The Benefits of Security Automation

The world is moving towards digital transformation, where software and automation mean less human support is necessary to perform repetitive tasks. Security automation is no different; we’ve seen massive automation in security in recent years and that trend continues unabated.  

Let’s explore security automation in detail and determine whether it’s time for you to automate your security operations!

Understanding Security Automation

Security automation refers to the use of technology to integrate security processes. That reduces the need for human assistance and increases the efficiency of security systems, ultimately eliminating security chaos caused by human errors. 

The approach here is to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate much of IT security operations, employing software-driven processes to detect, investigate, and treat security threats. Automation allows SecOps teams to focus on strategy-driven tasks, by automating routine manual work. 

Why do this at all? Because as digital transformation escalates, security threats are proliferating at an alarming rate too! Nearly every 39 seconds hackers are targeting websites and using new methods to breach firewalls. 

Manual security monitoring can be time-consuming and depends on workforce availability. With automated security tools, rapid incident response is made possible, so you can tackle cyber threats without delay.

The Significance of Security Automation

For efficient results and better business flow, organizations should move toward less dependence on security teams and analysts, and more on software solutions. Listed below are some of the and reasons why security automation is important in today’s highly challenging times, even against the most common cyberattacks:

Improves Incident Response

By automating your security operations, you will improve effective incident response. It allows you to prioritize threats and handle some cyber attacks automatically with pre-set courses of action. This will reduce the need for human intervention, reduce response time, and address security issues without manual effort.

Enables Faster Threat Detection

Security automation allows faster threat detection, without depending on any external force. This means that threats like malware, phishing, and endpoint vulnerabilities will be detected right away by the security system and not require any audits to be identified and treated. 

Automating your security system makes it intelligent and quick to recognize threats, which limits the potential for a security incident to occur. 

Eliminates ‘Alert Fatigue’

Alert fatigue is a real harm in cybersecurity. It increases response time and decreases the quality of investigation. The massive number of security notifications makes it difficult to identify and remediate critical security threats. 

With automated security solutions, most threat hunting tasks will be handled automatically with pre-set protocols, while the most critical will be routed to the appropriate response team.

Ensures Secure Software Development

Automated security operations ensure high-end security during the development phase. It identifies potential threats and vulnerabilities, allowing developers to fix the issues on the go. 

Security automation helps security systems by using threat intelligence to analyze the attack surface and to triage security threats before the program is deployed. 

Streamlines Business Processes 

Security automation tools help to streamline security processes. That reduces complexity, avoids human errors, improves knowledge sharing, and supports faster decision-making. 

Handles Sensitive Data Carefully 

If you are a business that faces tremendous cyber threats, handles sensitive data, stores user information, or believes in providing a safe and secure environment to its audience, then security automation is the right choice for you. It will allow your business to save time and money otherwise spent in manual addressing intrusion detection, not to mention making your detection capabilities far more effective.

Security Automation or Security Orchestration? 

Security orchestration refers to the integration of security tools and disparate security systems. It streamlines different security processes and boosts security automation. 

Security orchestration enables the coordination and flow of data and tasks. It connects the tools, systems, and processes to replace manual processes with contextual decision-making. You can turn complex processes into streamlined workflows. 

How DO Security Automation and Orchestration Differ?

With security orchestration, you save time and effort otherwise spent on different security systems, while maximizing the use of each security tool. 

On the other hand, security automation is streamlining different processes in your security system. You can automate different processes, but might still need orchestration to automate tasks among the systems and tools. 

When combined, security orchestration and security automation provide tremendous benefits for your security system, including:

• Faster response rate
• Improved investigation accuracy
• Fewer risks to the business
• Less alert fatigue
• Cost & time savings

Cybercriminals and their malware are getting smarter and stronger with time. They require high-end security systems and protection against cybersecurity threats. That’s where security orchestration comes into the picture: because it integrates security systems and processes for detection.

Is Security Automation Right for My Business? 

Security automation brings tremendous benefits for businesses. Primarily, it can help your company detect cybersecurity challenges faster and significantly reduce risk. 

With security automation, you don’t have to rely on security analysts to handle cyber threats. Instead, the system will automatically respond to cyber threats with pre-set responses. 

Security Automation Challenges 

All that said, security automation does come with certain challenges. It can detect pre-determined and pre-set cyber threats that are manually fed into the system. The system will automate manual tasks, but it cannot handle new cyber threats and challenges on its own.

Automation also requires security teams to determine the solutions first and then add them to the system, so the system can automatically determine what responses to implement when something happens. That is, the system still needs a “toolkit” of possible responses.

It’s wrong to assume that security automation will eliminate the need for human support in staving off security breaches. Human oversight will always be necessary. Automation will, however, make life easier for security teams by prioritizing cyberattacks, reducing alert fatigue, and handline routine threats automatically.   

If you are a business considering security automation, be prepared to encounter resistance from your cybersecurity team. Employees are often reluctant to adapt to technology when they believe their jobs are in danger with technology taking over. It is essential to make your employees and stakeholders realize the rationality of security automation to make it effective and fruitful for your organization. 

Ready to Automate Your Security Processes?

A reliable governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) solution is essential for effective automation. 

At Reciprocity, our automation platform helps companies improve their information security by evaluating their cybersecurity risks and implementing the appropriate workflows to meet all your security requirements.

ZenGRC can also map your security automation tasks across multiple frameworks and use cases such as SOC, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and more. Our dashboard provides a real-time view of your cybersecurity stance, showing you where your gaps are and what security tasks are needed for remediation.

Not only does this enable a stronger, more efficient cybersecurity risk management stance; it also helps compliance officers feel more effective at their jobs while keeping stakeholders informed.

To see how ZenGRC can improve your cybersecurity strategies, schedule a free demo today.