September 2021 Summaries

Purchasing a Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) platform involves careful consideration of factors such as time to value, ease of use, and pricing, as these tools are central to a security team's operations. Legacy SOAR tools are often seen as costly and complex, prompting a shift towards next-generation platforms noted for their affordability, user-friendly workflow automation, and simplicity. Key considerations before investing in a SOAR tool include the real time to value, which can be delayed by customization and integration issues, and the ease of use, as many tools are not accessible to less experienced analysts. Onboarding and customer support, recent innovations, and transparent pricing are also crucial factors, with vendors often charging based on data volume or user licenses, which can become expensive as organizations scale. Tines offers a no-code SOAR solution that promises quick time to value, transparency in pricing, and the ability to handle numerous use cases effectively within the first year.

A significant donation has been made to the University of Limerick's new Immersive Software Engineering program by Tines, aiming to support research into digital transformation and the benefits of no-code approaches over traditional software engineering. Tines is eager to collaborate with the university and join a coalition of organizations backing this initiative, emphasizing the importance of nurturing the relationship between academia and industry. The company has demonstrated the efficiency of low-code and no-code solutions in cybersecurity and other areas like IT, Finance, and HR, allowing non-developers to integrate systems and manage data without programming skills. Tines intends to delve into the foundational research with UL to validate user benefits and identify further optimizations, viewing this partnership as a step toward empowering organizations to automate tasks and enhance productivity. The research has the potential to provide insights into the technical and social effectiveness of these approaches, marking a move toward future advancements in digital transformation.

Tines emphasizes the importance of seamless integration in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) solutions, highlighting the challenges traditional platforms face with app-based integration models that require extensive coding for custom connections. These legacy systems often lead to restrictive, dependent, and rigid integrations, posing significant challenges when updating or adapting to new tools or API changes. Tines offers a different approach by focusing on API-centric connections, eliminating the need for complex integrations and allowing users to connect with any tool through HTTP APIs quickly. This flexibility is supported by thousands of preconfigured action templates, enabling users to automate workflows efficiently without needing advanced technical skills. The approach aims to provide a powerful, adaptable platform that supports mission-critical automation tasks and integrates smoothly with various tools, whether off-the-shelf or custom-built.

Tines is a versatile security automation platform that simplifies replacing manual tasks with automated workflows, offering users the chance to create robust security solutions. The Community Edition allows the publication of three workflows, aiding in tasks such as embracing ChatOps to streamline cybersecurity communications, enriching more than just indicators of compromise by utilizing diverse information sources within an organization, and managing alert budgets effectively by automating ticketing processes and prioritizing issues. These workflows are designed to save security teams significant time and improve efficiency, exemplifying how action can drive momentum in adopting new security practices.

Tines has historically faced challenges in synchronizing its REST API with the web app due to the use of different data fetching and updating methods, leading to limited access to new features like Folders and Teams through the REST API. To address this, Tines decided to integrate its existing GraphQL API, which powers the entire web app, to also serve the REST API. This approach allows for features to be implemented once and instantly available across both APIs, leveraging extensive testing and built-in advantages of GraphQL like type validation, versioning, and request parameter validations. Although a fully exposed GraphQL API might be considered in the future, REST remains more accessible to users. To streamline the process, Tines developed a declarative syntax for defining REST API endpoints, facilitating the creation and updating of these endpoints by specifying the corresponding GraphQL query and response transformation. This integration has enabled Tines to achieve feature parity between the web app and REST API, laying the groundwork for further enhancements such as versioning and cursor-based pagination.