The introduction of native artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities into security operations centers (SOCs) has ushered in what many call “hyper automation,” which enables Security, Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) to scale well beyond the restrictions of traditional platforms.
Last year, the largest security platform providers, including Cisco/Splunk, CrowdStrike, and Palo Alto Networks, were among those that rolled out upgraded versions of their traditional SOAR solutions, adding native AI capabilities and further integrating them with SIEM and XDR. Overwhelmed by the volume of alerts fielded by security analysts, AI is designed to considerably boost automation in their customers’ SOCs by enabling virtual agents to take on those tasks.
Meanwhile, many startups and smaller players have emerged with alternatives to “legacy” SOAR or enhancements to incumbent SOC automation platforms designed to enable advanced AI capabilities.
Related:CrowdStrike to Buy Seraphic Security in Bid to Boost Browser Security
Among them, one that has experienced significant growth in the past two years is Torq, a startup launched in 2020 by Ofer Smadari, Leonid Belkind and Eldad Livni. The trio co-founded Luminate Security, a provider of software-defined perimeter technology that they sold to Symantec a year before launching their second act.
Although Torq is based in Israel, most customers who have deployed Torq HyperSOC, its AI-native SOC platform built to autonomously manage alert triage, are multinational enterprises based in the United States, with some in London, Germany, and Japan. Among them are Carvana, Marriott, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Siemens, Uber, Valvoline and Virgin Atlantic, as well as some “unicorn” stage companies, Smadari says.
Torq, which is eying an IPO, has amassed over 250 customers, a figure that Smadari says has doubled in the past year. Earlier this month, Torq announced that it had closed a Series D funding round led by Merlin Ventures. The latest $140 million investment brings Torq's total raised to $332 million, boosting its valuation to $1.2 billion.
Smadari says roughly 30 percent of Torq’s customers are organizations with legacy SOAR platforms from companies such as Palo Alto Networks or Splunk. “Those companies have very monolithic, closed platforms,” he tells Dark Reading.
“We have an open platform that you can connect anything to easily,” Smadari adds. “It is very easy to implement new processes and very easy to investigate 100 percent of your security alerts with us.”
The Torq HyperSOC platform is powered by Socrates, which Torq describes as an “OmniAgent” that functions as an autonomous AI SOC analyst that can manage the total security incident lifecycle. Torq claims that Socrates’ Multi-Agent System (MAS) can resolve 95 percent Tier-1 alerts and many Tier-2 tasks without human involvement.
... continue reading