Automation and Integration in Cybersecurity | Virtually Testing Foundation

Security professionals, developers, and engineers are all under pressure to do more with less, so automation and integration are essential across the board. By incorporating security into agile processes such as CI/CD and DevOps, organizations can effectively manage risk while maintaining the required pace and quality of development. Sprawling web applications combining multiple web services are increasingly hard to secure, and automated solutions are becoming a necessity to reduce the workload on understaffed teams.

Automation is one of the trending topics in cybersecurity. The primary reason for automating mundane and repeatable tasks is to allow people to shift focus to problem-solving activities.

From a cybersecurity perspective, organizations can become more resilient to cyber-attacks by directing all the resources to these problem-solving activities.

Technological advancements also bring with it more sophisticated malicious attackers. Therefore Cybersecurity programs must be prepared to adopt automated cybersecurity solutions.

Globally, enterprises seek methods to improve their efficiency and profitability from their general activities like smart warehousing to automation and IT and cybersecurity integration.

Integrating automation in an existing infrastructure comes in a variety of ways and requires various security automation tools. What do these tools entail? On what principles do they work? How are they incorporated into security systems? What’s the benefit of automation and integration to a business entity?

This article walks you through some of the basic concepts and ideologies that surround what might be the future of cybersecurity in the foreseeable future.

What is Cybersecurity Automation?

Today, there are numerous cybersecurity products designed to automate processes. You have likely implemented one or more of these tools within your organization. For instance, vulnerability management products such as anti-malware may be set up to scan and automatically detect BYODs on an organization’s system. These products identify cyber-threats and eliminate identified defects based on the security protocols outlined by the organization. When talking about adopting new best practices in automation, gurus in this industry refer to security equipment like robotic process automation (RPA), customized software and code, and Security Orchestration Automation and Respons (SOAR) products automate the sequence and perform analysis.

SOAR products have been designed to orchestrate activities between various security tools and, at the same time, execute specific automation activities in response to the identified vulnerabilities. On the other hand, RPA tools allow for the automation of a variety of processes. Custom-developed software’s and code is often leveraged for a specific challenge or niche that the organization cannot find an out of box tool. This is because they can automate all manner of analyses and efficiently synthesize data as per the given security regulations and standards.

All of the above mentioned new approaches interact with an organization’s tools to perform a comprehensive analysis, collect intelligence and either prompt an assigned team member to take action or perform an automated reaction to the processed data.

Why Venture into Cybersecurity Automation?

Sophistication and complexity aspect of network infrastructure is rapidly increasing as organizations increase their emphasis on migration towards digitalization. Digital transformations affect the very nature of work performed by the organization, the module on which they interact with their customers, their strategies to stay competitive within the industry, and their overall efficiency level. The digitalization of enterprise network systems brings with it a new attack surface, which can significantly impact the organization negatively if not adequately defended, monitored, and responded to at the right time when threats emerge. From a corporate espionage perspective, it is important to understand the magnitude of vulnerability and threat exposure introduced into an organization as they move forward with an array of activities that aid with digital transformation.

Most organizations still rely on traditional methodologies while inspecting their systems for behavior abnormalities or threat indicators. This is a losing proposition in today’s organization set up and one which automation and integration of cybersecurity can help address. Concerning the organization’s growing digital footprint, ill-proportioned or lean Cybersecurity teams can be addressed by automation. Traditional tricks are relatively inefficient as they entail a combination of large amounts of data, which are is managed by human beings who are prone to error. This leads to cracks that threats can still slip through. Implementing automation in an organization is an important and reliable mechanism to protect your enterprise and, at the same time, ensure maximum defense through repeatable and robust processes.

Benefit of Automation

Automation is more than just a fad or a technical buzzword, but a technological revolution changing our business platforms. Adopting automation in an organization gives the security team to focus more on more productive and complex activities. This implies that the machine can carry out the repeatable work. At the same time, the cybersecurity team is devoted to more creative, critical, and technical work of resolving issues and improving the organization’s risk posture. After achieving a reliable automated cybersecurity system, security personnel can then focus on activities such as;

Architecture and Engineering: a shift of technology to automation will enable the cybersecurity team to focus on designing and actualizing strategies such as cyber hygiene and zero-trust networks within an entity.

Remediation Activities: after deficiencies have been identified, it is easy for the organization’s security team to identify the most repeatable activities within the businesses’ environment, leading to less vulnerability.

Development and engineering of automation: automation is an integral part of the cybersecurity program and requires specially dedicated resources to be comprehensively designed and implemented.

Tools and Platforms used in automation of cybersecurity

Below are some of the platforms and process tools for cybersecurity. This article covers each solution’s benefit and how they improve efficiency, reducing production costs improving cyber effectiveness, and generally enhancing organizational processes.

Robotic Process Automation

Using to automate repetitive tasks either physically or virtually is referred to as robotic process automation. Security automation and cyber-space defense can be defined as assigning low-cognitive functions such as monitoring, scanning, and low-level incident response to be handled by automation. It allows one to be aware of, aggregate, and extract data while carrying out the basic threat search and detection process and other low cognitive activities.