September 8, 2026
What SOAR Playbooks Do
SOAR playbooks in Google SecOps (formerly Siemplify) automate the response to detection alerts. When a detection rule fires, a playbook can automatically gather context, take containment actions, and notify the right people. The goal is removing repetitive manual steps from analyst workflows while keeping humans in the loop for high-stakes decisions.
Playbook Triggers
Every playbook starts with a trigger that defines which alerts activate it. You can trigger based on the rule name that fired, the alert severity, the log type involved, or combinations of these. A playbook designed for phishing alerts should only trigger on phishing detection rules. A playbook for critical severity alerts might be broader, handling any detection that crosses the critical threshold. Keep triggers specific. A playbook that fires on everything is just as noisy as an untuned detection rule.
The Three Action Patterns
Almost every playbook is built from three types of actions:
Enrichment pulls additional context to help analysts make decisions. This includes threat intelligence lookups, user activity history, asset ownership details, and related alert searches. Enrichment should always run automatically because it gathers information without changing anything.
Containment takes protective action: disabling a service account, isolating a compromised host, blocking a malicious IP, or revoking user sessions. These actions have real-world impact on systems and users.
Escalation notifies humans when their judgment is needed. This includes creating cases, sending Slack or Teams messages, paging on-call responders, or creating tickets in external systems.
The Critical Rule: Human Approval Gates
Never auto-execute destructive actions without a human approval gate. Disabling a service account could break a production pipeline. Isolating a host could take a critical server offline. Blocking an IP could cut off a legitimate partner. The correct pattern is: alert fires, playbook auto-enriches with context (VirusTotal lookup, GTI threat actor data, user login history), presents findings to an analyst with a clear summary, and then waits for the analyst to approve or reject the containment action. Only after explicit approval does the playbook execute.
The Design Framework
Use this decision framework when building a new playbook:
- What alert triggers this? Be specific about which rules or alert types.
- What context does the analyst need? List every enrichment action that provides useful decision-making data.
- What containment is appropriate? Define the containment actions, and always gate them behind approval.
- Who needs to know? Define escalation targets by severity level.
- What are the failure modes? Plan for API errors, missing data, and edge cases.
The Playbook Editor
The SOAR playbook editor in Google SecOps is a visual IDE with drag-and-drop action blocks. You connect trigger, enrichment, decision, containment, and notification blocks into a workflow. Each block has configurable inputs and outputs, and you can add conditional branching (if enrichment returns "malicious," take the containment path; if "clean," close the alert).
Start simple: one trigger, two enrichment actions, one approval gate, one containment action. Resist the urge to build a 30-step playbook on day one. Get the basic workflow running, observe how it performs on real alerts, and add complexity based on what analysts actually need.
These playbooks respond to the detection rules in your environment. Get the basic workflow running, observe how it performs on real alerts, and add complexity based on what analysts actually need.
