What is Soar Analysis? Complete Strategy Explained

Soar Analysis

SOAR stands for Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, Results Analysis. It is a strategic planning strategy that assists businesses in focusing on their existing strengths and opportunities while also forming a vision of future goals and the outcomes they will produce.

Today we will discuss it in detail.

Focusing on the Positivity and Opportunities at Work

You’ve probably heard comments like “It pays to be careful” and “Don’t get too enthusiastic!” ringing through a conference room. And if they respond negatively to your goals for the department’s growth, you may feel depressed and disillusioned.

Of course, while deciding on a plan, you must be professional, prudent, and completely aware of any potential threats. However, it would help if you also inspired others. Inspiration is the fuel that keeps them motivated, engaged, and productive daily. Their ambition, ingenuity, and creativity may all be stifled if they don’t have them.

What is a SOAR analysis?

Instead of using SWOT analysis, the SOAR model use appreciative inquiry to concentrate the business on what is known to work, rather than internal vulnerabilities or potential threats that may or may not materialise.

A SOAR analysis produces a set of activities that utilise strengths and opportunities to achieve common goals with quantifiable outcomes. It serves as a foundation for more in-depth examination using other business tools.

SOAR analysis is a strong method for bringing stakeholders together to realise the organisation’s potential and build a common future vision.

Who developed the SOAR analysis?

SOAR was invented by Jacqueline Stavros, David Cooperrider & D. Lynn Kelley in their Research Paper SOAR: A new strategic planning approach, published in 2003.

How do you conduct a SOAR analysis?

A SOAR analysis is drawn as a two by two matrix. It consists of 4 basic principles (Strength, Opportunities, Aspirations and Results). Let’s talk about them in detail.

The top row of the matrix, as you can see, focuses on the present, while the bottom row concentrates on your ideal future. Internal elements are addressed in the left column, while external influences are addressed in the right column.

You could wonder why outcomes are external rather than internal. After all, don’t we produce our outcomes? The explanation is that because outcomes are not something you produce on your own, they are considered an external force. For example, your consumers must be satisfied and recommend you to others.

1. Strengths

This section seeks to identify your organisation’s strengths, which you may use and improve to grab the chances you choose to pursue. This will be in the form of a list, and it will cover your company’s important assets, resources, and expertise.

The following are some questions that might assist you in determining your strengths:

• What distinguishes us from others?
• What is our USP (unique selling proposition)?
• What can we accomplish better than anyone else (with our most valued know-how)?
• What do we have (as our most valuable assets) that no one else has?
• Which of our assets is the most marketable in the marketplace?

2. Opportunities

This phase of the SOAR study is designed to help you uncover market opportunities that you may explore to improve your business.

The following are some questions that might assist you in identifying market opportunities:

• What are the current market trends that we may take advantage of?
• What global trends do we have access to that we could use?
• Could any of our company’s risks be transformed into opportunities?
• Is there anything missing from our current market?
• Is there any fresh market that we should pursue?
• Do our consumers have any unmet needs that we could fulfil?

3. Aspirations

This section is designed to help you figure out what you want to do with your life in the future. It’s simply a vision based on the strengths and possibilities you’ve found that will both challenge and motivate your company to succeed.

It’s important to note that your goals aren’t the same as the general vision of your company. Your goals will usually be shorter-term in nature. For example, your company’s ambition may be to become the world’s largest airline, but your next goal may be to become the largest airline in the country where you presently operate.

The following are some questions that might assist you in determining your goals:

• What should the future structure of our company look like?
• What is it that we truly care about?
• What is the best way for us to make a difference?
• What do we want to accomplish?
• What should our organisation’s objectives be?

4. Results

This section explains how you’ll know when you’ve completed your goals and how you’ll keep track of your progress. Goal-setting strategies like SMART goal-setting and Outcome goal-setting might be beneficial in this situation.

It is vital not to set too many metrics to track; instead, focus on the 3-to 5 most crucial metrics for company performance. A balanced scorecard can help you keep track of your progress.

The following are some questions that might assist you in determining your outcomes:

• How will we know when we’ve accomplished our goals?
• What figures or data may we use to track our progress toward our goals?
• Is it possible to turn our ambition into a quantifiable goal?
• How and when will we keep track of our progress toward our goals?

What is the purpose of Soar?

Working in security may be a never-ending challenge. Speed and efficiency are critical, but ensuring that all of your systems are in sync is more difficult than it appears.

Analysts are frequently bombarded with warnings from several systems, making acquiring and correlating the required data to distinguish serious threats from false positives a difficult process. Coordination of suitable reaction actions to mitigate those dangers is a completely other task.

SOAR’s purpose is to make these problems go away by increasing efficiency. A uniform data gathering method aids both human and machine-led analysis. Automating detection and response procedures reduces alert fatigue, allowing analysts to focus on activities requiring more in-depth human analysis and involvement.

A growing number of companies are using SOAR to strengthen their cyber security posture. SOAR will be used by 15% of enterprises with a security team of more than five employees by the end of 2020, up from 1% in 2018.

What are Soar Tools?

SOAR solutions, in general, enable teams to collect vital security data, discover, evaluate, and address current and prospective risks and vulnerabilities from various sources. Consequently, the solutions give better visibility that helps firms to respond to security problems quicker, efficiently, and reliably.

An ideal SOAR tool should include the following features:

• Data and warnings from various security systems are ingested and analysed.
• Have the capacity to create, create, and automate procedures required by teams to detect, prioritise, investigate, and respond to security alarms.
• To enhance operations, orchestrate, and integrate a wide range of technologies.
• Possess the forensic capability to conduct post-incident analysis, allowing teams to improve their procedures and avoid repeat problems.
• Most security operations are automated, minimising repetitive activities and allowing teams to save time and focus on more complicated duties that require human input.

The tools use artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other technologies to automate repetitive operations such as data collection, enrichment, and correlation, among other things. This technique enables teams to respond to a wide range of security concerns more quickly and at scale.

Some of the Popular SOAR Tools are:

Splunk Phantom

Splunk Phantom is a SOAR solution that combines a wide variety of security capabilities for teams to better understand and respond to external and domestic threats. A visual playbook editor (VPE) allows security and development teams to create complete playbooks using the built-in drag and drop capability.

IBM Resilient

IBM Resilient is a SOAR platform for machine learning that increases risk identification and response. The SOAR solution may be installed on-site as an MSSP service or as the SaaS deployment strategy for Security as a service. It gives a single platform for teams and the capacity to automate operations, increase intelligence, increase cooperation and handle threats more quickly and efficiently.

Insightconnect

DFLabs IncMac is a feature-rich, adaptable, and scalable SOAR platform to enhance security and automation operations for businesses. The web-based or SaaS platform is designed to automate, measure, and arrange incident response procedures and other safety activities for MSSPs, CSIRTs, SOCs, etc.

The single easy AI-driven tool allows a wide range of safety problems to be detected and managed.

RespondX

LogRhythm RespondX is a simple SOAR solution that helps enterprises improve their security by providing dependable real-time advanced threat detection. The SmartResponse feature aids in the automation of workflows and the speeding up of threat analysis and response.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow Security Operations is a robust corporate security solution for managing events and vulnerabilities and improving security threat intelligence and compliance. The SOAR tool, in general, allows you to evaluate, identify, eliminate, and recover from assaults and threats. As a result, it gives you a complete solution for managing the whole life cycle of security issues.

What are the advantages of SOAR?

The following are SOAR’s benefits:

• It is simple to comprehend and apply.
• It functions as a framework for a single person or a group of individuals.
• Unlike many other strategic frameworks, it offers certain concrete goals in addition to business and market information.
• It’s simpler to grasp the business’s path when strengths and ambitions are mapped out.

What are some of the limitations of SOAR?

SOAR has several drawbacks, including the following:

• There are no conceptions of corporate weaknesses or dangers.
• You’ll be repeating certain portions if you complete it with SWOT.
• It’s all too simple to go too wide.
• The business’s ambitions or results indicate that the key owners or stakeholders should be doing the SOAR.

Can SOAR be used for departmental strategies?

There is no excuse why your SOAR framework cannot be used in your departmental strategy; it is an excellent approach to summarise any strategic plan for staff. Your goals and outcomes will be unique to your department if you’re utilising the framework for areas like marketing or product development.

For example, a Marketing Strategy’s goal can be to become the most frequented site in its sector, with a key value of monthly traffic as a result.