust if you push back?

    General example:

    AI SOC Evaluation: Example of AI that asks clarification questions
    General example showing how ChatGPT asks clarification questions before building a report in Deep Research.

    7. An AI Assistant That You Don’t Need to Babysit

    Look for:  Agentic AI capable of autonomously chaining together multiple actions without constant human prompts. 

    Your human analysts don’t want to click through 10 steps every time they need the AI to take action. While human oversight of critical decisions is important, to efficiently investigate an alert end-to-end and even initiate containment, an AI SOC analyst must be capable of independently stringing together a sequence of relevant subtasks — like log collection, enrichment, reverse engineering, and containment suggestions — in pursuit of a high-level goal.

    Ask:

    • Can the AI SOC analyst complete a multi-step investigation with one high-level instruction?
    • Can the AI write and execute deterministic workflows when needed?
    • Does it pause and check with human analysts before executing sensitive tasks (e.g., blocking users or IPs)?
    • When given a high-level goal or non-playbook scenario, does the AI independently decide which steps to take and in what order?
    • How does the AI identify when not to act — and escalate to a human when it hits a confidence or authority threshold?

    General example:

    AI SOC Evaluation: Example of AI that defines when it needs to loop humans in
    General example of how Intercom’s Fin interface defines the moments where a human needs to be looped into the convo.

    8. AI That Gets More Helpful Through Human Feedback

    Look for: An AI SOC analyst that continuously learns and improves by observing and incorporating feedback from human analyst behavior.

    The best AI SOC analysts learn from human analyst behavior to become more effective and accurate over time. Think of it as shaping the ideal analyst that shadows your team, watches how they triage alerts, write queries, and handle false positives — and gets smarter with every interaction.

    Human analysts should be able to fine-tune and correct AI as threats evolve rather than treating it as a black box. In practice, features like thumbs-up/down ratings, interactive retraining, or the ability to override AI decisions make the human–AI loop tighter and more effective.

    Ask:

    • How does the AI SOC analyst adapt based on human analysts’ corrections or preferences over time?
    • Can I adjust the AI’s prioritization or response style via feedback?
    • How can the user flag a successful conversation with the AI to make future sessions easier and more effective?
    • Can you review and audit what the AI has learned from your team? 

    General example: 

    AI SOC Evaluation: Example of AI that continuously improves
    General example showing how Cursor’s Coding Rules feature helps developers continuously improve and adapt their preferences using natural language. 

    Next-Gen AI for the SOC is Here — Are You Ready?

    Don’t be the security leader who marvels at a shiny paint job while ignoring the revolutionary engine. When evaluating AI SOC analysts, focus on explainable intelligence, seamless integration into your team’s workflow, and deterministic AI that can independently plan and orchestrate all of the actions required to complete a high-level goal from end to end.

    Finding an AI SOC analyst that truly understands context, empowers your analysts, and acts with proactive autonomy will ensure you’re not just keeping up with the latest tech but investing in a force multiplier for your security team.

    Get the AI or Die Manifesto to learn strategic considerations, get insights from a CISO, and learn red flags and more questions to ask for an AI SOC evaluation.

    Get the Manifesto
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    Ready to automate everything?

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

    Corey Kaemming, Senior Director of InfoSec

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

    Todd Willoughby, Director

    Compuquip logo in white

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

    Phillip Tarrant, SOC Technical Manager

    Fiverr logo in black

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

    Gai Hanochi, VP Business Technologies

    Carvana logo in black

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

    Dina Mathers, CISO

    Riskified logo in white

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

    Yossi Yeshua, CISO

    Get a Demo

    Hyperautomation Security Automation 101 Use Cases

    Phishing Analysis That Runs Itself — Powered by Torq

    By Torq
    May 16, 2025
    6 Minute Read

    Contents

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    Phishing has evolved from a nuisance into a full-blown crisis for SOC teams. Once easy to spot, today’s phishing emails are polished, personalized, and powered by generative AI — enabling attackers to launch thousands of realistic campaigns in minutes. 

    SOCs are drowning in suspicious email reports, with analysts forced to inspect headers, attachments, and URLs at scale manually. Even worse, over a majority of end-user reports turn out to be false positives, meaning hours of wasted effort chasing noise instead of responding to real threats.

    Why Phishing Analysis Overwhelms SOC Teams

    Phishing isn’t just the most common cyberattack; it’s also one of the most draining for security teams. Attacks have increased 49% since 2021, with each successful breach costing organizations nearly $5M on average. GenAI has fueled a 4,151% increase in phishing campaigns since 2022, so the volume and realism of phishing attempts are outpacing traditional defenses.

    Phishing analysis is the process of examining suspicious emails to identify and mitigate phishing attacks. This involves scrutinizing various aspects of the email, including sender details, content, and attachments, to detect signs of malicious intent. It’s a critical component of cybersecurity, helping organizations protect themselves from data breaches and other cyber threats.

    For SOC analysts, every reported phishing email can become a time sink. Investigations require painstaking review of headers, attachments, URLs, and sender reputation checks — often across multiple tools. A Microsoft study found 90% of user-reported phishing emails turn out to be false positives, yet each still consumes valuable analyst time. At scale, that means thousands of hours spent chasing noise while real threats risk slipping through the cracks.

    This perfect storm of higher alert volume, more sophisticated lures, and limited staff creates an unsustainable workload. Instead of focusing on strategic tasks like threat hunting or incident response, analysts get buried in repetitive phishing checks. The result: Burnout, alert fatigue, and delayed response times that adversaries exploit to their advantage.

    With the help of automation taking over the repetitive triage and enrichment tasks that bog analysts down, platforms like Torq HyperSOC™ slash analysis times from hours to minutes, eliminate the majority of false positives, and free security teams to focus on threats that actually matter.

    How to Automate Outlook Mailbox Monitoring with Torq

    Torq HyperSOC™ includes ready-to-run templates that transform your phishing inbox into an always-on, case-driven automation pipeline. Here’s how it works end-to-end, plus the setup details, best practices, and guardrails that make it safe at scale.

    1. Turn Your Mailbox into an Always-On Detection Pipeline

    Instead of relying on analysts to check a shared phishing inbox, Torq connects directly to Microsoft Outlook using Microsoft Graph API. A dedicated mailbox (for example, [email protected]) becomes an automated trigger point, and every new report instantly kicks off an enrichment and triage workflow. This integration is secure by design, using least-privilege permissions and admin-controlled access policies to keep everything locked down.

    2. Automate the Analysis

    Once a message lands, Torq automatically extracts and analyzes the essential data: headers, links, attachments, sender reputation, and user context. Behind the scenes, AI and security Hyperautomation handle all the enrichment tasks that typically burn analyst time — checking SPF/DKIM, scanning URLs and attachments, detonating files in sandboxes, and cross-referencing with threat intel. This leaves analysts with a fully scored, context-rich case that tells you whether it’s safe, suspicious, or malicious, all before a human ever touches it.

    3. Respond at Machine Speed 

    When Torq confirms a threat, response happens automatically but safely. The platform can:

    • Quarantine malicious emails organization-wide
    • Block domains or senders
    • Isolate infected endpoints or reset credentials through integrated EDR and IAM tools
    • Notify users with templated guidance (e.g., “Did you click…?”) for added validation
    • Log every action, approval, and artifact in a complete, auditable case file

    Everything runs according to your organization’s policies; automation never overrides human approval for sensitive actions.

    4. Get Case Management That Writes Itself

    Each investigation is automatically converted into a structured case, complete with enriched data, screenshots, indicators, and an easy-to-read AI-generated summary. Analysts can quickly review, bulk-close false positives, or pivot into related cases for campaign hunting — all from a single workspace.

    What once took hours now happens in seconds, freeing your team to focus on strategy and proactive threat hunting instead of inbox cleanup.

    5. Enforce AI Guardrails

    Automation at scale only works if it’s safe, and Torq was built with that in mind. Every workflow runs with built-in AI governance, compliance, and resiliency features designed for enterprise SOCs and MSSPs.

    • Least-privilege access: Microsoft Graph permissions are scoped to a single mailbox or folder, minimizing exposure.
    • Role-based access controls (RBAC) and approvals: Sensitive actions like global purges or account disables always require the right role or human confirmation.
    • Self-healing subscriptions: Torq automatically monitors Microsoft Graph subscriptions, renews them before expiration, and alerts if something drifts.
    • Resilient error handling: Smart retries and throttling logic keep automations stable under API load or transient faults.
    • MSSP-ready tenant isolation: Shared automations can be cloned per customer, ensuring strict data separation with zero cross-tenant risk.

    6. Experience What “Good” Looks Like

    A well-built phishing response automation doesn’t just run — it delivers measurable impact. Here are the key KPIs that show it’s working:

    • Faster MTTD / MTTR: Phishing cases identified and contained in minutes, not hours
    • Broader automation coverage: A growing percentage of Tier-1 triage handled end-to-end with zero human touch
    • Reduced false positives: Fewer manual reviews and cleaner queues for analysts
    • Better purge performance: Malicious messages removed across mailboxes more quickly and completely.
    • Higher user engagement: High confirmation rates and faster user responses to “Did you click?” checks
    • Improved analyst efficiency: Hours reclaimed per case — often hundreds of hours per quarter — that can be reinvested into proactive security work

    When these numbers start trending up and manual reviews drop off, that’s when you know your automation is transforming the SOC.

    Faster, Smarter, and Scalable Phishing Analysis

    Torq cuts phishing triage from hours to minutes. Automated enrichment includes:

    • DMARC/SPF analysis to validate sender reputation
    • URL screenshotting to detect impersonation
    • Sandbox detonations and IOC checks for attachments
    • AI-generated summaries of findings, ready for analyst review

    The outcome: faster investigations, fewer false positives, and higher analyst efficiency.

    Torq Makes Traditional Phishing Analysis Tools Better

    Legacy SOAR tools require rigid playbooks and manual tuning. Torq delivers:

    • No/low-code flexibility: Build workflows in minutes.
    • Agentic AI: Summarizes, enriches, and prioritizes phishing cases.
    • 300+ integrations: Connects to your SIEM, EDR, IAM, ITSM, and email stack.
    • Scalability: Automate phishing triage across thousands of alerts with no extra headcount.

    Make Phishing Analysis Autonomous

    Phishing isn’t slowing down — but your team doesn’t have to slow down with it.

    With Torq HyperSOC™, phishing analysis becomes fast, reliable, and fully automated. Every reported email is enriched, scored, and resolved in minutes, with full visibility and control. By turning repetitive triage into efficient and autonomous workflows, Torq helps SOCs reclaim time, eliminate false positives, and focus on stopping real threats before they spread.

    Check out our SOC Efficiency Guide for tips on squeezing the most out of your SOC processes, people, and tech stack.

    Get the Guide

    FAQs

    What is phishing analysis?

    Phishing analysis includes investigating an email to determine whether it’s malicious or benign. Analysts inspect elements like the email header, sender domain, URLs, and attachments to uncover signs of spoofing or social engineering. Using automation tools such as Torq HyperSOC™, SOC teams can quickly analyze large volumes of suspicious emails across the mailbox to identify real threats while reducing manual workload.

    How can you identify phishing emails?

    You can identify a phishing email by examining inconsistencies in the sender address, checking the email header for mismatched domains, and inspecting embedded URLs for redirects or spoofed links. Poor grammar, unexpected attachments, and urgent requests for sensitive information are common warning signs. Modern email security tools and phishing analysis tools help automate these checks by performing authentication validation (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and sandbox testing.

    What are the signs of a phishing email?

    A suspicious email often contains subtle red flags, such as a spoofed display name, forged sender authentication headers, or URLs that impersonate legitimate brands. Malicious emails may include weaponized attachments, such as PDFs or Office documents containing macros. By analyzing the email header and sender authentication results, SOC teams can determine whether the threat is credible. Automated analysis tools like Torq can perform these verifications instantly.

    Can phishing analysis be automated?

    Absolutely. With a modern security automation platform like Torq, the entire phishing analysis process — from mailbox monitoring to threat enrichment and response — can be automated safely and effectively. Automated workflows extract data from the email header, verify sender authentication, assess URLs and attachments, and classify each message as benign, suspicious, or malicious. Guardrails such as RBAC, approval flows, and secure integrations ensure that automation never acts on false positives or spoofed alerts.

    Why is phishing analysis important for SOC teams?

    Phishing analysis is foundational to modern email security because it enables organizations to detect malicious messages that slip past traditional filters. Attackers often exploit trust in familiar senders or use spoofed domains to steal sensitive information like credentials or financial data. Automated phishing analysis tools correlate data across multiple sources — including the email header, authentication records, and threat intel feeds — to identify and neutralize these threats before they reach users.

    How does Torq differ from traditional phishing tools?

    Torq combines no-/low-code automation with AI-driven phishing analysis to streamline email security workflows end to end. Unlike rigid playbook-based systems, Torq dynamically analyzes phishing emails, validates authentication headers, enriches sender data, and triggers response actions automatically. With 300+ integrations, Torq connects to your mailbox, SIEM, and other analysis tools to deliver continuous, adaptive protection against spoofed or malicious emails.

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    Research Security Automation 101 Use Cases

    What is Cyber Threat Hunting? How to Stay Ahead of Attacks

    By Torq
    May 15, 2025
    10 Minute Read
    Torq enhances cyber threat hunting with automation and integration

    Contents

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    Cyberattacks are becoming more frequent and sophisticated as threat actors continually sharpen their tactics and upgrade their tools. Defending against these evolving threats is increasingly complex, especially in a landscape where cybersecurity ROI is measured in loss prevention rather than revenue generation.

    Cyber threat hunting offers a proactive way to secure your environment by actively seeking out threats that evade traditional defenses. However, manual threat hunting is time-consuming, resource-intensive, and complicated by a growing shortage of skilled professionals.

    In this blog, we’ll unpack everything you need to know about cyber threat hunting and show how Hyperautomation can help your team stay ahead of attackers by streamlining detection, investigation, and response without requiring massive overhead.

    What is Threat Hunting in Cybersecurity?

    Cyber Threat Hunting

    Cyber threat hunting is a proactive cybersecurity process where trained individuals, called threat hunters, actively search for malicious cyber activities and potential threats that might have evaded traditional security measures. It involves going beyond automated security tools and alerts to investigate and identify hidden threats within a network or system.

    The value of cyber threat hunting lies in these key properties:

    • Proactive approach: Unlike traditional security measures that react to alerts, threat hunting is a proactive process. Threat hunters actively seek out potential threats rather than waiting for them to be detected or, worse, erupt into a critical incident. 
    • Augmenting automated systems: Threat hunting complements automated security tools by identifying threats that may have slipped past those systems.
    • Human expertise: It relies on the knowledge and skills of threat hunters who use their expertise, tools, and methodologies to identify malicious activities. 
    • Targeted searches: Threat hunters develop hypotheses about potential threats based on threat intelligence, known attack techniques, and other factors, then they search for evidence to validate those hypotheses.
    • Focus on advanced threats: Threat hunting is beneficial for identifying advanced persistent threats (APTs) and other sophisticated attacks that can evade traditional security measures.

    Why is Cyber Threat Hunting Important?

    Most SOC tools operate reactively — they wait for indicators of compromise (IOCs) or known attack signatures to trigger alerts. However, today’s adversaries are stealthy, often residing in networks undetected for weeks or months. Cyber threat hunting flips the script.

    Threat hunting proactively searches for unknown, suspicious behavior and zero-day threats that traditional detection tools miss. The benefits include: 

    • Early threat detection and response: Threat hunters spot anomalies before damage occurs, enabling rapid, contained responses to reduce breach impact. Early detection and response can significantly reduce the potential damage and costs associated with cyberattacks.
    • Identification of persistent and complex threats: Advanced persistent threats (APTs) often evade SIEMs or endpoint detection and response (EDR). Threat hunting reveals long-dwelling attackers using subtle tactics.
    • Improved incident response efficiency: Hunting improves context and decision-making for incident response (IR) teams, reducing mean time to investigate (MTTI) and resolve (MTTR). By identifying and mitigating threats proactively, threat hunting strengthens an organization’s overall security posture. 
    • Enhanced threat intelligence: The insights gained from threat hunting can also improve an organization’s threat intelligence and help them better understand their adversaries. 

    How Cyber Threat Hunting Works: 6 Methods

    Cyber threat hunting isn’t a single technique — it’s a flexible, proactive approach that combines human expertise with data, context, and tooling. Depending on your team’s goals, tools, and maturity level, different methodologies can be used to uncover hidden threats and eliminate adversaries before they cause damage. Here are six of the most effective threat hunting methods in use today.

    1. Hypothesis-Driven Hunting

    This method begins with a well-formed theory about how an adversary might be operating within your environment. Hunters often base these hypotheses on current threat intelligence, past incidents, or a known threat actor’s tactics. 

    For example, a threat hunting team may ask, “Is an attacker using PowerShell for lateral movement across endpoints?” They then query logs, examine user activity, and look for anomalies that might validate or disprove that theory. This structured, scientific approach allows analysts to pursue purposeful leads and systematically uncover sophisticated threats.

    2. Indicator of Attack (IoA)-Based Hunting

    Rather than reacting to alerts, IoA-based threat hunting proactively searches for signs of attacker behavior that signal malicious intent — even if no breach has occurred. Analysts look for behavioral patterns and tactics often used by adversaries, such as a sudden surge in failed login attempts, suspicious registry modifications, or abnormal user behavior during off-hours. 

    By focusing on indicators of attack (IoAs) instead of indicators of compromise (IoCs), teams can identify active intrusion attempts earlier in the kill chain, often before data exfiltration or lateral movement occurs.

    3. Advanced Analytics and Machine Learning

    Threat hunting at scale benefits significantly from security automation, particularly through advanced analytics and machine learning (ML). These AI models are trained on historical attack data and behavioral baselines, helping analysts identify statistical anomalies and outliers across massive datasets. 

    For example, suppose a user suddenly begins downloading gigabytes of data from an unfamiliar endpoint. ML-driven tools can flag the deviation from normal behavior in that case, even if no specific IoA has been defined. This method increases speed and coverage, especially in cloud or hybrid environments.

    4. Structured Hunting

    Structured threat hunting leverages formal models and frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK to organize and guide investigations. By using well-defined tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), analysts can systematically scan for known threat behaviors across endpoints, identities, and networks.

    This method is beneficial for standardizing team processes, ensuring knowledge sharing, and aligning with compliance or threat modeling requirements. It also enables better documentation and repeatability of hunts, making it a valuable tool for maturing a cybersecurity program.

    5. Unstructured Hunting

    Unstructured hunting relies more on analyst intuition and real-world experience than on formal rules or frameworks. In this method, seasoned hunters follow their instincts, identifying suspicious patterns, log entries, or correlations that don’t match any known indicators — but still “feel off.” 

    This open-ended approach can surface novel attacks, zero-day behaviors, or insider threats that evade automated detection. While more time-consuming, unstructured hunting is crucial in developing hypotheses for future structured hunts and refining detection rules.

    6. Situational or Entity-Driven Hunting

    This method prioritizes hunting based on specific contexts — such as critical assets, high-risk users, or sensitive business functions. For example, threat hunters may target systems housing personally identifiable information (PII) or monitor executive accounts likely to be targeted in phishing or business email compromise (BEC) attacks. 

    Situational or entity-driven hunting ensures security teams protect what matters most by focusing on high-value targets and contextual threat intelligence. It can also quickly act on suspicious activity that might otherwise get lost in the noise.

    Cyber Threat Hunting Process

    Effective threat hunting follows a straightforward process. Here’s how top-performing teams approach it.

    • Trigger: A hunt often starts with a clue — a suspicious login, a new TTP from a threat intel feed, or a hunch. Triggers inform what to investigate.
    • Investigation: Hunters use SIEM, EDR, network traffic, and log data to dig deeper. Enrichment, correlation, and historical context help determine risk.
    • Resolution: If a threat is confirmed, it’s escalated for response, and hunting insights are used to improve detection rules and workflows in the future.

    Cyber Threat Hunting Tools & Technologies

    4 Cyber Threat Hunting Challenges & How to Navigate Them with Torq

    Cyber threat hunting is an essential pillar of modern cybersecurity strategy, but it’s not without its obstacles. Today’s SOC teams face increasing complexity, resource constraints, and alert overload, which can hinder their ability to detect and respond to threats proactively. 

    Below are four of the most common challenges security teams encounter in threat hunting, along with how Torq’s Hyperautomation platform directly addresses them with AI-driven precision and scale.

    1. Integrating Disparate Data Sources

    The Challenge: Threat hunters rely on data from SIEM, EDR, firewalls, and cloud environments, which are often siloed.

    How Torq Helps: Torq Hyperautomation breaks down these silos by integrating your entire security stack into a unified, low-code automation engine. With hundreds of pre-built integrations, Torq enables real-time data normalization, enrichment, and orchestration across all sources. Threat intel from platforms like VirusTotal or Recorded Future can be automatically enriched into alert streams, providing analysts with actionable context — fast. This consolidated view eliminates blind spots and empowers threat hunters to act confidently and quickly.

    2. Alert Fatigue

    The Challenge: Analysts drown in noisy, low-value alerts, making it difficult to spot real threats.

    How Torq Helps: Torq uses agentic AI to combat alert fatigue. Torq ensures that only high-confidence, context-rich alerts reach analysts by filtering out noise, deduplicating alerts, and applying real-time prioritization logic. Low-risk or redundant alerts are automatically suppressed, and high-severity incidents are escalated to the right person or team through customized workflows. This triage process reduces alert volume by up to 95%, allowing teams to focus on what truly matters — critical threats that require human judgment.

    3. False Positives

    The Challenge: Traditional tools generate too many “maybe” threats — wasting time and delaying response. In fact, more than half of security teams say that false positives are a huge problem.

    How Torq Helps: Torq uses intelligent case automation and prioritization to differentiate between real threats and false alarms intelligently. By analyzing historical resolution data, Torq can fine-tune playbooks to automatically suppress known false positives while continuously learning and adapting to your unique environment. This self-optimizing capability reduces alert fatigue and improves detection, cutting through the noise to surface high-priority incidents faster.

    4. Limited Resources

    The Challenge: Skilled threat hunters are in short supply — and expensive.

    How Torq Helps: Torq HyperSOC empowers teams of all skill levels to participate in advanced threat hunting. Its intuitive low-code interface allows junior analysts to build and execute workflows without needing deep coding experience. Meanwhile, Torq’s AI agents led by Socrates, automatically handle routine triage, enrichment, and correlation, freeing up senior analysts to focus on deep-dive threat analysis and strategic improvements. The result is an autonomous SOC that can scale without scaling headcount.

    The Bottom Line

    Cyber threat hunting is too important to be slowed down by fragmented tools, noisy alerts, or stretched resources. Torq Hyperautomation modernizes the threat hunting process by combining unified data integration, real-time alert intelligence, and agentic AI, enabling any SOC team to hunt smarter, faster, and more efficiently.

    Ready to eliminate your threat hunting roadblocks? See Torq Hyperautomation in action and learn how to evolve from reactive to proactive security today.

    Get a Demo

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    SEE TORQ IN ACTION

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

    Corey Kaemming, Senior Director of InfoSec

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

    Todd Willoughby, Director

    Compuquip logo in white

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

    Phillip Tarrant, SOC Technical Manager

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

    Gai Hanochi, VP Business Technologies

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

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    Yossi Yeshua, CISO

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    AI Hyperautomation Security Automation 101 Use Cases

    Automate SOC 2 Compliance: Stay Ready, Not Just Audited

    By Torq
    May 14, 2025
    9 Minute Read

    Contents

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

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    Information security is a top priority for every organization, especially those relying on third-party vendors like SaaS platforms and cloud providers. When sensitive data is mishandled, the risks are significant: data breaches, ransomware, and reputational damage.

    For modern SaaS and cloud-first companies, compliance is a fundamental requirement to earn trust, win business, and prove operational integrity. Yet, for many teams, achieving and maintaining compliance readiness remains a slow, manual, and spreadsheet-heavy burden.

    SOC 2 is a widely recognized auditing framework designed to ensure service providers securely handle data. For any business that values trust and transparency, SOC 2 compliance is the baseline when evaluating cloud-based partners.

    Hyperautomation platforms offer a smarter, faster path to SOC 2 compliance, transforming compliance from an annual fire drill into an always-on, audit-ready advantage. 

    What Is SOC 2 and Why Does It Matter Today?

    SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls 2) is a voluntary compliance standard that specifies how service organizations should manage customer data to protect their security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. It’s a framework developed by the AICPA to help businesses demonstrate their commitment to data security and build trust with clients. 

    SOC 2 compliance outlines how service providers should manage customer data based on five Trust Services Criteria:

    1. Security: Protect systems against unauthorized access.
    2. Availability: Ensure systems are operational and accessible.
    3. Processing Integrity: Guarantee complete, valid, accurate, and timely system processing.
    4. Confidentiality: Restrict access to sensitive information.
    5. Privacy: Govern the collection, use, and disposal of personal information.

    There are two types of SOC 2 reports:

    • Type I: A snapshot in time that verifies whether controls are properly designed.
    • Type II: A more rigorous report that tests control effectiveness over a period (typically 3-12 months).

    SOC 2 Type II has become the industry expectation for most SaaS vendors, especially when handling sensitive customer data. It signals a company’s commitment to long-term security and operational maturity.

    Why is SOC 2 compliance important?

    Builds trust: It demonstrates a commitment to data security and helps build trust with clients and stakeholders. 

    Mitigates risk: It helps organizations identify and mitigate data security and privacy risks. 

    Competitive advantage: SOC 2 compliance can be a competitive differentiator in some industries. 

    Meeting client requirements: Many organizations require their vendors to be SOC 2 compliant. 

    Regulatory compliance: While not a legal requirement, SOC 2 compliance can help organizations meet other regulatory requirements related to data privacy and security.

    How does SOC 2 compliance work?

    Getting a SOC 2 report isn’t a one-time event; it’s an ongoing process with distinct steps. Here’s a breakdown of how organizations achieve and maintain compliance.

    1. Choose relevant Trust Services Criteria: Organizations select which of the five criteria apply to their business and data handling practices. 
    2. Implement controls: Organizations implement controls to meet the selected criteria. 
    3. Undergo an audit: An independent CPA firm audits the organization’s controls and provides a report. 
    4. Maintain compliance: Organizations should continuously monitor their controls and undergo regular audits to maintain compliance.

    Why Manual SOC 2 Compliance Is a Pain

    • Manual evidence collection takes forever. Most companies still rely on spreadsheets and screenshots to track audit artifacts. Gathering, reviewing, and validating evidence for auditors takes hundreds of hours across departments.
    • Tracking controls is inconsistent and hard to manage. Multiple teams often own security controls using disconnected tools. Tracking each control’s health, coverage, and effectiveness is fragmented and prone to gaps and oversights.
    • It’s not a one-and-done. SOC 2 Type II isn’t just about proving you were compliant once. It’s about showing your security practices are consistent over time. That means continuous evidence generation, alert monitoring, and policy enforcement daily.

    SOC automation tools help teams map their security operations directly to these trust principles, automatically enforcing controls across hybrid, multi-cloud, and containerized environments.

    How SOC 2 Compliance Automation Works

    Achieving and maintaining SOC 2 compliance can be a manual, time-intensive process — but it doesn’t have to be. By leveraging AI and compliance automation, organizations can simplify how they meet and demonstrate compliance across the five Trust Services Criteria.

    Integrates with Your Stack

    What it means: Automation tools plug directly into your existing ecosystem — cloud platforms like AWS and Azure, identity providers like Okta, and collaboration tools like Jira and Slack, making compliance enforcement and monitoring seamless and real-time.

    How Torq does it: Torq connects natively with your infrastructure, security, and productivity tools using out-of-the-box integrations. These integrations fuel automated workflows that pull relevant signals (e.g., IAM policy changes, unencrypted S3 buckets, open security groups) and act on them immediately. Whether it’s ingesting audit logs from AWS CloudTrail or pushing alerts to Slack, Torq bridges the gap between tools without manual configuration.

    Maps to Trust Principles and Controls

    What it means: Modern compliance platforms organize automation workflows around the Trust Services Criteria. This makes it easier to align security controls with compliance requirements and prove that each area is covered.

    How Torq does it: With Torq, you can build a custom compliance runbook or use pre-built templates that map specific security checks to SOC 2 controls. Each runbook clearly logs which control it’s addressing, such as enforcing encryption standards or validating role-based access controls. This creates a structured, traceable link between your workflows and SOC 2 requirements, ready for auditor review.

    Constant Monitoring, Not Periodic Check-ins

    What it means: Compliance is an ongoing effort. Automation ensures that control monitoring happens in real time, continuously validating your posture and preventing drift.

    How Torq does it: Torq runs real-time compliance checks through scheduled or event-driven workflows. For example, any time a new cloud resource is deployed, Torq automatically evaluates it against predefined compliance criteria. Misconfigurations trigger alerts, ticket creation, or even automated remediation.

    Generates Audit-Friendly Evidence Automatically

    What it means: Instead of compiling screenshots and hunting down logs days before an audit, automation systems gather and organize evidence as it’s created, giving you a full audit trail at any time.

    How Torq does it: Torq logs every workflow execution, including input data, actions taken, and outcomes. These logs are stored in a structured format, ready to be presented to auditors as proof of continuous compliance. You can also export or share audit evidence directly through Torq’s reporting tools or integrate with ticketing systems for compliance task tracking.

    6 Benefits of Automating SOC 2 Compliance

    1. Reduced audit prep time and cost: Automating evidence collection and control validation can shrink audit timelines by weeks and reduce consulting fees.
    2. Better visibility into control health: Dashboards and real-time alerts let you see which controls are compliant, which need attention, and where risk is growing.
    3. Fewer human errors: No more copy-pasting logs into spreadsheets. Automation ensures consistency and accuracy at every step.
    4. Always-on compliance posture: Your organization is ready for an audit at any time. Continuous monitoring makes compliance a state of operations, not a one-time event.
    5. Easier collaboration across departments: Automation brings security, engineering, and compliance teams onto the same platform with shared visibility and workflows.
    6. Increased trust with customers and partners: A real-time compliance program sends a powerful message to customers: Your organization takes data protection seriously.

    How Torq Helps You Automate SOC 2 Compliance

    Torq HyperSOCTM delivers a powerful, unified platform to streamline and scale your SOC 2 compliance program across your entire environment. Torq eliminates manual bottlenecks and transforms compliance into a continuous, self-sustaining process by orchestrating complex workflows across tools, teams, and time zones.

    Integrations: Unified Visibility Across Your Stack

    Torq connects to your entire cloud and security ecosystem in minutes using out-of-the-box integrations. Whether you’re running workloads in AWS, GCP, or Azure, managing identities in Okta, or tracking development workflows in GitHub and Jira, Torq can tap into these sources and extract the signals you need for compliance.

    • Monitor infrastructure changes in real-time (e.g., new EC2 instance launches, S3 bucket policy updates).
    • Ingest identity events from Okta or Azure AD to validate least-privilege access.
    • Track policy exceptions and code deployment events directly from GitHub or CI/CD tools.

    Runbooks: Automate Evidence, Reviews & Enforcement

    Torq’s no-code and low-code playbooks make automating key SOC 2 tasks easy without relying on engineering time.

    • Automatically collect audit evidence when key events occur, like provisioning new users, updating firewall rules, or completing access reviews.
    • Launch scheduled playbooks to ensure periodic checks (e.g., quarterly access audits) happen without fail.
    • Enforce policies across cloud, SaaS, and internal systems by detecting and responding to real-time misconfigurations.

    Monitoring: Continuous Control Validation

    Instead of ad hoc or periodic checks, Torq enables 24/7 control monitoring to ensure compliance with SOC 2 requirements.

    • Create detection workflows that monitor changes in cloud configurations, access policies, and security controls.
    • Trigger real-time alerts for violations, like unencrypted storage, public resources, or unauthorized privilege escalation.
    • Use control dashboards to see exactly which requirements are covered, which are failing, and what actions were taken.

    Remediation: Automated Issue Handling

    Not every compliance issue needs manual intervention. Torq’s team of AI Agents intelligently distinguishes between routine fixes and high-risk violations, so your team can focus on what matters most.

    • Auto-remediate common misconfigurations (e.g., remove public S3 access, disable unused accounts).
    • Escalate critical events to the right teams via Jira, Slack, or your preferred ticketing system.
    • Track remediation efforts as part of your audit log, ensuring every action is documented and reviewable.

    Reporting: Audit-Ready, All the Time

    Preparing for an audit shouldn’t be a fire drill. Torq automatically compiles and organizes evidence into structured, SOC 2-aligned reports.

    • Generate reports categorized by the five Trust Services Criteria.
    • Include timestamps, actor information, and remediation history for every logged event.
    • Export or share directly with auditors and GRC teams.

    With Torq, your SOC 2 program becomes:

    • Always on: Continuous monitoring, detection, and evidence gathering.
    • Always improving: Automated feedback loops help eliminate recurring issues.
    • Always audit-ready: Pre-organized, verified data ensures you’re prepared year-round.

    SOC 2 Compliance, the Hyperautomated Way

    SOC 2 isn’t just a regulatory hoop to jump through. It reflects how seriously your company takes security, privacy, and operational excellence. But maintaining that standard manually is a recipe for burnout, errors, and missed risks.

    Torq HyperSOC gives you the power to turn SOC 2 from a painful annual scramble into a seamless, always-on system. Faster audits. Lower risk. Greater trust.

    Ready to make SOC 2 compliance effortless? Read the SOC Efficiency Guide to see how leading teams are transforming SecOps with Torq.

    Get the Guide
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    SEE TORQ IN ACTION

    Ready to automate everything?

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

    Corey Kaemming, Senior Director of InfoSec

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

    Todd Willoughby, Director

    Compuquip logo in white

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

    Phillip Tarrant, SOC Technical Manager

    Fiverr logo in black

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

    Gai Hanochi, VP Business Technologies

    Carvana logo in black

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

    Dina Mathers, CISO

    Riskified logo in white

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

    Yossi Yeshua, CISO

    Get a Demo

    AI AI SOC Hyperautomation Security Automation 101 Use Cases

    Why SOAR Cybersecurity Can’t Keep Up With Modern SOCs

    By Torq
    May 13, 2025
    10 Minute Read
    Learn what SOAR is, where it fails, and why Torq’s Hyperautomation Platform is a smarter, faster alternative for modern security.

    Contents

    Get a Personalized Demo

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

    Request a Demo

    Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) promised streamlined workflows, quick incident responses, and reduced security analyst workloads. But as cybersecurity threats grew more sophisticated, legacy SOAR solutions showed their critical limitations. 

    SOAR’s static, rigid workflows and cumbersome integration processes have left many SOCs overwhelmed, struggling with slow response times, high security alert fatigue, and fragmented security toolsets.

    Today, traditional SOAR platforms are becoming obsolete, unable to keep pace with rapidly evolving cyber threats. Legacy SOAR solutions typically rely on static playbooks and manual script updates, which quickly become outdated, failing to adapt dynamically to new threats or changing environments. Additionally, traditional SOAR platforms often come with steep learning curves, extensive deployment timelines, and hidden cost, which limit their practicality and reduce their overall ROI.

    Hyperautomation and advanced agentic AI tools like Torq offer a powerful alternative, transforming security operations by automating dynamically, intelligently, and at scale. Unlike legacy SOAR, Hyperautomation provides flexibility with no-code workflows, real-time contextual enrichment, and seamless integrations, eliminating the need for extensive manual intervention and continuous maintenance. 

    By leveraging advanced AI-driven tools, SOC teams can proactively manage threats, dramatically reduce analyst fatigue, and significantly improve response times. AI-powered SOCs outperform traditional SOAR by reasoning through signals, correlating context across tools, and executing adaptive remediation — closing the loop where legacy workflows stall.

    What is SOAR in Cybersecurity and How Does It Work?

    Legacy Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) was built to stitch together security tools — but relies on brittle scripts and static playbooks. It promised efficiency but delivered complexity, blind spots, and burnout. It’s dead because the modern SOC demands dynamic, AI-driven action, not legacy code and lag time. See why SOAR is dead.

    SOAR is composed of three components: 

    1. Orchestration: Orchestration connects disparate security tools into a cohesive ecosystem. SOAR tools coordinate actions and share data across multiple platforms by integrating various security solutions..
    2. Automation: Automation enables SOC teams to execute repetitive security tasks without human intervention. Common automated actions include blocking IP addresses, isolating infected endpoints, or generating reports..
    3. Response: Security orchestration and automation provide the foundation for response. Response is where detection turns into action.

    How SOAR Works in Practice

    Data analysis: SOAR applies correlation rules or basic machine learning to identify indicators of compromise (IOCs), anomalies, or attack patterns.

    Enrichment: Alerts are enriched with contextual data like user behavior, asset value, or known threat intelligence to support investigation.

    Triage and investigation: Automated playbooks classify incidents by type or severity. Analysts manually investigate with supporting evidence and logs.

    Response: Once verified, predefined playbooks carry out static actions like isolating devices, disabling accounts, or opening IT tickets.

    By orchestrating and automating these stages, SOAR platforms aimed to improve incident response times, reduce human error, and standardize security operations. However, traditional SOAR often falls short due to rigid playbooks, brittle integrations, and high maintenance requirements.

    Limitations of SOAR Solutions in Modern SOCs

    SOAR was supposed to be the silver bullet for overloaded SOCs, promising faster response, streamlined workflows, and fewer manual tasks. But, in practice, legacy SOAR platforms introduced new complexity, slowed response times, and failed to adapt to real-world threats.

    Here’s why they’re falling behind:

    • Poor integrations and limited interoperability: Integration complexities frequently result in limited interoperability, leaving critical data fragmented across isolated tools.
    • Disconnected tools, fragmented data: Despite promises of centralization, many SOAR platforms leave vital security tools disconnected, exacerbating inefficiencies.
    • Alert overload: Without dynamic context, traditional SOAR platforms struggle to differentiate legitimate threats from noise, overwhelming security analysts. AI-driven triage replaces static playbooks with real-time reasoning that separates noise from high-risk incidents, allowing SOCs to react with precision instead of guesswork.
    • Long implementation timelines: Implementing SOAR solutions can take months, significantly delaying any potential benefits.
    • High cost with limited ROI: Legacy SOAR investments often fail to deliver sufficient value due to high upfront costs, ongoing maintenance expenses, and poor usability. Worse, their architecture doesn’t scale elastically to cloud workloads, limiting performance under pressure.

    Read the SOAR is Dead manifesto >

    How Torq HyperSOC™ Outperforms Traditional SOAR

    Legacy SOAR systems were designed for a different era of security — one where attacks were slower, data was smaller, and workflows could afford to be linear. But today’s SOCs operate in a world of cloud-native infrastructure, API sprawl, and machine-speed threats. Static playbooks and brittle connectors can’t keep up.

    Torq HyperSOC™ was purpose-built to fix what SOAR broke. It eliminates the inflexible playbooks, easy-to-break integrations, and alert overload that plague traditional platforms, replacing them with intelligent, adaptable workflows that actually deliver on the promise of automation. This shift toward AI-powered security operations gives enterprises a SOC that learns, adapts, and evolves — something legacy SOAR architectures were never designed to do.

    Here’s how Torq redefines what automation can do.

    Faster Response Time

    Legacy SOAR tools operate linearly — one workflow, one action, one alert at a time. Each step must complete before the next begins, often delayed by scripts, human approvals, or system latency. This “assembly-line” approach slows detection-to-response cycles, especially when incidents span multiple environments.

    Using real-time, parallel execution, Torq’s incident response workflows trigger the right action the moment an event is detected, whether that’s isolating an endpoint, revoking credentials, or opening an investigation. With context-aware automation, Torq eliminates the lag between detection and containment, reducing MTTR from hours to seconds. 

    Reduced Analyst Fatigue

    SOAR was meant to help analysts, but in practice, it buried them in maintenance. Manual setup, constant tuning, and false positives turn every SOC shift into a cycle of triage and exhaustion.

    Through AI-assisted triage, enrichment, and decision-making, Torq automatically handles 90% of Tier-1 tasks — validating alerts, enriching data, correlating context, and closing noise. Analysts stay focused on high-impact investigations that truly require human intuition and expertise.

    Seamless Integrations

    SOAR integrations are often a house of cards, characterized by brittle APIs, manual connectors, and vendor lock-in that restrict flexibility. Each new integration means new scripts, dependencies, and points of failure.

    Torq eliminates this friction with native integrations to over 300 security, IT, and cloud tools — from SIEMs and XDRs to identity, collaboration, and ITSM platforms.

    Out of the box, Torq unifies:

    • Detection sources (like CrowdStrike, Wiz, and SentinelOne)
    • Response tools (like Okta, AWS, and Microsoft Defender)
    • Collaboration systems (like Slack, Teams, and Jira)

    Smarter Decision-Making

    Legacy SOAR follows logic, not intelligence. It executes rigid “if/then” sequences that fail when the data doesn’t match expectations. In contrast, Torq thinks before it acts.

    At the core of the HyperSOC™ is Socrates, Torq’s AI SOC Analyst — an intelligent AI Agent that autonomously:

    • Correlates alerts across multiple tools and data sources
    • Validates whether incidents are legitimate or benign
    • Enriches with live context from threat intel, user behavior, and asset criticality
    • Recommends or executes the next best action, based on policy and risk

    This reasoning-driven automation replaces thousands of static playbooks with a single, adaptive brain — capable of evolving as threats, tools, and environments change. These AI-driven decisions create a continuous improvement loop, strengthening detection accuracy and response speed with every incident handled.

    Scalable Cloud Architecture

    Traditional SOAR architectures are monolithic and lack scalability. Each new tenant, workflow, or data stream adds overhead — eventually choking performance and reliability.

    Built on a cloud-native, event-driven architecture, Torq scales horizontally with zero friction. Whether you’re processing 100 alerts per day or 100,000 per minute, the platform’s performance remains consistent and predictable. Every workflow runs as an independent, elastic function — with built-in resiliency, version control, and immutable audit trails for complete compliance.

    That’s how enterprises use Torq to automate across multi-cloud environments, hybrid SOCs, and distributed teams, all while maintaining governance, visibility, and control.

    5 Steps to Modernize Your SOC With Hyperautomation

    SOAR is dead, thanks to Hyperautomation. And you’re not alone in trying to figure out how to move on. Enterprises everywhere are abandoning legacy SOAR systems that have become more burden than benefit.

    If you’re worried about the complexity of migration, don’t be. Torq makes the transition fast, seamless, and transformative. Whether you’re replacing XSOAR, Phantom, or another legacy platform, Torq has helped global enterprises make the switch in weeks.

    Here’s how to kill your SOAR (for good) and evolve your SOC into an autonomous, Hyperautomated powerhouse.

    1. Build Your Migration Blueprint

    Audit your current SOAR: workflows, integrations, and pain points. Identify which automations matter most and where Torq can deliver immediate ROI. The Torq team helps you map every dependency, prioritize key use cases, and define measurable success metrics before you start.

    2. Migrate Workflows and Integrations

    Connect Torq to your existing tools — SIEM, XDR, IAM, email, and more — using 300+ native integrations. Your playbooks, data, and logic move into dynamic, no-code workflows that actually scale. You can even expand automation to new tools your SOAR couldn’t support.

    3. Test, Tune, and Validate

    With Torq, testing is built-in. Validate every workflow step in real time, spot issues instantly, and iterate fast. You can run Torq alongside your old SOAR during migration to ensure nothing slips through the cracks.

    4. Go Live — and Scale Fast

    Launch in phases, starting with high-impact automations. Once live, Torq’s event-driven architecture keeps performance consistent at any scale — from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of alerts per hour.

    5. Learn, Optimize, and Evolve

    Through our onboarding program, Torq’s architects work alongside your analysts to build priority use cases, accelerate adoption, and upskill your team. As you go, AI Agents like Socrates and the AI Workflow Builder elevate your SOC from automated to autonomous.

    This is where AI-powered SOCs pull ahead — continuously refining workflows, shrinking MTTR, and eliminating the operational drag created by legacy SOAR.

    Torq Use Cases That Improve SOC Performance

    Reduce Alert Fatigue

    SOC teams overwhelmed by constant noise use Torq Hyperautomation to validate alerts, enrich context, and automatically suppress false positives. This removes the manual triage burden and keeps analysts focused on real incidents.

    The result: 80% less alert fatigue and 10x faster incident response time.

    Accelerate Cloud Remediation

    When Wiz or CSPM tools detect a risky misconfiguration, Torq triggers parallel remediation workflows instantly. These workflows notify the right teams, apply policy-based fixes, and confirm remediation without waiting for human intervention.

    The result: Critical cloud exposures resolved in minutes instead of hours.

    Eliminate Tier-1 Backlog

    Torq’s AI Agents autonomously triage alerts, correlate signals across tools, and escalate only validated threats. Routine Tier-1 tasks — enrichment, user verification, risk scoring — run end to end without analyst involvement.

    The result: More than 90 percent of Tier-1 workload automated, giving analysts time for deeper investigations.

    Kill Your SOAR. Make the Switch.

    While SOAR cybersecurity was a significant step forward in security automation, its limitations are evident. Modern SOC teams require dynamic, adaptive, and intelligent tools that can scale effortlessly and deliver immediate value.

    Hyperautomation, as delivered by Torq, empowers SOCs to achieve true operational agility, dramatically faster response times, and improved overall security posture, without the complexity and rigidity of traditional SOAR.

    Modern SOCs are moving beyond SOAR. With agentic AI, Hyperautomation, and context-driven orchestration, Torq delivers faster, more accurate, and more scalable operations — proving why AI-enabled SOCs are rapidly becoming the enterprise standard. Get the migration guide and see how your SOC can do more.

    Get the Migration Guide

    FAQs

    What is SOAR in cybersecurity?

    SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response) is a cybersecurity framework that helps streamline security operations by connecting and automating tools across the SOC. It combines orchestration, automation, and incident response to help security analysts manage threats more efficiently. Traditional SOAR tools centralize alerts from systems like SIEM, EDR, and threat intelligence feeds, then execute predefined playbooks to respond to potential incidents.

    How does SOAR improve incident response and triage?

    SOAR platforms were built to automate repetitive tasks such as alert triage, correlation, and enrichment. When a detection event occurs, the SOAR platform retrieves related data from threat intelligence sources and applies automated playbooks to determine the next steps, such as isolating an endpoint, disabling a user, or opening a case for investigation. While this improves response time, legacy SOAR tools often rely on static logic that can’t adapt to evolving threats, leading many SOCs to adopt AI-driven Hyperautomation for faster, more intelligent response.

    What are the main limitations of SOAR in security operations?

    Legacy SOAR systems suffer from:

    • Slow performance due to linear playbook execution
    • Limited scalability for large or multi-cloud environments
    • Integration gaps that fragment visibility across SIEM and detection tools
    • High maintenance requirements for scripting and rule tuning
    • Alert fatigue and false positives that overwhelm analysts

    That’s why many organizations are replacing SOAR with AI-powered Hyperautomation to achieve real-time incident response, adaptive threat detection, and continuous orchestration across the full SecOps stack.

    How does Hyperautomation differ from traditional SOAR tools?

    Hyperautomation builds on SOAR’s foundation but eliminates its rigid, static architecture. Instead of executing fixed playbooks, Hyperautomation platforms like Torq HyperSOC™ use AI reasoning, dynamic workflows, and contextual orchestration to make intelligent decisions in real time.

     

    This enables security teams to:

    • Correlate data automatically from SIEM, threat intelligence, and endpoint tools
    • Automate incident response actions like containment, remediation, and recovery
    • Enhance vulnerability management with live risk scoring
    • Reduce manual triage and improve analyst productivity
    Does SOAR support threat intelligence and threat hunting?

    SOAR was originally designed to enrich alerts with threat intelligence, but modern threat hunting requires more agility than static SOAR workflows allow. Torq’s Hyperautomation platform automatically correlates live threat feeds with SIEM and detection data, enriching every incident with context such as asset criticality, user behavior, and attack patterns. Analysts can then launch automated threat hunts, identify high-risk vulnerabilities, and take response actions directly within the same workflow — without manual handoffs or repetitive tasks.

    Can SOAR help streamline vulnerability management and case management?

    Only to a limited extent. Traditional SOAR tools can trigger patching workflows or ticket creation, but they often operate in silos. Torq’s HyperSOC™ fully integrates vulnerability management and case management into its automation engine. When a new vulnerability or endpoint alert is detected, Torq automatically correlates it with threat data, prioritizes by business risk, and executes automated response actions — all while maintaining full auditability for compliance.

    Is SOAR still the best choice for modern SOCs?

    Not anymore. Today’s threats move faster than SOAR’s static systems can handle. The next evolution is AI-driven Hyperautomation, which merges orchestration, intelligence, and automation into one adaptive SOC platform.
     

    With Torq, security teams achieve:

    • Instant response to emerging threats
    • Continuous threat detection and incident response
    • Unified orchestration across every security and IT tool
    • Reduced analyst fatigue and improved SOC efficiency
    Share

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    SEE TORQ IN ACTION

    Ready to automate everything?

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

    Corey Kaemming, Senior Director of InfoSec

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

    Todd Willoughby, Director

    Compuquip logo in white

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

    Phillip Tarrant, SOC Technical Manager

    Fiverr logo in black

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

    Gai Hanochi, VP Business Technologies

    Carvana logo in black

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

    Dina Mathers, CISO

    Riskified logo in white

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

    Yossi Yeshua, CISO

    Get a Demo

    Customers Hyperautomation Use Cases

    Stop Retail Cyberattacks with SOC Automation

    By Bob Boyle
    May 12, 2025
    9 Minute Read
    Learn how retail cybersecurity SOCs are using security Hyperautomation to streamline operations and defend against threats.

    Contents

    Get a Personalized Demo

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

    Request a Demo

    Retail companies are high-value targets for cybercriminals. With sprawling infrastructures, complex supply chains, and large amounts of customer data, retailers are a goldmine for bad actors. In 2024, the With massive volumes of customer data, sprawling store networks, vulnerable point-of-sale systems, and complex supply chains, retail businesses are prime targets for ransomware, phishing, credential theft, and supply chain intrusions. 

    At the same time, cybersecurity teams are under intense pressure to protect operations, uphold compliance, and respond to cyber threats instantly, all without disrupting customer experience. Traditional security tools can’t keep up. 

    That’s why more retailers are turning to security Hyperautomation to transform their SOCs, eliminate manual work, and defend against today’s most sophisticated threats. This blog explores the top use cases for cybersecurity in the retail industry and shows how a leading global fashion retailer scaled their SOC with Torq.

    Why Cybersecurity in Retail Demands a New Approach

    Retail has become one of the most targeted industries, accounting for one in four cyberattacks. With sprawling networks, complex digital supply chains, and massive amounts of sensitive customer data, the retail industry accounted for 24% of all cyberattacks in 2024 — more than any other vertical. The average cost of a data breach in retail has climbed to $3.28 million.

    Cybersecurity in the retail industry is becoming more difficult to manage due to the rise in e-commerce (84% of consumers now shop online), omnichannel platforms, and distributed teams. Cybercriminals exploit vulnerabilities in POS systems, third-party vendors, and cloud environments using tactics like phishing, ransomware, and credential theft.

    Cybersecurity Challenges in the Retail Industry

    High alert volumes with limited analyst headcount: Retail SOCs work with thousands of alerts daily, many of which are false positives or low-priority noise. With small teams stretched thin across locations and time zones, critical threats can easily slip through the cracks. This alert overload leads to burnout, slower response times, and dangerous blind spots in the attack surface.

    Manual ticket handling and case management: Legacy workflows rely heavily on human intervention, from assigning tickets to gathering evidence and escalating incidents. This manual process is time-consuming and error-prone, making it nearly impossible to keep up with today’s speed and complexity of threats. SOC analysts spend more time managing systems than securing them.

    Access and identity control challenges: Retail businesses must manage thousands of users across stores, warehouses, and corporate systems. Controlling access is a daily challenge, especially for temporary or third-party users. Without SOC automation, granting and revoking admin rights or privileged access becomes inconsistent, increasing insider risk and potential compliance violations.

    Customer service expectations and compliance demands: Downtime is not an option in retail. Customers expect seamless transactions and real-time digital experiences, while regulatory bodies demand strict adherence to data privacy and security standards (e.g., PCI DSS, GDPR). Security teams must ensure continuous protection without disrupting customer-facing operations, a delicate balancing act made harder by outdated tools and manual processes.

    Top Cyber Threats Targeting Retailers

    • Ransomware attacks: Threat actors deploy file-encrypting malware to lock critical retail infrastructure, such as inventory databases and POS systems, and then demand cryptocurrency payments in exchange for decryption keys. This often stops operations and disrupts revenue streams.
    • Phishing campaigns: Adversaries use targeted social engineering and spoofed domains to deliver payloads or harvest credentials, enabling lateral movement, privilege escalation, and subsequent exploitation across retail IT and cloud environments.
    • Point-of-sale (POS) malware: POS malware infiltrates endpoints via vulnerable network paths or infected third-party software, intercepting unencrypted track data and exfiltrating payment card information to command-and-control (C2) infrastructure.
    • Supply chain compromise: Attackers exploit weak security controls in upstream vendors or software suppliers to insert backdoors or manipulate trusted integrations, providing persistent access into the retailer’s internal systems and customer databases.
    • Insider threats: Authorized users — either negligently or maliciously — circumvent access controls, exfiltrate sensitive data, or introduce malware into the network, exploiting gaps in monitoring, logging, and least-privilege enforcement.

    These mounting threats and operational challenges reveal a simple truth: retail cybersecurity can’t keep relying on manual effort and legacy tooling. The sheer volume, speed, and sophistication of attacks demand real-time detection, automated response, and continuous enforcement of access policies across a sprawling ecosystem. 

    By replacing reactive, fragmented workflows with intelligent, end-to-end automation, Torq Hyperautomation empowers retail SOCs to instantly triage alerts, investigate threats, and respond autonomously — at scale. It’s not just faster; it’s the only sustainable path forward.

    How Torq Hyperautomation Solves Retail’s Biggest SOC Challenges

    1. Automating Security Case Management to Fight Breaches

    Torq automatically ingests and prioritizes open security incidents from tools like Wiz, enriches them with actionable context, creates complete cases, and routes them based on severity and team workflows, eliminating the need for repetitive, manual triage.

    Workflow Steps:

    1. Filter Wiz event data to select incidents with status ‘OPEN’ and severity ‘MEDIUM’, ‘HIGH’, or ‘CRITICAL’.
    2. Transform data using Data Agent (AI-generated data transformation) operator to prepare it for case creation.
    3. Create a new case with detailed incident information and links.
    4. Add a quick action button to the case for advancing investigation phases based on the assigned runbook.
    5. Extract indicators of compromise (IOCs) from incident alerts.
    6. Populate observables within the security case with the newly extracted IOCs.
    7. Update case severity based on incident severity and:
      1. IF case severity changes to ‘CRITICAL’ or ‘HIGH’, change the case state to ‘TRIAGE’ and assign the case to the appropriate Tier-2 analyst. 
      2. IF case severity changes to ‘MEDIUM’ or ‘LOW’, change the case state to ‘TRIAGE’ and assign the case to Socrates, Torq’s AI SOC Analyst, for remediation.

    2. Real-Time Threat Intelligence to Combat Phishing and Ransomware Attacks 

    With integrations like CrowdStrike and threat intelligence tools (VirusTotal, Recorded Future), Torq analyzes command line activity and extracts IOCs using AI. It flags risks early and updates case observables in real time to stop evolving ransomware attacks and phishing before damage occurs.

    Automate the process of retrieving, analyzing, and managing threat intelligence data from CrowdStrike alerts, integrating AI Task Agent operator analysis, and updating case observables.

    Workflow Steps:

    1. List Crowdstrike case events and filter them based on [custom] criteria.
    2. Create a session with CrowdStrike, retrieve alert details, and add to case.
    3. Filter and process command line data using the AI Task Agent for analysis.
    4. Extract and filter IOCs from alert details.
    5. Compare new IOCs with existing case observables and identify unique ones.
    6. Trigger a secondary nested workflow to check observables with threat intelligence (Workflow: Parallel Execution – VirusTotal, Recorded Future, AlienVault).
    7. Revoke the CrowdStrike session token and exit.

    3. Enriching Alerts for Faster Detection of Retail Cyber Attacks

    Torq aggregates data from endpoint and asset platforms like SentinelOne, Axonius, and Azure AD to provide rich, multi-source context for every alert. AI-generated summaries accelerate understanding, reduce noise, and enable accurate, automated decision-making.

    Workflow Steps:

    1. Execute parallel processes to gather endpoint details from multiple sources.
    2. Retrieve agent details from SentinelOne using an API call with specified parameters.
    3. Extract key information from SentinelOne data using a JSON query.
    4. Fetch device details from Axonius with a POST request and process the response to extract relevant attributes.
    5. Generate an access token for Microsoft 365 and retrieve device information from Azure AD based on display name.
    6. Compile the gathered data from SentinelOne, Axonius, and Azure AD using AI Task Agent to create a formatted summary of results.

    4. Automating Identity and Access Requests to Secure Retail Networks 

    Retail SOCs can automate the entire process of requesting, approving, and granting temporary admin access across distributed store locations — from Slack initiation to device matching and IT approval, ensuring compliance, timely revocation, and stronger retail network security.

    Workflow Steps:

    1. Search for a Slack user’s email address based on the provided username.
    2. If the email is found, prompt the user to provide a reason for requesting temporary admin rights on their Mac.
    3. Depending on the user’s response, either proceed to find computers and store locations associated with the user’s email, or end the request.
    4. If approved computers are found at the current location, ask the user to select which Mac they need admin rights on.
    5. Request IT approval for granting admin rights.
    6. If approved, temporarily grant admin rights on the selected Mac and notify the user.
    7. After 15 minutes, revoke the admin rights and notify the user of the expiration.
    8. If not approved, notify the user about the denial.

    5. Daily Health Checks to Prevent Vulnerabilities and Breaches

    Torq automatically monitors security cases and detections across tools like CrowdStrike, scanning for unassigned incidents, missed escalations, and SLA violations. Summarized updates are sent to Microsoft Teams, helping SOC teams stay ahead of vulnerabilities and prevent breaches.

    Workflow Steps:

    1. Query Crowdstrike events for specific states and severities, starting a custom SLA timer for each based on severity.
    2. Retrieve the current date from each event; check if it is Monday, Wednesday, or Friday to proceed with further actions.
    3. Search for unassigned detections and incidents older than specified hours/days.
    4. Filter and process detection and incident data, collecting details for each unassigned detection and incident.
    5. Summarize findings and send to Microsoft Teams.

    Case Study: How a Fast Fashion Retailer Transformed Cybersecurity Efficiency

    One of the world’s largest fast-fashion retailers was struggling under the weight of manual processes, siloed tools, and a legacy SOAR platform. With thousands of alerts coming in every day, their team was spending most of their time chasing false positives and combing through disjointed systems, leaving little time for meaningful response and strategy. 

    The retailer turned to Torq Hyperautomation to modernize their cybersecurity processes. With Torq’s intuitive workflow builder, analysts at all skill levels could build automations in minutes. Torq’s case management system and integrations with the team’s existing security solutions streamlined alert enrichment, triage, and response. They were also able to automate their just-in-time access across OS systems, cloud, and hybrid environments, ensuring a streamlined process for administrative workflows.

    The retailer now solves end-user tickets in minutes and automates admin access across globally distributed teams. Read the full case study for more >

    Retail Cybersecurity Demands Hyperautomation

    Retail businesses can’t afford to fall behind in cybersecurity. Cyber threats like ransomware, phishing, and data breaches are growing more sophisticated, and legacy tools simply can’t scale.Torq Hyperautomation empowers retail SOCs to detect potential breaches faster, respond automatically, and maintain secure, compliant operations across global environments without waiting on developers or ripping and replacing systems.

    Ready to see how Torq can help you stop retail cyberattacks before they escalate? 

    Get a Demo
    Share

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    SEE TORQ IN ACTION

    Ready to automate everything?

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

    Corey Kaemming, Senior Director of InfoSec

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

    Todd Willoughby, Director

    Compuquip logo in white

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

    Phillip Tarrant, SOC Technical Manager

    Fiverr logo in black

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

    Gai Hanochi, VP Business Technologies

    Carvana logo in black

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

    Dina Mathers, CISO

    Riskified logo in white

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

    Yossi Yeshua, CISO

    Get a Demo

    AI Hyperautomation Security Automation 101 Use Cases

    Cut the Compliance Hassle: Automate It for Real‑Time Compliance Monitoring

    By Torq
    May 9, 2025
    7 Minute Read
    Torq compliance automation transforms slow, manual processes into real-time, audit-ready workflows.

    Contents

    Get a Personalized Demo

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

    Request a Demo

    Security compliance isn’t just checking boxes; it’s business-critical to keeping your organization secure, reputable, and operational. Yet, despite how critical regulatory compliance is, many organizations still wrestle with manual compliance management checks. Meet Torq Hyperautomation™: the best thing for streamlining security and compliance regulations.

    Imagine waving goodbye to spreadsheets, endless manual tasks, and frantic pre-audit scrambles. Compliance automation replaces outdated methods with security automation tools, freeing your SOC teams to focus on what matters most — securing your organization.

    Why Compliance is Still Done Manually

    If compliance management is so important, why are many organizations still stuck managing it manually?

    Legacy Systems, Siloed Non-Centralized Teams, and Spreadsheets 

    Organizations frequently rely on legacy systems designed before modern regulations and threats. These outdated tools often don’t integrate smoothly with newer systems, making automation challenging. Add to that the problem of teams — including finance, IT, HR, and security — all working in isolation and independently tracking compliance tasks through spreadsheets and manual logs. The result is a fragmented, error-prone compliance management process that wastes time and resources.

    Constantly Evolving Regulations (HIPAA, SOC 2, GDPR)

    On top of internal challenges, industry regulations like HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC 2, GDPR, and others are always changing. Keeping pace manually is nearly impossible. Changes to compliance frameworks are frequent and complex, demanding continuous updates to policies, procedures, and reporting. Manual processes simply can’t keep up, resulting in risks of non compliance and potential fines or reputational damage.

    What is Compliance Automation?

    Compliance Automation

    Compliance automation is using technology to streamline and automate the process of adhering to regulatory standards and internal policies. It involves leveraging software and AI to manage compliance-related tasks, reducing manual effort and improving efficiency. This includes automating tasks like documentation, risk assessments, reporting, and controls testing.

    Key features of compliance automation include:

    • Automated evidence collection: Automatically gathers data and logs across systems to demonstrate compliance with industry standards and frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, or GDPR.
    • Real-time monitoring: Continuously monitoring configurations, access controls, and activity logs to detect violations, vulnerabilities, and enforce real-time policy adherence.
    • Workflow orchestration: Executes predefined actions when compliance issues are detected (e.g., revoking access, sending alerts, and opening tickets).
    • Audit readiness: Maintains organized, timestamped documentation and audit trails to simplify preparation and reduce disruption.
    • Cross-system integration: Connects with critical tools to centralize compliance efforts and eliminate data silos.

    With Torq, compliance automation becomes more than just a productivity boost. Torq connects with all your critical tools, orchestrates tasks across systems, and ensures nothing slips through the cracks — from missed access revocations to failed encryption checks.

    How Does Compliance Automation Work?

    Compliance automation leverages software and integrations to streamline the compliance lifecycle, from continuous monitoring and reporting to remediation and documentation. Here’s how it works.

    Integrations

    Compliance automation pulls critical data from existing security and operational tools like SIEMs, Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems, cloud platforms, and endpoint protection tools. This creates a centralized view of your regulatory compliance posture, eliminating manual data gathering.

    Automated Workflows

    Automated workflows replace tedious manual tasks, such as collecting evidence for audits, scheduling routine security checks, or sending alerts when compliance thresholds are breached. Tasks that once took hours or days happen automatically, accurately, and consistently.

    Continuous Monitoring

    Automated compliance continuously monitors environments, detecting and flagging policy violations, vulnerabilities,  or deviations. Immediate detection means security teams can address issues swiftly, preventing minor oversights from escalating into major incidents.

    Reporting Dashboards

    With automated compliance reporting, audit-ready dashboards and reports are generated instantly. You no longer need to spend days compiling documentation; it’s continuously available, making internal and external audits smooth and stress-free.

    Remediation and Orchestration

    Automation doesn’t stop at identifying issues. It can automatically remediate certain policy violations or vulnerabilities, such as adjusting misconfigured cloud settings, or route complex matters to the appropriate teams along with detailed context, dramatically reducing mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR).

    7 Benefits of Compliance Automation

    As regulatory landscapes grow more complex and the risks of noncompliance increase, organizations are turning to automation to ensure control, consistency, and clarity across their compliance programs. Here’s how automated regulatory compliance software delivers measurable value.

    1. Reduced Compliance Risks

    Manual processes leave room for human error, delays, and oversight. Compliance automation software, with automated monitoring and remediation, ensures that violations and misconfigurations are detected and resolved at machine speed. This ensures data protection and minimizes the risk of regulatory fines, reputational damage, and data breaches, especially in fast-paced, cloud-native environments where change happens rapidly.

    2. More Efficient than Manual Processes

    Automation removes the manual burden from repetitive, time-consuming tasks like evidence gathering, access reviews, control verification, and report generation. This allows security and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) teams to focus on higher-value work like risk management and strategic policy development. It also improves scalability, making it easier to ensure your environment stays compliant even as your organization grows.

    3. Real-Time Data in One Dashboard

    Compliance automation platforms provide a centralized, unified dashboard that aggregates metrics, control health, policy violations, and remediation status. This real-time visibility eliminates the need to dig through multiple tools or spreadsheets and empowers teams to make faster, data-driven decisions about risk posture and compliance gaps.

    4. Simplifies the Audit Process

    Instead of scrambling to prepare evidence during audit season, automation ensures audit-ready documentation is always available on demand. Whether you’re using AuditBoard, Hyperproof, or your own system, automated audit logs and audit trails keep everything neatly recorded and ready to go. 

    Detailed logs, timestamps, access histories, and control status reports are automatically maintained and updated, making it easier for auditors to verify compliance and significantly reducing the cost, time, and stress associated with internal and third-party audits.

    5. Continuous Monitoring of Control Health

    Automating compliance provides continuous control, performance, and configuration validation, unlike periodic checks. This ensures that security controls like multi-factor authentication (MFA), role-based access controls (RBAC), encryption, and access policies remain effective. Automation can trigger alerts or remediation workflows instantly, turning compliance management from a static checkbox into a living, breathing process if a control becomes misconfigured or fails.

    6. Centralized Single Source of Truth

    Compliance automation tools are a centralized repository for all compliance-related activities like tracking issues, documenting resolution workflows, and maintaining immutable audit trails. This unified view eliminates siloed team efforts, improves accountability, and supports a long-term compliance strategy. With all evidence and activity accessible in one place, organizations spend less time searching for data and more time optimizing their security posture.

    7. Built-in Scalability

    As your business grows, managing compliance becomes more complex. With compliance automation software, scaling doesn’t mean hiring more people — it means deploying more intelligent workflows that extend your reach across every cloud, region, and team.

    Real-Time Compliance Monitoring With Torq

    Automation tools like Torq Hyperautomation make compliance seamless by enabling real-time monitoring across hybrid and cloud environments. With support for security and compliance workflows out of the box, Torq delivers rapid value to overworked SOC and GRC teams.

    With Torq, enterprises gain:

    • Limitless integrations: Immediate data sync with tools like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, IAM solutions, and more.
    • Customizable automation workflows: Tailor workflows to your organization’s specific compliance requirements such as PCI DSS, NIST, GDPR,  HIPAA, and SOC 2.
    • Continuous visibility: Continuous monitoring of your security compliance state, with immediate notifications and contextual information when issues are detected.
    • Automated evidence collection and reporting: No more scrambling for audits — automated regulatory compliance software from Torq automatically captures, organizes, and generates audit documentation.
    • Intelligent remediation: Automatically address compliance issues or escalate them to human teams with complete contextual data, reducing MTTR and ensuring continuous compliance.

    Ready to Ditch Security Compliance Stress? Automate It with Torq.

    Compliance automation delivers immediate wins in efficiency, visibility, and risk reduction.

    This automation transforms compliance management from a slow, manual burden into an efficient, automated, accurate, and real-time process. By reducing risk, cutting costs, and streamlining operations, compliance automation software lets your security team refocus on strategic initiatives instead of paperwork.

    Torq Hyperautomation simplifies security compliance in modern, complex environments. Torq enables teams to effortlessly maintain continuous compliance, secure, scalable, and compatible with hybrid and cloud-based infrastructures.

    Ready to automate security compliance and reclaim your time?

    Get a Demo

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    First, They Killed Their SOAR. Then They Joined Torq.

    By Torq
    May 7, 2025
    6 Minute Read
    Former SOAR users who found the ideal SOAR replacement with Torq

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    Before Torq, they were trapped. Buried under alerts. Drowning in old playbooks. Burned out by legacy SOAR tools that promised automation and delivered chaos. Then they discovered Torq, not just as a solution, but as a better way to work. They became power users, rebuilt their workflows, and transformed their SOCs.

    Now? They’re former legacy SOAR users — thriving with the ultimate SOAR replacement: Torq.

    Meet the team. Hear their stories. And see why switching to Torq wasn’t just the best move they made for their SOC; it was the best move they made for their careers.

    Meet the Team That Escaped SOAR Hell

    PO shares his SOAR replacement story
    Patrick “PO” Orzechowski
    Field CISO

    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 worldwide.

    Superpower: Connecting across teams, balancing priorities, and helping people align on what matters.

    João Ceron
    Solution Architect

    João is a Solutions Architect at Torq with 15+ years in SOC and network security. He holds a PhD with research on DDoS and IoT security, has published at USENIX Security, and contributed to projects for the Dutch government and U.S. DHS. At Torq, he helps clients implement AI-driven SOC automation.

    Superpower: Processing massive amounts of data and turning it into actionable value.

    Rich Chen
    Sales Engineer

    To borrow a line from Wayne’s World, Rich’s career could be summed up as “an extensive collection of name tags and hairnets.” Over nearly 20 years, he’s done it all — teacher, helpdesk, sysadmin, VMware wizard, cybersecurity engineer, and manager. Rich brings deep technical knowledge and a teaching mindset to every customer conversation as Sales Engineer at Torq.

    Superpower: Teaching. Whether it’s a teammate or a customer, Rich is always teaching at Torq.

    Kyle Dalton
    Director, Solutions Architecture

    Kyle is the Global Head of Solution Architecture at Torq, where he helps organizations reimagine the modern SOC through security Hyperautomation and agentic AI. A former analyst and engineer with deep hands-on experience, Kyle spent years in the trenches. Today, he brings that frontline perspective to help security teams operationalize response, eliminate burnout, and amplify human impact with Torq HyperSOC™.

    Superpower: Listening and turning real-world pain points into better solutions.

    Why They Replaced SOAR with Torq

    Partnership: “The level of attention and partnership from Torq was unlike anything else. Every meeting and interaction was consistently positive. And it wasn’t just about features — it was about the willingness to build what we needed.” – Patrick Orzechowski

    Intuitive user interface: “We were looking at a few vendors. Torq had the most intuitive UI, the best pricing model, and a clear commitment to delivering case management features we needed.” – João Ceron

    Built for analysts: “I needed something my analysts could actually use. With Torq, everything just made sense. But honestly, it was the team that sold me. It felt like a true partnership.” – Rich Chen

    Pride in every detail: “I could feel the pride that the team takes in the product, and that was huge for me. The team was really committed to the partnership.” – Kyle Dalton

    Compare AI-driven Hyperautomation to legacy SOAR >

    The Problems Legacy SOAR Couldn’t Solve — But Torq Did

    Before joining Torq, Patrick’s team bought into the SOAR promise — that it would automate everything, integrate with everything, and even replace analysts. Instead, it became a scalability nightmare. The platform was slow, clunky, expensive to maintain, and unusable for entry-level analysts. With Torq, everything changed. It was fast, intuitive, and actually usable from day one.

    Kyle shared a similar experience. 30% of his team’s time was spent managing an on-prem SOAR implementation. It wasn’t event-driven, which made scaling painful. With Hyperautomation as their SOAR replacement, they quickly expanded integrations and were able to rebuild complex workflows in just hours instead of weeks.

    “We were burning 30% of our team’s capacity just managing an on-prem SOAR. That’s how we knew we needed something to replace SOAR. Shifting to Hyperautomation completely changed everything — we dramatically expanded integrations and met customers where they are. What really sealed it was rebuilding a workflow that used to take a week and a half… in under four hours.”

    – Kyle Dalton, former legacy SOAR user

    Rich brought receipts on how Torq made a massive difference outside traditional SecOps. His team was bogged down by daily manual processes, pulling data from multiple platforms, transforming CSVs, and uploading them all again. Torq eliminated that friction, automating workflows across security and IT operations.

    João pointed to a major shift in team autonomy. Before Torq, every automation request had to go through engineering. With a modern SOAR replacement, his team could build what they needed on their own: faster processes, better data correlation, and complete control over their workflows.

    Learn how to make the switch like PO, João, Rich, and Kyle did.

    Get the SOAR Migration Guide

    Favorite Features and Go-To Tools

    When asked which Torq features sealed the deal, each team member had a clear favorite — and a very good reason why.

    PO pointed to case routing: “When you manage thousands of cases and a hundred analysts, things get missed. Torq’s case management made things manageable and improved the analyst experience overall.” Case management and Socrates, the AI SOC analyst, remain his go-to zones in the platform.

    João loves the Collect operator: “It made my life so much easier.” Collect streamlines data gathering, making it simpler to manage and reference results across complex workflows. You’ll usually find him deep in workflow builds and data transformation.

    Rich is all about nested workflows: Reusable, modular automation that keeps things clean and scalable. He spends his time on Canvas, where he builds POCs and custom demos.

    Kyle highlighted Torq’s ability to convert any step to HTTP as a game-changer: “Way less overhead than scripting in legacy tools.” Lately, he’s been spending time exploring Interact workflows and pushing new features to the edge.

    Life at Torq: What Surprised Them Most

    One of the biggest surprises for PO, Joao, Rich, and Kyle after joining Torq was how closely the internal culture mirrored the customer experience. PO noted how refreshing it was to see the same positivity and partnership behind the scenes that he had experienced as a customer. 

    João was surprised by how much customer feedback directly influences the roadmap, realizing that Torq isn’t just listening, it’s actively building with its users. Rich was blown away by the pace of innovation, sharing how HyperSOC launched and then evolved rapidly within weeks. For Kyle, he knew he was boarding a rocket ship — but didn’t expect it to be going that fast.

    “The pace of innovation at Torq is insane. HyperSOC came out — and within weeks, even more functionality was being rolled out.” 

    – Rich Chen, Sales Engineer, Torq

    Want to join the team that killed SOAR?

    Explore Torq Careers
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    SEE TORQ IN ACTION

    Ready to automate everything?

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

    Corey Kaemming, Senior Director of InfoSec

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

    Todd Willoughby, Director

    Compuquip logo in white

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

    Phillip Tarrant, SOC Technical Manager

    Fiverr logo in black

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

    Gai Hanochi, VP Business Technologies

    Carvana logo in black

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

    Dina Mathers, CISO

    Riskified logo in white

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

    Yossi Yeshua, CISO

    Get a Demo

    AI Hyperautomation News & Events

    Torq Drops Jaws at RSAC 2025

    By Britt Wittfeldt
    May 5, 2025
    5 Minute Read
    A roundup of highlights from RSAC 2025

    Contents

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    Torq roared into RSAC 2025 in our usual style: all gas, no brakes. Our team traveled in from around the world to set up an unmissable, unforgettable booth featuring Grave Digger that instantly became the talk of the show. (We also unleashed our Junior Media Intern, Trevor, on San Francisco, for which we apologize). But the real game-changer was our unveiling of new agentic AI innovations in Torq HyperSOC™ — with the demo that set RSAC on fire.  

    Here are all the best moments.

    Torq Steals the Pre-Show Spotlight

    In the lead-up to RSAC, Torq announced the acquisition of stealth Israeli startup Revrod, whose multi-agent RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) advancements are now incorporated into HyperSOC™. This latest release makes HyperSOC-2o our most autonomous model to date and the first truly agentic SecOps platform. 

    This was followed by the announcement of another Torq “first” for autonomous security operations: becoming the first platform to support a Model-Context Protocol (MCP) natively in its architecture. 

    Torq was also featured in the latest “new and notable” Microsoft Sentinel integrations ahead of RSAC. Rounding out the pre-conference press blitz, Forbes published an article detailing how Torq stands out in cybersecurity thanks to “bold branding and a fearless aesthetic… bringing edge, energy and authenticity to an industry known for playing it safe.”

    “What really sets Torq apart is its effort to blend cultural relevance and brand identity with technical innovation.”

    – Tony Bradley, Senior Contributor, Forbes

    The RSAC Booth Sensation: “Just, Wow.”

    Yes, we really put all 12,000 pounds of the iconic Grave Digger monster truck in our booth. LinkedIn post after LinkedIn post declared it “the best booth at RSAC,” and the hype was electric. 

    Forbes hailed the Torq booth’s visual elements as “more reminiscent of streetwear brands and music festivals than typical enterprise security vendors.” Security Weekly said that Torq “pulled out ALL THE STOPS MONSTER TRUCK LASER SKULLS F*&CK YEAH, that’s how you do it!” Chainsaw through the noise? Check.

    The Demo That Set RSAC on Fire

    While Grave Digger drew people in, it was Torq’s technology that kept hundreds of security pros around our booth for demo after demo. 

    Leading up to RSAC, HyperSOC’s agentic AI innovation was validated by industry analysts, with IDC’s new report stating: “Torq is working on all SOC fronts while improving MTTD, MTTR, threat hunting, and remediation actions impactfully. The agentic AI architecture is disruptive.” 

    We also got a shout-out ahead of RSAC from Cyber Research Analyst Francis Odum, who stated: “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. Torq HyperSOC is a huge game-changer for enterprises.”

    To top it all off, mid-conference, Torq won the 2025 SC Media Award for Best Emerging Tech by SC Media for our platform’s agentic AI capabilities, which were described as “the forefront of next-gen security automation.”

    “Everyone says ‘agentic AI,’ but that’s the first demo I’ve seen actually working live.”
    – Heard at RSAC

    Beyond the Moscone Center

    On the first night of the conference, two of Torq’s co-founders — CTO Leonid Belkind and CINO Eldad Livni — hosted an exclusive Founders’ Dinner at Michelin-star restaurant Boulevard with CISOs and security leaders from major brands around the globe.

    Moving into day three of RSAC, Torq CMO Don Jeter sat down with George Kamide and George Al-Koura from the Bare Knuckles & Brass Tacks podcast to talk through how Torq’s marketing blew up from a small 10×10 booth RSAC just a few years ago to this year’s monster display. When the Georges asked how Torq built such “a fundamentally cool brand”, Don shared that it all started with the fierce belief that SOAR is dead and then telling that story boldly — which hit a community nerve to create “something that people want to be a part of.”

    Watch the episode here >

    “Tech is lame. Torq is cool.”

    – George A., Bare Knuckles & Brass Tacks podcast

    Unleashing the Most Feral Channel Program in Cybersecurity

    During the conference, ​Sheldon Muir, Torq’s AVP of Global Channels, spoke with MSSP Alert about how our disruptive partner program prioritizes customer outcomes — driving results, incentives, and value for our partners. More on this coming soon!

    “Great tech — which I obviously believe Torq has — has to be met by great marketing. And the third leg of the stool is you gotta have something disruptive on the channel side.”

    – Sheldon Muir, AVP of Global Channels, Torq

    On to the Next

    Thousands of steps logged, energy drinks downed, and Bone Bucks handed out later, the Torq team said goodbye to the Moscone Center, but that’s not the end of the road for Torq + Grave Digger. Torq has partnered with Monster Jam® for a 6-city tour this summer. Find your city and save your seat here.

    Want to see the HyperSOC demo that set RSAC on fire? Request a demo.

    Get a Demo
    Share

    Related Articles

    SEE TORQ IN ACTION

    Ready to automate everything?

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

    Corey Kaemming, Senior Director of InfoSec

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

    Todd Willoughby, Director

    Compuquip logo in white

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

    Phillip Tarrant, SOC Technical Manager

    Fiverr logo in black

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

    Gai Hanochi, VP Business Technologies

    Carvana logo in black

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

    Dina Mathers, CISO

    Riskified logo in white

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

    Yossi Yeshua, CISO

    Get a Demo

    See Torq in Action

    Get a demo to see how Torq helps you harness AI in the SOC to detect, prioritize, and respond to threats faster.

    Is your security team ready to automate more, faster?