Automation and Integration in Cybersecurity- One of the hottest topics in cybersecurity is automation. The major goal of automating mundane and repetitive jobs is to free up time for problem-solving activities.
Organizations can become more resilient to cyber-attacks by dedicating all resources to these problem-solving activities from a cybersecurity standpoint.
Malicious attacks are becoming more sophisticated as technology advances. As a result, cyber-security programmes must be ready to implement automated cybersecurity solutions.
From general activities like smart warehousing to automation and IT and cybersecurity integration, businesses around the world are looking for ways to improve their productivity and profitability.
Adding automation to an existing infrastructure can be done in a number of ways and with a variety of security automation solutions. What are the functions of these tools? What principles are they based on? What are the methods for incorporating them into security systems? What are the advantages of automation and integration for a company?
This article explains some of the fundamental principles and philosophies that surround what the future of cybersecurity might look like in the near future.
What is Cybersecurity Automation?
There are various cybersecurity products on the market today that are designed to automate operations. One or more of these tools has most certainly been implemented in your company. For example, vulnerability management technologies such as anti-malware can be configured to scan and detect BYODs on a company’s network. Based on the security rules defined by the organisation, these tools identify cyber threats and eliminate found defects. When it comes to implementing new automation best practises, experts in the field point to security equipment such as robotic process automation (RPA), customised software and code, and Security Orchestration Automation and Respons (SOAR) products, which automate the sequence and do analysis.
SOAR products are designed to coordinate operations across multiple security technologies while also performing specialised automated tasks in response to discovered vulnerabilities. RPA tools, on the other hand, enable the automation of a wide range of procedures. Custom-developed software and code are frequently used for a specific challenge or niche for which there is no off-the-shelf solution. This is due to their ability to automate a wide range of studies and effectively synthesise data in accordance with the applicable security requirements and standards.
All of the above-mentioned innovative ways work in tandem with an organization’s technologies to do a thorough study, gather intelligence, and either alert an assigned team member to act or perform an automated reaction to the processed data.
Why Venture into Cybersecurity Automation?
As enterprises place a greater emphasis on digitization, the sophistication and complexity of network infrastructure is fast expanding. Digital changes have an impact on the nature of the organization’s work, the module through which they connect with their customers, their industry-competitive tactics, and their overall efficiency level. The digitization of enterprise network systems introduces a new attack surface that, if not properly protected, monitored, and responded to when threats arise, can have a significant negative impact on the organisation. From the standpoint of corporate espionage, it’s critical to comprehend the scope of vulnerability and danger exposure introduced into a business as it moves forward with various digital transformation operations.
While inspecting their systems for behaviour irregularities or threat indicators, most firms still use traditional approaches. In today’s organisation, this is a losing proposition, which automation and cybersecurity integration can assist overcome. Automation can handle ill-proportioned or thin Cybersecurity teams in the context of the organization’s rising digital footprint. Traditional techniques are inefficient because they require the management of enormous volumes of data by humans who are prone to making mistakes. This creates crevices through which dangers can still enter. Implementing automation in your organisation is a critical and dependable mechanism for protecting your business while also ensuring optimum defence through repeatable and resilient operations.
Benefit of Automation
Automation is a technology revolution that is altering our business platforms, not merely a fad or a technical buzzword. When a company adopts automation, it allows the security staff to focus on more productive and challenging tasks. This indicates that the machine is capable of performing repeated tasks. Simultaneously, the cybersecurity team is focusing on more creative, critical, and technical work in order to resolve challenges and improve the organization’s risk posture. Following the establishment of a reliable automated cybersecurity system, security staff can concentrate on tasks such as;
- Architecture and Engineering: As technology advances, the cybersecurity team will be able to focus on developing and implementing tactics such as cyber hygiene and zero-trust networks within an organisation.
- Following the identification of weaknesses, the organization’s security team can quickly identify the most repeated operations inside the business’s environment, resulting in reduced susceptibility.
- Automation development and engineering: Automation is a critical component of any cybersecurity programme, and it necessitates a significant amount of time and effort to design and implement.
Tools and Platforms for Cybersecurity Automation
The platforms and process tools for cybersecurity are listed below. This article discusses the advantages of each solution and how they boost efficiency, reduce manufacturing costs, improve cyber effectiveness, and improve overall organisational procedures.
Robotic Process Automation
The use of robotic process automation to automate repetitive operations, either physically or virtually, is known as robotic process automation. Low-cognitive functions such as monitoring, scanning, and low-level incident response can be done by automation in security automation and cyber-space defence. It enables one to be aware of, aggregate, and extract data while doing basic threat search and detection and other low-level cognitive tasks.
Advantages of Integrating RPA into Your Enterprise
RPA provides numerous advantages, both in terms of compliance and logistical risk. First, it makes cyber-defense so simple to implement since it reduces the need to physically do repeated operations. It also aids organisations in reducing human interaction, which is one of the most major cybersecurity weaknesses. People, whether by accident or design, are one of the most serious cyber-threats to corporations and organisations. As a result, removing the human element makes your data and information more secure.
Here are a few examples of how software robots might aid in decreasing cybersecurity risk.
- RPA uses automated detection and alarm response, which reduces the time it takes to detect threats and provide feedback on responses.
- By assisting with application and device discovery, RPA assists in identifying vulnerable attack surfaces and mitigating security threats.
- RPA fills in for the absent cybersecurity competence, bridging the talent gap.
When dealing with sensitive personal information, RPA reduces the vulnerability posed by the human component. - Unlike humans, who tyre or psychologically clock out due to weariness, RPA delivers proactive security coverage 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
- RPA leverages characteristics like automation of software upgrades and patch distribution to increase security.
Furthermore, RPA assists your company in adhering to standards and regulations set forth by the European Union, such as the PCI DSS or the General Data Protection Regulation. RPA, for example, can be used to automate repetitive processes such as data breach alerts, consent notification rollouts, data collecting, and documentation of all data held by your firm for audits. So, why hire more people to do boring, repetitive work when RPA can do it for you?
RPA provides several benefits to businesses and other organisations. No business, however, should rely only on RPA for more essential security operations that may necessitate greater analytical and cognitive capabilities. A more thorough investigation is required. A company should use a combination of cognitive learning technologies and human analysts.
Certificate Management
Due to Google’s necessity to encrypt its website, SSL keys and certificates have become widely used, resulting in several harmful blind spots.
One of the most serious security concerns to your website and business is a lack of openness in your public key infrastructure. If you were to be interviewed by a panel of cyber specialists, would you be able to answer the following questions without hesitation?
- How many SSL certificates did your company, domains, and workers receive?
- What distinguishes the certificates?
- Were all of the certificates issued by the same authority, or did some come from a separate source?
- Who made the request for the certificates to be printed?
- What is the total number of keys in the company?
- What is the location of the key storage facility?
- Who has access to SSL keys and who does not?
I’m guessing you won’t be able to affirmatively answer any of those questions. Shadow certificates can result in data breaches, significant financial losses, or, in the worst-case scenario, the network’s complete failure. This has a number of severe consequences for your company’s bottom line, including lost income, lost consumer trust, and different non-compliance fines and penalties. This is a lot of money to lose for something you didn’t even realise was in your system. As a result, how can unidentified certificates be prevented from expiring? Yes, this is where PKI certificate management comes in handy for cybersecurity and automation encryption.
Advantage of a Certificate Management Platform
Other than website management, management solutions with facilities for certificate delivery can be used for a variety of purposes. It enables your company to identify every X.509 digital certificate on its network, regardless of the brand, issuance date, type, client certificates, IoT and device certificates, or TLS/SSL certificates. SCM (Sectigo Certificate Manager) is an excellent example of such a tool.
The following are some of the repetitious processes that these certificate management technologies may immediately eliminate:
- Renewal, issuance, revocation, and installation of management certificates are completely automated.
- Self-enrollment is used to produce and create end users automatically.
- Certificates that are due to expire in 30, 60, or 90 days are automatically notified.
To preserve a proactive insight into your organization’s digital certificates, my free suggestion is to take advantage of the current certificate management solutions available on the market today. This is a less expensive alternative to compensating for serious consequences such as lawsuits, regulatory fines, or even a blemish in the brand’s image.
SOAR and Event Management
In 2017, Gartner described the process of combining numerous technologies to improve security efficiency and capabilities as security and response automation, provided that no human assets are attached to any low-level tasks. By improving operations automation, reaction to a security incident, and vulnerability management capabilities, SORE optimises security automation, security response, and orchestration. Because siem and soar have many similarities, this may seem more like security incident and event management. Both take data from a variety of sources, evaluate it, and look for anomalous behaviour in a network system. Despite the fact that they collaborate, they differ in the following ways:
- SIEM is more manual, requiring a physical reaction to notifications as well as periodic manual changes to the technologies in use. SIEMs, on the other hand, are less successful at detecting unknown or new risks, and are only capable of detecting known dangers.
- SOAR employs a variety of applications, receives notifications, and sends an automatic reaction for remediation or triage when the need arises. SOAR detects vulnerabilities and threats both within and outside the network using Artificial Intelligence and advanced cognitive technologies such as machine learning.
Advantages of adopting SIEM and SOAR solutions for your organisation
SOAR is essentially about optimising an enterprise’s output by reducing processes, technology, and people in order to improve incident response and other associated security activities. SOAR, for example, enhances SIEM capabilities in a security operations centre by adding value.
Threat detection and response times have been proven to diminish by 50 percent to 70 percent in previous studies; thus, SOAR orchestration benefits the organisation by avoiding phishing assaults from succeeding.
How can you tell if SOAR solutions will help your company or not?
To accurately establish how the solution indicated above can assist your company, ask yourself the following questions.
- Are you constantly confronted with ergonomic activities that could be automated?
- Is your security staff getting tired of receiving alerts?
- Are you educated and knowledgeable enough to make informed decisions about cybersecurity?
- Are there any processes in your company that could benefit from automation?
If you answered yes to the bulk of these questions, you should spend more time weighing the benefits and drawbacks of implementing automated solutions for each process to determine their true worth to your company.
Custom Automation Solution Development
Every organisation is distinct in some way, and the needs of different organisations differ greatly. As a result, while existing solutions may be useful, customisation of a need-specific solution may still be beneficial to an organisation if necessary. If your security team is competent enough, you can easily handle this, or you can delegate it to a third-party service provider.
What is Next? What does the future hold for us?
The future of cybersecurity will undoubtedly be shaped by automation. Advancements in technology, on the other hand, have resulted in better cyber-experts in software creation and other code trickery tactics. It’s possible that cybersecurity programmes may evolve into more of a one-stop shop where consumers can buy a variety of capabilities in the future.
How to Implement Automation Concepts Successfully
- Your cybersecurity should be trained and equipped with development capabilities so that they can report directly to cyber leadership.
- Establish a strong interdepartmental link between the cybersecurity team and the rest of the organisation.
- Adopt a hybrid strategy. Develop developmental methods and approaches with your core team, improve organisational development goals, and complete advanced integration tasks.
As the complexity of technology continues to increase and evolve, so does the demand for security automation and integration technologies. Automation and integration will play a big role in the cybersecurity blueprints of organisations and corporations in the future. Is your company ready to deal with the inevitable change? And, if not, what techniques will you employ to stay ahead of the competition in this industry?
