How to close the threat detection gap: Your SOC action plan

Running SOC often feels like it’s owned by alerts. Every morning, the dashboard lights up at thousands of signals. Some urgent, many are irrelevant. The job is to find real threats quickly enough to stack cases, prevent analysts from burning out and maintain the trust of clients or leadership.

But the toughest challenges are not alerts that can be quickly rejected, but those hidden in front of you. These tricky threats drag out investigations, create unnecessary escalations, and quietly drain resources over time.

Why the detection gap is open?

Slowing SOCS is not just a flood of alerts, but rather a way in which investigations are divided into disconnected tools. One platform, Intel explodes on another platform, enriched by a third. All switches waste time. Over hundreds of cases, these minutes become stagnant investigations, unnecessary escalations, and threats that will leave them longer than they should have.

Action Plans that provide 3x SOC efficiency for threat detection

The SOC team considering close detection gaps has found one approach. This is the construction of detection as a continuous workflow where every step enhances the next step. Instead of stopping disconnected tools, analysts move the flowing process, from filtering alerts to explosive indicators of suspicious files.

A recent Any.Run study shows how much this shift changes SOC performance.

94% of users who reported the survey in a faster survey, said triage was saved by MTTR for each case, faster and faster.

Three-stage action plans that affect when using any.run

Behind these numbers is more than speed. Using this workflow, SOCs have reduced alert overload, gained clearer visibility into complex attacks, and built confidence in compliance and reporting. And, as analysts learned by doing things rather than relying solely on static reports, teams grew their expertise faster.

So how are these numbers possible? The answer lies in three practical steps that the SOC team is already taking.

Let’s see how this plan works and how it can be implemented in your workflow.

Step 1: Early expand your threat coverage

The earlier the SOC can spot an incident, the faster it will be able to respond. Threat Intelligence Feed provides analysts with fresh, practical IOCs drawn from the latest malware campaigns. IP, domain, and hash seen in real attacks. Instead of blindly chasing alerts, teams start with data that reflects what’s happening in a threat situation right now.

TI feeds as the first step in threat detection

This early coverage gives SOCS three important benefits: They acquire incidents faster, align with current threats and reduce the noise that clutters tier 1.

The best part is that threat intelligence feeds are available in multiple formats with simple integration options, allowing you to connect directly to your existing SIEM, chip, or SOAR setup without disrupting your workflow.

By excluding signals that are unrelated to duplicates at initiation, the threat frees resources and ensures that analysts are focused on the alerts that are actually important.

Step 2: Streamline triage and response using interactive sandbox

Once alerts are filtered, the next challenge is to prove what remains. An interactive sandbox is the proven basis for SOC. Instead of waiting for a static report, analysts can explode suspicious files and URLs in real time, and see the actions unfold in stages.

This approach exposes what most automated defenses miss. The payload you need to click is an evasive tactic designed to deceive gradual downloads that become active and appear over time, as well as passive detection.

Any.run’s sandbox analyzes complex threats

The result is a faster and clearer answer:

Exposed evasion attacks before they can escalate actionable threat reports generated for rapid response routine tasks minimized by automated investigation

In reality, SOC achieves a median detection time of 15 seconds, changing what was once a fast and decisive finding that was long and uncertain.

By combining real-time visibility and automation, Sandbox gives experts at all levels the confidence to act quickly, freeing senior staff from spending time on daily triage.

Step 3: Strengthen your aggressive defense with Threat Intelligence Search

Even with full sandbox results, one question always remains. Has this threat been seen before? Knowing whether IOCs are part of a fresh campaign or a campaign that is already circulating across the industry can completely change how SOCs respond.

So the third step is to implement a search for threat intelligence. By leveraging live attack data provided by over 15,000 SOCs around the world, analysts instantly enrich their findings and link isolated alerts to a wider pattern.

TI lookup search for attacks and related sandbox analysis

The advantages are clear:

The hidden threat revealed through aggressive hunting is the clarity of the larger incident with a rich historical context.

By accessing 24 times more IOCs than typical isolated sources, security experts can verify that tickets will be closed faster and faster, and predict what will come next.

This final step ensures that all investigations end with stronger evidence. Understanding not just a snapshot of one case, but how it fits into a larger threat situation.

Build more powerful SOCs with a unified detection workflow

Closure detection gaps are possible by creating workflows where every stage enhances the next stage. Early filtering from threat feeds, real-time visibility from sandboxes, and global context from lookups, SOCs move into continuous processes that provide measurable results from fragmented detection: faster triage, reduced escalation, up to three times more efficiency than threat detection.

Organizations around the world are already seeing benefits:

74% of Fortune 100 companies use Any.run to enhance SOC operations 15,000+ organizations integrated it into their detection workflow Over 500,000 users rely on it every day for malware analysis and threat intelligence

Increase detection rates, reduce research time and enhance SOC efficiency.

Connect with any.run experts and explore how this approach works for your team.