Cyber Security Automation: 12 Key Functions Your Organization Needs to Automate Now
What do you believe in, managing security tasks manually or automating? Your answer would certainly be automation, as it reduces human efforts, right? With 300,000 new malware being produced daily and a hacker attack occurring every 39 seconds, organizations find it challenging to defend themselves completely. Cyber-attacks continue to climb, so cybersecurity and cybersecurity automation has become key concern for organizations worldwide. The average data breach cost in 2020 was $3.86 million, with the healthcare and finance sectors being the most vulnerable. According to a report by Cybersecurity Ventures, cybercrime losses will exceed $10.5 trillion per year by 2025, making it the most dangerous to the world economy. Isn’t that a massive loss?
To counteract this ever-increasing threat, organizations must keep ahead of hackers by implementing automated solutions that can detect and prevent assaults before they occur.
The Need for Cyber Security Automation
One significant benefit of automating security functions is that it can quickly handle and process numerous datasets, whereas manual security systems may consume much time. For example, Organizations can collect and analyze enormous volumes of data from multiple sources using automated technologies such as SIEM systems and threat intelligence platforms to discover trends and anomalies that may indicate a security threat. This helps security teams to respond quickly to possible breaches before they evolve into full-fledged attacks.
Another reason for security function automation is that it allows security staff to focus on more complex jobs that require human knowledge. Security teams can dedicate more time to investigating and responding to more advanced threats that may necessitate more in-depth study by automating typical processes like vulnerability detection, patching, and system updates.
Cyber Security Automation: 12 Key Functions Your Organization Needs to Automate
1. Monitoring Bot Activity
Bot activity monitoring is an essential component of any automation programme design. End-user accounts should never be linked to bot privileges. The bot’s system credentials should be encrypted and not available in plaintext. During execution, bot actions should be centrally logged. Bots should run on their VLANs to facilitate network monitoring and risk management.
2. Defensive Actions
Scanning online resources for potential cyber threats is expected to keep them secure. But when a threat is confirmed, someone must take action manually to fix it. However, it would be helpful for businesses to automate the steps needed to defend against security vulnerabilities because it would reduce downtime and save money.
3. Data Encryption
Encrypting data and automating the process is crucial for businesses in today’s digital landscape. Unencrypted data poses significant risks to organizations and should be avoided at all costs. By continuously creating encrypted backups and automating the process, businesses can mitigate the impact of ransomware attacks and easily roll back to the previously encrypted backup with minimal disruption to their operations. Therefore, it is highly recommended that businesses prioritize encryption and automation of data backups to ensure the security and resilience of their data.
4. Vulnerability scanning
Cybercriminals use software and system flaws to launch attacks on businesses before providers can release security updates. Because it is simply impossible for security analysts to identify and repair all of these vulnerabilities before cyber attackers exploit them, companies must automate vulnerability scanning to identify and evaluate weaknesses based on their severity and potential impact, then prioritize the identified vulnerabilities based on their risk scores.
5. Compliance, Audit, And Incident Response
Automating compliance, audit, and incident response processes can be highly beneficial for businesses. By automating these processes, businesses can ensure that they are consistently adhering to industry regulations and standards. Automation can also help identify potential compliance issues and quickly address them before they become significant problems.
- Automating audit processes can help businesses ensure that they are meeting internal and external audit requirements. Automation can provide real-time monitoring and reporting, which can help identify potential issues early on and streamline the audit process.
- Automating incident response processes can help businesses quickly identify and respond to security incidents. Automated incident response can provide rapid detection and containment of security threats, reducing the impact on the organization.
- Automating compliance, audit, and incident response processes can help businesses improve their security posture, increase efficiency, and reduce the risk of non-compliance or security breaches.
6. Automation of Data Management
Most of the working day is devoted to manually administering technologies by security team members of organizations to guarantee the security of critical company data. However, security operations can be more effective by automating processes like log and asset management and data collection, freeing skilled security team members’ time to work on high-value jobs requiring human participation.
7. Data Security Automation
Using automation to manage data privacy can help organizations comply with regulations and requirements. By automating these functions, AI-powered solutions can quickly identify activities that don’t align with legal standards. However, it’s important to conduct thorough audits to ensure that these systems are functioning correctly and keeping data safe. Cybersecurity automation can help businesses maintain legal compliance and protect sensitive information.
8. Incident Response/ Threat detection
To protect against cybercriminals, organizations can use automated solutions for threat detection and response. These technologies can quickly identify potential risks and take action to prevent attacks using advanced methods like machine learning and artificial intelligence. Automated techniques are more precise and can detect threats more accurately than humans. By automating security processes, organizations can respond to attacks faster and minimize the risk of human error.
9. Application Security
A solution that relies solely on manual labor to guarantee application security is no longer practical. This is because as more businesses employ low-code, no-code, and application programming interfaces, the number of DevOps installations keeps growing. A manual approach can also bring human mistakes, increasing the potential for security breaches.
Businesses can utilize automated solutions to safeguard their applications by verifying authentication, authorization, and encryption protocols. In addition, automation can be used by businesses to check apps for known security issues.
10. Initial Alert Triage
The usage of SOAR solutions can automate initial alarm triage to a great extent. In large-scale international enterprises, security operations center analysts spend excessive time responding to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of warnings. Automation in the SOC enables staff to efficiently use their time while bridging the gap created by staff shortages.
11. Analysis of endpoint data
To help them detect vulnerabilities, IT directors should ensure they have the right tools to view their whole endpoint landscape and ingest all of the data from those endpoints. Security teams can concentrate their frequently constrained resources using a security product that automates detection with out-of-the-box MITRE-mapped detections.
12. Automated deception technology
To entice cyber attackers, AI-powered deception technology uses realistic decoys, such as databases, servers, files, apps, and domains. The technology starts gathering intelligence as soon as attackers engage with these spoofs, which it then utilizes to alert organizations’ security staff, enabling them to address/remove these threats, halt prospective breaches, and guarantee data protection.
Businesses can utilize automated solutions to safeguard their applications by verifying authentication, authorization, and encryption protocols. Automation can be used by businesses to check apps for known security issues.
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