How Automation Can Improve Your Cybersecurity Posture 

The last year has completely changed the cybersecurity landscape. It has started a new era of cyberattacks. Attackers are using sophisticated methods for bringing down servers. They are using creative ways for gaining access to important data assets. It is important to deal with this evolving threat. Organizations are moving towards automation tools for solving this problem. These automation tools will help you in strengthening your IT security protocols. It will also help you in enforcing your remote work environment. In this article, we are going to talk about how automation can improve your cybersecurity strategy.

What is cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity simply means a set of processes, tools, and principles that you can use for protecting your critical systems. It will help you in protecting your sensitive data from damage or unauthorized access. Organizations are relying heavily on their network systems for staying connected with the internet. Such systems face a lot of threats as they are connected to the internet. Cybercriminals are targeting organizations of all sizes. They don’t even care about small organizations know. The main aim is to steal personally identifiable information (PII) like addresses, Social security numbers, names, and credit card data. They can sell this data on the dark web for fraud purposes.

Companies also need to deal with massive DDoS attacks. The biggest DDoS attack happened in November 2021. Attackers were trying to take down the Cloudflare network. Ransomware attacks are also becoming more common with time. They can bring down even the best companies down.

It is important to protect your business from attackers. The financial impact of security breaches is significant. According to a report from 2020, a data breach costs about $3.86 million on average. However, this figure is around $8.7 million in the United States. You will also lose reputation due to a data breach. Your customers will move to other platforms. Effective cybersecurity can help you in protecting your business from these things. It will help you in protecting your business from security breaches. A good cybersecurity strategy will ensure that can deal with multiple security threats. Your remote workers can also work without worrying about security threats.

What is automation?

The best thing about computers is that they help us in minimizing the need for human input. They can do most of the work and you don’t need to worry about any errors. Computers can help you in doing all manual processes. The potential of computers is finally realized by automation tools. These automation tools are using complex algorithms for learning quickly. They use available data for learning about new situations. You don’t need to worry about manual intervention.

Automated processes will help you in streamlining workflows. You can efficiently manage content. These processes will also help you in analyzing unstructured content. This will help you in minimizing errors. Also, it will help you in improving your efficiency. These tools will also free up your valuable resources. You can use these valuable resources for doing higher-value tasks.

How to automate cybersecurity?

Latest cybersecurity practices are becoming more automated with time. This is helping companies in enhancing vulnerability management, security operations, incident response, and threat detection. Automated security protocols will help you in detecting and investigating threats. They will help you in removing these threats automatically. You don’t need to worry about sending an alert notification to someone. An average IT team will generally miss these alerts. According to a report, more than 75% of such alerts are either ignored or missed by the IT security team. The best way to solve this problem is by automating your security systems. These automated security tools will help you in attending to every issue. You don’t need to worry about any missed alerts.

There are various ways to implement these cybersecurity automation tools. These tools will generally be a general approach for automating security protocols. You need to first implement systems for gathering datasets. These datasets will be used by your machine learning algorithms for identifying threats. You can use these tools for automatically responding to threats.

All the collected data will be analyzed by the tools. This will help you in identifying key patterns and trends. These trends will help you in predicting future threats. They will help you in spotting the signs of a data breach before it even happens.

You will also implement scalable detection scans capability. This will help you in testing and examining your computing and network assets after an incident. It will ensure that all your systems are working properly. This is very labor-intensive work. If your IT team is doing it manually, then they need to spend a lot of time checking your systems. Still, your IT team will miss something according to statistics. Automated solutions will help you in minimizing the chance of errors.

Advantages of Cybersecurity Automation 

1. Better Application Security

Integration is a very important part of IT systems. There are hundreds of systems running in an enterprise. These systems are connected through various APIs and networks. It is difficult to manage all these systems. Also, you need to track who has access to which system. You can use cybersecurity automation tools for solving this problem. It will ensure that you can monitor your entire network without requiring any manual oversight. You don’t need to worry about minor details going overlooked. Automation tools will help you in tracking all the activities and assess for suspicious behavior or threats.

2. Privacy compliance

Data privacy laws are becoming stricter with time. This can be already seen after the introduction of CCPA or GDPR regulations. Consumers are getting control over their data and how companies can manage this data. Information security standards like ISO 27001 and SSAE 18 require you to use the best IT security protocols. Automation tools are perfect for following these regulations. They are a perfect fit for the compliance industry. These tools will help you in minimizing manual contact with your confidential data. This will reduce the chances of human errors.

3. Better Security testing

The most important tool in the IT security industry is still simulated cyberattacks. This can help you in quickly finding weak points in your cybersecurity systems and security protocols. In the past, IT security teams were conducting these attacks manually. However, this will take a lot of resources, energy, and time. Organizations will also generally neglect testing. If you are not testing your IT systems, then it will become difficult to find security risks. Automated security solutions can help you in solving this problem. They will continuously do simulations for generating real-world data on vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities can be exploited by attackers. Thus, automated tools will try to act as attackers and exploit these vulnerabilities.

4. Better incident response

The IT infrastructure is becoming complex with time. It is difficult for IT experts to find potential threats. Most threats will strike too quickly. Your IT team won’t have time to respond to these threats. They might take too much time to notice these attacks. Automated security tools will help you in solving this problem. You can use automated incident response tools for protecting your network from security breaches. However, these tools will require large datasets. These tools will help you instantly recognize the signs of an attack. You can take action for mitigating or avoiding a security breach.

5. Better Data management

It is very important to keep up with the security landscape. Security data will help you in improving your cybersecurity practices. Your teams should know about the latest threats. This will help your team in combating the threats effectively. However, gathering data is a very tedious task. You also need to analyze all this data. These tasks are prone to manual errors.

You should use automation tools for data collection and management. This will ensure that all the data is collected and analyzed. All the data will be examined and logged for future use. Your IT team can focus on implementing other IT security precautions. They don’t need to worry about manually collecting your data. Your IT team can focus on making your network systems secure.

Which security operations can be automated?

You can automate the entire triage, containment, and investigation process. Security automation will help you in enabling the workflow process to enjoy a variety of data enrichment. Almost every IT security field can be automated. You can use it for collecting data and sending notifications. Automated security tools will also help you in containing an attack. These tools will ensure that no threat will go unnoticed.

You can adjust the automation of these tasks according to your needs. Your security teams can adjust the automation for your security operations. You can implement automation in both low-risk and high-risk security operations. However, automation is best when you are automating repetitive tasks. This won’t affect the quality of your security operations.

You should look for repetitive tasks that your security team is doing. For example, they might be manually monitoring your network. Automated solutions will help you in automatically monitoring your network. You don’t need to worry about manually monitoring your network. Similarly, your IT team doesn’t have enough time and resources to look for vulnerabilities manually. Automated vulnerability scanners will help you in scanning your network for vulnerabilities. You can use penetration tools for testing these vulnerabilities. These tools will also generate a tool for your IT security tool. It will automatically arrange the reported vulnerabilities according to their risk level.

Is there any disadvantage of cybersecurity automation?

Security automation will handle your tasks independently. However, you still need to provide instruction on these tools. Human intervention will be required for navigating these tools. SecOps and Analysts are required to interact with these automated solutions. They will also decide whether the workflow will be semi-automated or fully automated.

The automation process will require some human control. You can tweak these automation processes according to your organization’s needs. Analysts will also be involved during the decision-making process. Your IT team can customize the level of automation according to your needs. If you need 100% automated solutions, then you can implement them. However, automation is not good if your environment is changing rapidly. You should use it for low-risk operations that are not evolving fast in starting. After some experience, you can move to high-risk operations. However, you should still consider working with a good MSP for solving this problem. They will bring the expertise you need for customizing and using these solutions.

How to implement cybersecurity automation effectively?

You should first analyze your current security operations properly. It is important to check the areas of your IT security operations where most alerts are generated. You should also check the most frequent alerts.

Your IT team needs to tweak the automated responses in such a way that they learn from the action and experience of your SecOps team. You can increase the usage of these tools as you gather more data. Thus, you should start by assessing your security operations. After that, you can decide to which degree you want to use cybersecurity automation. If you don’t have a large IT security team, then you can work with an MSP. Experienced MSPs like Bleuwire will help you in assessing your network and security solutions. They will help you in customizing and implementing cybersecurity automation according to your needs.

Conclusion

Cyberattacks are using automated tools for attacking organizations. If you are trying to protect your network manually, then you can’t win. IT will be a fight between man and machine. It is important to ensure that you are using automated cybersecurity tools. However, it is not easy to implement these tools. The best way to improve your cybersecurity posture is by working with a good MSP. Experienced MSPs like Bleuwire can help you in integrating automated IT security tools. This will ensure that your network and data are secure. You don’t need to worry about implementing these complex IT security tools. Bleuwire will help you remotely monitor your IT network. They will create a proactive IT security strategy for your business. Thus, you don’t need to worry about manually protecting your network. If you need more tips regarding IT security services, then you can contact Bleuwire.

Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™  services and solutions in how we can help your business.