Cybercriminals are using automated tools to find security weaknesses and launch attacks. If organizations rely on manual defenses, they’re going to lose. The only way to level the playing field is to pit machine against machine — that is, to implement automated cybersecurity tools. Automation enables IT teams to detect threats faster and prevent them from propagating throughout the environment.
Many organizations view security automation as a means of reducing IT operational overhead. That’s true — robotic automation tools enable IT staff to offload many routine, repetitive tasks. The objective isn’t to reduce headcount but to give staff more time to focus on threat response and enhancing the organization’s security posture. Cybersecurity efforts can be further enhanced by cognitive automation tools that analyze the behavior of users, systems and devices to spot anomalies and defend against previously unknown threats.
Robotic Security Automation
One of the biggest challenges organizations face is the vast amounts of data collected by systems and security tools. It’s simply impossible for humans to analyze all of these log files and follow up on all of the alerts that are generated. Even if they could, the data is of little value unless it’s correlated across the environment. Automated tools excel at these tasks, enabling faster, more accurate and more effective threat analysis.
Once a threat is identified, organizations need the ability to deploy defenses faster than the attack can spread throughout the network. Because it takes time to perform threat analysis, security teams need to quickly determine which systems have been infiltrated and where the attack is expected to go next. Automated tools can ensure that the right controls are in place.
Today’s automated attacks are complex, often involving multiple types of threats in coordination. Defensive measures need to be implemented at multiple stages in the “cyber kill chain” in order to effectively disrupt the attack. This is very difficult to do manually, especially when using multiple security tools that don’t talk to one another. Automated tools are much more effective.
Cognitive Security Automation
More advanced security automation platforms take advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to perform threat analysis. These tools “learn” what normal network and system behavior looks like so they can detect deviations that could point to a cyberattack. They work in concert with robotic security automation systems and provide contextual information to human engineers to coordinate incident response.
Cognitive security automation tools can also be used to develop models that help organizations improve their overall security posture. By continuously analyzing threat vectors throughout the environment and backward and forward in time, these tools can help security pros become more proactive and develop dynamic, policy-based actions that enhance threat detection and response. They can also help detect and prevent social engineering attacks.
How Technologent Can Help
Technologent’s IT automation and cybersecurity experts can help you refine your cybersecurity strategy to employ next-generation tools that use robotic and cognitive automation to rapidly detect threats. We can also help you establish automated processes that implement the right protections to stop the attack lifecycle anywhere in your environment.
Very few organizations are taking full advantage of cybersecurity automation to defend against today’s sophisticated attacks. Now is the time to take a serious look at how automated tools can enhance your security posture.
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