SOC108 · Security Automation and Response (SOAR)

Categories: Cybersecurity
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About Course

Automate repetitive SOC work safely. You design playbooks, build an enrichment and response workflow with free tools, and add the guardrails and human approvals that keep automation trustworthy.

Advance · 8 hours · 4 lessons, a lab, an assessed assignment and a portfolio piece

Who it is for

Analysts and security engineers who want to cut manual triage time without losing control.

Prerequisites

Complete SOC105 and SOC107, and be comfortable reading JSON.

What you will be able to do

  • Identify SOC tasks suitable for automation using frequency, consistency and risk criteria
  • Design a playbook with triggers, enrichment, decisions, actions and human approval points
  • Build a working alert enrichment and response workflow in self-hosted n8n with free threat-intelligence APIs
  • Apply guardrails such as allowlists, rate limits, audit logging and rollback to automated actions

Lessons

  • Lesson 1 · SOAR concepts and choosing what to automate
  • Lesson 2 · Designing playbooks
  • Lesson 3 · Guardrails, testing and operating automation
  • Lesson 4 · Lab and assignment

Lab: Build a phishing alert enrichment playbook

You build an n8n workflow that receives a sample phishing alert through a webhook, extracts the sender IP, URLs and attachment hash, enriches them with free threat-intelligence APIs and calculates a risk score. High-risk cases pause for human approval before a simulated block action, and every step is written to a case log.

Free tools: n8n self-hosted in Docker Desktop (free community edition), VirusTotal and AbuseIPDB free API tiers, and a local CSV or Google Sheets case log

Assessed assignment

Design and document an automation program for a small SOC that handles about 200 alerts per day. Select three use cases, justify each with time saved and risk, and deliver the full playbook for one of them with a workflow diagram, the exported n8n JSON, decision thresholds, approval points, guardrails and failure handling. Include a test log showing at least three alerts processed: one benign, one suspicious and one malicious.

Criterion Weight What excellent work looks like
Use case selection 20% Use cases are justified with volume, time saved and an honest risk assessment.
Playbook design 30% Triggers, enrichment, decisions, actions and approvals are complete, logical and documented.
Working implementation 30% The exported workflow runs, handles API errors and produces the documented results for all test alerts.
Guardrails and governance 20% Allowlists, rate limits, audit logs, rollback and ownership are defined and implemented.

Portfolio piece

A documented, working n8n phishing enrichment playbook with guardrails and test evidence.

Self-paced, 12-month access. Questions are answered in writing through the student panel. A completion record is issued when you finish the course.

Next step

Continue with SOC109 · Final Project: A Detection and Response Playbook for a Small Business · 8 hours · $56.00

Continue to the next course

Prefer the whole program? Program in Security Operations & Threat Defense · $378.00 (10% less than buying the courses separately)

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What Will You Learn?

  • Identify SOC tasks suitable for automation using frequency, consistency and risk criteria
  • Design a playbook with triggers, enrichment, decisions, actions and human approval points
  • Build a working alert enrichment and response workflow in self-hosted n8n with free threat-intelligence APIs
  • Apply guardrails such as allowlists, rate limits, audit logging and rollback to automated actions

Course Content

SOC108 · Security Automation and Response (SOAR) (8 h)
Automate repetitive SOC work safely. You design playbooks, build an enrichment and response workflow with free tools, and add the guardrails and human approvals that keep automation trustworthy.

  • Lesson 1 · SOAR concepts and choosing what to automate
  • Lesson 2 · Designing playbooks
  • Lesson 3 · Guardrails, testing and operating automation
  • Lesson 4 · Lab and assignment
  • SOC108 Assessment · Security Automation and Response (SOAR)
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