Has anyone tried the integration with Torq or Tines for SOAR? How was it?

Welcome to the security side, it's a fascinating shift from marketing automation. I've worked through integrations with both platforms, and they're definitely a force multiplier for Elastic Security.

For your question on a simple workflow example, a very common starting point is automating the response to a high-confidence malware alert from Elastic. You can set it up so that when Elastic detects something like "Ransomware Behavior Detected", it triggers a Tines or Torq story. That story can then automatically gather enriched context from your EDR, check the asset owner in your CMDB, create a ticket in ServiceNow with all the details, and send a Slack message to the on-call team. The quarantine action for an endpoint is absolutely doable, but I'd advise making that a second-step approval within the workflow when you're starting out.

The setup is largely point-and-click, using webhooks from Elastic and the pre-built connectors in Torq/Tines. The main gotcha isn't the connection itself, but the data mapping. You'll spend time ensuring the alert JSON from Elastic is parsed correctly to pull out the hostname, user, and rule name into usable variables for your automation. My advice is to start with one specific, noisy alert rule and build a simple, three-step workflow to prove the value before expanding.

"Overwhelmed" is the normal state with these platforms. You're sold on the promise of no code, but the reality is you'll spend more time wrestling their abstractions than if you'd written a simple webhook handler in bash.

> point-and-click, or custom code?
It's point-and-click until it isn't. Then you're debugging opaque vendor-specific steps. Tines' "agents" and Torq's "triggers" become a new layer of complexity to manage, and you're locked into their way of doing things. Suddenly, a 5-line curl script looks pretty good.

The gotcha is thinking you need a full SOAR before you can automate a single alert. Start with a script that hits the Elastic API and creates a Jira ticket. Get that working. Then decide if you need the bloat.

>Then you're debugging opaque vendor-specific steps.

Yeah, this hits home from a data pipeline angle. I built a simple webhook-to-BigQuery loader in Python for something else, and it was maybe 50 lines. When I tried a "no-code" connector tool for a similar job, I spent two days just figuring out why timestamps were being formatted weirdly in their UI. The abstraction leaked everywhere.

But do you think there's a tipping point where the script gets too messy? Like, if you have ten different alert types that need five different actions each, maybe the visual workflow becomes easier to manage than a giant `if/elif` chain?

The setup process for both is largely point-and-click, which is good for your background, but the devil is in the details. You'll configure a webhook action in Elastic to send alerts to Torq or Tines, and then build your automation "story" or "workflow" there. The initial connection is straightforward.

The real complexity, and the area where custom code often sneaks back in, is in data transformation. Elastic's alert schema might not match what your ticketing system needs. I spent more time mapping fields between systems and converting timestamps than on the core logic. For a quarantine action, you'll need to ensure your endpoint management platform's API is accessible to the SOAR platform, which involves API keys and sometimes writing a small custom function to format the request correctly.

As for a concrete benefit, it's the audit trail and conditional logic. A script is fine for one path, but when you need to branch - like "if the infected endpoint is a server, page the team, but if it's a developer laptop, just disable the user's account" - a visual workflow can be clearer to document and modify later. The tipping point user376 mentions is real; it's when you have more than about three distinct, multi-step alert responses.

> > Can you share a simple example of a workflow you automated? Maybe something like automatically creating a ticket or quarantining an endpoint when Elastic detects a certain alert?

You're coming from marketing automation, so the allure of "no-code" SOAR is probably real. But think about this: a webhook from Elastic to a Slack channel + a simple Python script that calls your endpoint API is maybe 30 lines. I've seen Torq and Tines workflows for quarantining an endpoint that need three approval steps, field mapping YAML, and a half-day debugging why a timestamp isn't parsing. The "simple example" is exactly where these tools fall apart - they replace a clear if-else chain with a visual spaghetti that's harder to audit.

Before you commit, ask yourself: how many alert types do you realistically need to automate? If it's under 5, write a script. If it's 20 and you need a human-approved approval matrix, maybe Torq/Tines have some value. But for a "first workflow" like auto-ticketing, a curl + Jira API call is faster, cheaper, and you'll actually understand what's happening when it breaks.

> Also, how was the setup process? Is it mostly point-and-click, or did you need to write a lot of custom code?

Point-and-click gets you the connection. The custom code hides in field transformations and error handling. I've watched people spend two days mapping Elastic's `kibana.alert.rule.parameters` to a ServiceNow ticket field because the SOAR's UI can't handle nested JSON. Meanwhile, a `jq` filter and a POST request took my colleague 20 minutes. The gotcha isn't the initial link - it's the maintenance. And the vendor lock-in. Once you build 15 stories in Tines, good luck migrating off.

So if you're overwhelmed, ignore SOAR for now. Get a single alert sending a message to your team. Then add one automated action with a script. You'll learn your actual requirements way faster than wrestling with a "story" abstraction.

I get the argument for a simple script, especially for a first workflow. But what about when the person who wrote that 30-line Python script leaves the team and nobody else knows Python? I've seen that happen with Excel macros at my last job - one guy built all these VBA tools and then got promoted, and the rest of us were stuck trying to reverse-engineer them. At least with Torq or Tines, the logic is visible in the UI even if it is spaghetti.

Do you have a system for documenting those scripts so they're not just a black box on a random server? Or do you just keep them in a git repo with good comments?

>the logic is visible in the UI even if it is spaghetti

This is the core of the trade-off. The spaghetti is visible, sure, but is it comprehensible? A visual workflow with twenty-five nodes, each with its own hidden vendor-specific logic, is just a different kind of black box. You're trading a Python black box for a Torq black box; the latter just has a nicer paint job.

That random script is a liability if it's undocumented, but that's a process failure, not a language one. A well-maintained git repo with a README, structured logging, and a linter is more transparent than any proprietary canvas. If your team can't manage that, they'll drown in the SOAR's "visible" complexity too, they'll just pay more for the privilege.