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According to a World Economic Forum report, cybersecurity will continue to be a concern in the year 2024.
No wonder why businesses are now inclining towards better techniques, technologies, and tools to safeguard their systems, networks, and data. One such technique is security automation which lets you automate security tasks like detecting and resolving threats in real time to save you time and resources.
Let’s understand what security automation is and how it can help your business. We will cover the types, challenges, and best practices around security automation that businesses should be aware of.
What Is Security Automation?
Security automation is a modern approach to automating an organization’s security operations using advanced tools and solutions, with/without human assistance. It aims to streamline security operations such as incident detection and response, vulnerability management, compliance management, threat prevention, and more.
Organizations need security automation to stay one step ahead of cyber attackers who are always on the lookout for security loopholes and compromise systems and data.
Security automation allows you to automate your regular, repetitive security tasks like detecting security issues, patch management, updating software, managing firewalls, and more. This helps security teams save time and effort, minimize human errors, and prevent costly security fixes.
Difference Between Security Automation and Orchestration
Security automation and orchestration are closely related, which is why many confuse these two terms, assuming they are the same.
Security automation utilizes an automation solution to complete a single security task. On the other hand, security orchestration uses multiple automation tools to complete multiple security tasks across different applications.
Automating tasks speeds up your operations but simple automation can’t optimize a complete process. It’s because it’s associated with only one task, but a process consists of many tasks. Here, you need security automation to automate different tasks and optimize the process.
Another difference is security automation can exist without orchestration. But, you’ll need to manage each automation workflow manually within the organization. On the other hand, orchestration can’t exist without automation. What will you orchestrate if no automation are set up?
Security Automation Types
Security automation can be of the following types:
- SIEM solutions: Security information and event management (SIEM) tools allow you to analyze log data to detect security threats and neutralize them before an attack happens.
For example, SentonelOne’s AI SIEM provides faster, real-time automated threat detection and response to secure your endpoints, network, cloud, and data. Built on the Singularity Data Lake, it offers the benefits of hyper-automation and a unified, world-class user console.
- SOAR platforms: Security orchestration automation and response (SOAR) solutions let you integrate and manage individual security tools and automate manual, repetitive security tasks like incident detection and response, threat detection and response, etc.
- XDR platforms: Extended detection and response (XDR) solutions automate the process of detecting and responding to security incidents. XDR collects threat intelligence from various sources and involves security analysts to correlate security alerts and provide deeper context.
For example, SentinelOne’s Singularity XDR empowers security teams with smarter workflows and richer data and provides end-to-end enterprise security visibility, response, and protection.
- AI-powered automation security: It primarily involves using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and low-code solutions to automate some of the security tasks with better speed, effectiveness, and scale.
For example, SentinelOne’s Purple AI is an advanced AI-powered solution that acts as your security analyst to detect and respond to threats faster. It’s the only solution that’s built on a simple platform, data lake, and console. Using AI in cybersecurity, it streamlines your entire SecOps.
No-Code Automation: No-code solutions allow you to integrate tools and automate your entire security workflow without writing any codes. This means even if you don’t have any coding skills, you can still automate workflows effortlessly with the help of pre-built workflows and ready-made integrations. However, it limits flexibility and customizability for users.
Benefits of Security Automation
Security automation offers many benefits to organizations. Let’s understand some of them:
1. Improved Incident/Threat Detection and Response
Modern automated cyberattacks are prompt, narrowing down the time from their first contact to the final blow to compromise your devices and data.
Thus, you need to act quickly to prevent these attacks or minimize their impact on your systems. Now, you have no choice but to use efficient security solutions like automation tools. Security automation tools utilize advanced technologies and techniques like AI and ML to quickly detect security incidents and threats in real-time before they can harm your business.
According to a study, 70% of respondents say AI is a highly effective technology in identifying threats that were undetectable previously.
2. Reduced Workload
With IT infrastructure getting more complex, organizations’ attack surface has become wider. Thus, monitoring and securing systems, networks, and data has become challenging for security teams. The increasing workloads overwhelm them and can take a toll on their productivity.
Security automation empowers security teams to automate daily, mundane security tasks like software updates, periodic patches, scheduling events, etc. They can use customized, automatically executed workflows to save time. You can also delegate security policy management to suitable departments and eliminate unnecessary communications. In addition, you can save time in visualizing, filtering, and sorting data and reduce alert fatigue.
3. Better Compliance Management
Data privacy issues are increasing with time. According to Statista, 8+ million user records were exposed worldwide in Q4 2023. This is why data privacy is one of the biggest concerns today. Realizing this, data privacy laws and regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, etc. are in place, and failing to comply with their requirements can cost companies heavy penalties and customer trust.
Security automation helps you strengthen compliance management in your organization by automating processes like managing data securely, access controls, audit logging, compliance reporting, and more. This way, you can achieve compliance without manual errors and save time.
4. Standardized Security Processes
You can standardize security processes, methods, and technologies in your organization with the help of security automation tools. It will help you clearly define all the processes without errors and apply them throughout your organization. This will provide everyone in your organization with consistent security guidelines that they can follow and stay secure and compliant with laws.
5. Enhanced ROI
Security automation saves you time and costs that were previously wasted on manual tasks. With automation tools, you can measure statistics like worked hours, costs involved, etc. In addition, lower operational costs also mean lower mean time to repair (MTTR).
Thus, you can evaluate how security automation helps enhance your return on investment (ROI). Realizing all these benefits, businesses are now adopting it increasingly. By 2028, the global market for security automation will hit US$16.7 billion.
Security Automation Challenges and Considerations
Despite offering any benefits, security automation comes with certain challenges, mainly in its implementation. Let’s understand those challenges and ways to overcome them.
- Integration complexity: Integrating security automation tools in your current systems and IT infrastructure can be complex and costly. It could also create compatibility issues, affecting operations.
Before implementing security automation, plan each step carefully. Understand your current setup, choose compatible security automation tools, and keep your budget in mind.
- Resistance to change: Your staff might resist adopting automated security. It could be due to unfamiliarity with the technology, fear of being replaced, or anything else.
Discuss with your staff the benefits of implementing cyber defense automation and how it will assist them, instead of replacing them. Provide proper training and resources to ease the adoption process.
- Skill shortage: Using security automation tools requires AI experience and skills in order to implement them in your operations. But skill shortage is real across industries. Human mistakes like misconfigurations can damage an organization in terms of data loss, operational delays, etc.
Upskill your current security professionals by training them on AI models. Or, hire professionals with expertise in AI and coding by conducting in-depth interviews and technical tests. Alternatively, opt for fully automated systems and providers offering comprehensive technical support.
- False positives: Automation tools show high false positives even if they detect a non-critical activity. Addressing false positives is a time wastage. And if it’s critical, leaving them unaddressed can translate into a security disaster.
Use security automation tools with sophisticated ML models to predict threats. Also, keep training your AI models to become better with time.
- Evolving compliance needs: Compliance requirements change frequently with evolving threats and data privacy concerns. Keeping up with them is challenging for businesses and non-compliance can result in heavy penalties.
Use security automation tools with built-in compliance to ensure the requirements are met. In addition, perform regular audits and prepare reports to prove compliance.
Best Practices for Security Automation
Follow these best practices while implementing security automation in your organization:
1. Plan Strategically
Before implementing security automation in your operations, create a solid plan aligning your organization’s security goals. Determine your attack surface, the level of risk your company faces, and your security history and choose suitable tools to automate security tasks. Once everything is set in place, plan each step of the implementation, from integration to incident response automation, and execute your plans accordingly.
2. Establish Standards and Rules
Set up clear standards, guidelines, processes, and rules for each security automation activity. Make everyone on your security team aware of these guidelines and follow them. Document all steps and information for performing a task to eliminate confusion and ensure consistency in operations.
3. Define Use Cases
Define what sort of security tasks you wish to automate in your organization. It could be updating software, performing patches, scheduling jobs, and more. Create a list of all these tasks and assign a level of priority to each one of them.
For example, if a security update is available for an important application, updating it is a critical task and, therefore, must be given a higher priority level.
4. Train Your Staff
To achieve wholesome security in your organization, both machines and humans must work in harmony. Train your staff on using security automation tools effectively, and consider machines as their assistants, not their replacements. Upskill them with coding and AI to handle automation tasks.
5. Choosing a Reliable Provider
Choosing a secure, reliable software provider is difficult. If their security mechanisms are not robust, it may affect your data and systems where you’re using their software.
Run a background check on the company and what security mechanisms they use to protect your data. Always choose a secure, powerful, and reputed security automation provider to ensure safety and confidentiality.
Security Automation Examples and Use Cases
When to use security automation:
- Incident response: Prompt action is essential, especially when an attack looms over your organization. Security automation tools will help you respond to incidents quickly so you can reduce their impact and contain the threat actor.
- Threat monitoring: Monitor your IT infrastructure 24/7 for threats and detect them in real-time using security automation software.
- Access permissions: Manage access permissions automatically for different users to save resources and time, eliminating the chances of permission violations or data theft.
- Data enrichment: Enrich your threat database with new attacks and how to respond to them effectively. It will help you avoid similar attacks in the future.
- Business continuity: Security automation tools enable you to operate even if you’re under attack by containing and removing threats promptly.
Example: The tool can block the IT address associated with an affected system while allowing other IPs to be operational.
- Endpoint scans: You can automate endpoint scans across different hosts efficiently to reduce costs and manual effort associated with individual scans.
Example: You can configure and trigger scans in an endpoint to detect security issues faster and resolve them on time.
- Generating test code: DevSecOps teams can use automation tools to generate test code automatically and integrate security from the beginning in software development.
When Not to Use Security Automation
- Penetration testing: Pen testing requires business-specific insights to be able to run a simulated attack on a system and find vulnerabilities. Thus, automation doesn’t work here.
- Threat modeling: It requires in-depth knowledge of an organization’s IT environment, and flaws in business logic to be able to develop a secure application. Automation can’t do that.
- Sensitive decision-making: Skip using automation tools if a task involves sensitive decision-making.
Example: Humans can better decide the reason for a password failure, whether it’s due to a person forgetting their credentials or a cyberattack.
Conclusion
Security automation is a modern approach that allows you to automate repetitive, time-consuming, and resource-intensive security tasks. It uses the power of the latest technologies like AI and ML for automation in threat hunting and response, compliance management, and improved ROI.
Embrace security automation today with SentinelOne – a leading cybersecurity solution provider, offering tools like Purple AI, AI-SIEM, XDR, and more.
Contact us to explore more.
FAQs
1. What is Cyber Security Automation?
Cyber security automation enables you to detect, eliminate, and prevent cyber threats by automating security tasks.
2. What’s the need for security automation?
Organizations need security automation to enable faster incident detection and response, continuous monitoring and detection, reduce security workload, manage compliance, and improve security ROI.
3. How do I choose the right security automation tools for my organization?
If you are looking to choose the right security automation tool for your organization, consider your organization’s size, number of assets, budget, risk levels, and security goals.
4. Is security automation suitable for small businesses?
Definitely, security automation is suitable for businesses of all types, including small businesses to promptly detect and prevent security incidents in real-time.
5. What role does AI play in security automation?
In the security automation sphere, Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables you to detect vulnerabilities and predict security threats by analyzing attack patterns and historical data.