What is Security Automation? Balancing Efficiency with Risk Management

Security automation is the application of technology to automatically discover, monitor, and respond to cybersecurity threats while reducing the need for manual intervention.

Automation can streamline some repetitive security tasks, like threat detection, security incident response, vulnerability management, and more. It also enables organizations to respond more quickly to information security scenarios while reducing the potential for human error.

However, while you’re implementing cyber security automation, it is critical to ensure that you’ve got the balance right between efficiency and risk management.

What is automation in cybersecurity?

Automation in the cybersecurity world refers to the usage of software, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to automatically prevent, detect, investigate, and respond to cyber threats. This minimizes the amount of manual work done on routine security operations, leading to faster response times and fewer human errors.

Security automation tools can constantly monitor, analyze, and respond to threats across their digital footprint. This process ultimately realizes a more robust and scalable security posture with less reliance on manual management.

What are the benefits of cyber security automation?

Security teams are inundated with alerts like never before. With the amount of data from threats and with a perennial shortage of talent in cyber security, the perfect storm now allows critical threats to fall through the cracks. And that’s precisely what makes cybersecurity automation a crucial component of an organization’s cyber security defenses.

1. Enhanced efficiency and speed

Automated systems can parse large amounts of data and take action in milliseconds. Unlike humans, a computer does not need to consider or analyze an action. This is crucial in containing threats before they have a chance to spread and cause significant damage.

2. Improved accuracy

Unfortunately, a tiny mistake in cybersecurity can have huge implications. Automation seamlessly removes the human error factor from repeated tasks, and consistency and accuracy are maintained in security operations automation.

3. Around-the-clock monitoring

Cyber threats do not come in a 9-5 window. Automated systems provide continuous monitoring and responses at every hour of every day.

4. Effortless scalability

Just as your organization is growing, so is your attack surface. Security automation enables you to streamline and scale security operations in line with your growing infrastructure, eliminating the need to expand a security team of the same size.

5. Proactive security and compliance

Automating routine tasks allows security professionals to engage in more proactive measures, such as Threat Hunting, Security Architecture, and security strategy planning. This transitions the security perspective from reactive to proactive.

How does security automation work?

Security automation is about establishing and executing a predetermined workflow to address security events. There are a few standard components:

1. Data aggregation and analysis

The first step is aggregating all your security data from various sources, such as Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems, firewalls, endpoint protection platforms, and cloud environments.

2. Automated playbooks

Once the security data is aggregated, it can then be analyzed by the automation platform to identify potential threats. If a threat is identified, it will trigger an automated playbook, or what is referred to as a workflow, describing the computerized actions to take.

3. Security automation tools

A variety of tools are available to complement automation in security:

• Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR): SOAR platforms are designed to take alerts from different sources and execute their automated playbooks in response to those alerts.
• Extended Detection and Response (XDR): XDR solutions offer a more holistic view of threat detection and response through correlating data from across the IT environment, providing a more complete picture of an attack.
• Vulnerability Management Tools: Vulnerability management tools can automate the posture of scanning for, prioritizing, and even patching vulnerabilities in your environments.
• Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP): As organizations transition to cloud environments, they need security automation tools to manage security in complex spaces.
• For example, Top CNAPP vendors, like Wiz, unite security and compliance management broadly across the cloud-native application lifecycle. Wiz Security Graph is a prime example of a resource that more easily illuminates risk and helps prioritize by providing a visual understanding of one's cloud environment.

Key use cases for security automation

The potential of security automation is extensive and continuously growing. The most common scenarios for security automation include:

• Automating initial portions of threat detection and response, such as finding a compromised endpoint and quarantining, or isolating a malicious IP and blocking.
• Scanning for vulnerabilities, prioritizing based on risk, and deploying patches without human intervention.
• Streamlining data collection and reporting is necessary to meet various regulatory policies and standards.
• Simplifying incident ticket creation, notifying stakeholders, and collecting forensic information.
• Phishing email analysis - Automating the analysis of suspicious emails to identify and prevent phishing attacks.

The art of balancing automation with human oversight

While automation can be beneficial, it invariably has limitations. Configuring and integrating security automation tools often entails significant time and effort, necessitating ongoing upkeep and development to keep them effective. A serious potential risk of automation is total reliance on automated systems.

It is essential to note the value of human intervention and expertise to analyze contextual enablers and partial risks that automated processes may miss. AI plays a critical role in mitigating these risks; AI-powered systems can process terabytes of data to improve threat detection capabilities, notify them of potential future threats, and allow for advanced automated responses.

There are cloud security compliance platforms that demonstrate how to operationalize automation across that scale, from data discovery down through remediation pathways. A compliance management platform integrated with your automation platform, such as Torq, can significantly enhance your SOC's capabilities by streamlining repetitive and critical workflows on a single platform.

Best practices for successful implementation

To fully realize the potential of security automation, it is vital to adhere to this set of best practices.

1. Create a strategic plan

Stage automation efforts in line with organizational goals, regulatory responsibilities, and risk profiles. Keep in mind that you are trying to solve a specific organizational issue by automating the workflow, and don't automate for the sake of automating.

2. Set clear goals and metrics

Before getting too far into the process, decide what you would like to accomplish using automation and how you will define an effective automation solution. This will keep you on task and ensure you can demonstrate how automation benefits the larger organization.

3. Start small and scale

Don't try to automate everything all at once. Keep the initial processes small and manageable, like a couple of simple, repetitive security tasks, and then expand from there as you become more experienced and confident in your automation work.

4. Continuously optimize

Look for high-volume or repeatable tasks that have good value for your organization and that would fit well into an automation framework (for example, phishing alert triage, patch deployments, etc.). Create simple playbooks that outline what steps you will take, under what conditions you will take those steps, and who you will hold responsible for oversight.

5. Offer training and education

Empower your security teams with the ability to provide oversight and operational management of automated processes. Provide training on the technologies associated with and the processor's critical thinking around a more nuanced, uncertain situation that may require human intervention.

6. Develop and maintain playbooks

Cyber threats evolve, necessitating changes to automation workflows and rules. You should regularly test and adapt automation rules and workflows, especially after a security incident or infrastructure change.

7. Choose the right technology partner

Assess vendors based on the reliability of their platform and security practices, integration capabilities, functionality, and a strong balance between their obligations and your assets.

Conclusion

Security automation is transforming how organizations combat multiple security threats by providing speed, consistency, and scale like never before. But the real challenge is to gain the benefits from security automation all while balancing risk management, human oversight, and continuous learning and improvement.

Implementing security automation will remain a core enabler of proactive, resilient, and business-aligned security practices as security threats become more sophisticated, more dangerous, and more widespread.