Why SOAR Alone Can’t Stop Modern Attacks

The SOAR Security Gap

SOAR platforms are essential for automating and orchestrating incident response, yet they don’t generate detections themselves. When upstream tools miss novel or stealthy attacks, SOAR workflows have nothing actionable—leaving gaps in visibility into compromised identities, lateral movement, and emerging tactics.

How Attackers Evade SOAR

1. Wrong input, wrong output

SOAR automates responses based on input from other tools, but if those tools miss a threat, SOAR won’t detect it either.

2. Rule-based limitations

Attackers use novel techniques and fileless attacks that don’t trigger predefined playbooks.

3. Slow & incomplete investigations

SOAR helps analysts respond faster, but it doesn’t surface hidden threats or prioritize the most critical incidents.

The Real-World Consequences of SOAR Visibility Gaps

In the Scattered Spider scenario below, SOAR workflows execute only on detected events, while stealthy stages go unreported. Vectra AI’s continuous AI-driven detections would flag each attacker action across network, cloud, and identity layers, ensuring SOAR automations have real threats to act on.

SOAR Automates Response—Vectra AI Secures What Comes Next

SOAR is invaluable for automating your response steps—but it doesn’t generate or validate alerts itself. When upstream tools miss sophisticated attacks or generate noisy alerts, SOAR workflows either sit idle or spin on false positives. To power effective automation, you need real-time, AI-driven threat detection that feeds accurate, context-rich signals into SOAR.

SOAR relies on integrations and predefined workflows, but:

• What if the initial detection is wrong? SOAR can’t verify if an alert is a real attack or a false positive.
• What if attackers use unknown techniques? SOAR playbooks depend on known attack patterns, missing emerging threats.
• What if SOAR lacks context? Playbooks trigger generic responses, but they don’t analyze attacker behavior in real time.

How Vectra AI Fills the Gap

SOAR streamlines incident response, but it depends on accurate detections to be effective. The Vectra AI Platform provides real-time threat detection across network, cloud, and identity layers, ensuring that SOAR automations act on real threats, not noise.

• Reduces false positives: AI-driven detections eliminate unnecessary alerts, improving SOAR efficiency.
• Prioritizes real attacks: Identifies and escalates high-risk threats before they cause damage.
• Works alongside SOAR: Complements SOAR by delivering real-time, AI-driven detections for automated response.

With Vectra AI, you can stop wasting time on false positives and ensure SOAR automations respond to real threats.

How Vectra AI Complements SOAR

SOAR orchestrates response, while Vectra AI provides high-confidence detections to power automation. Here’s how they compare:

Vectra AI doesn’t replace SOAR, it enhances it by detecting real threats and reducing alert noise.